Thabo of Destiny

By: Charlie Danoff

Do you believe in destiny? If you don’t, Bulls second-year guard Thabo Sefolosha is living proof it exists. Thabo has a tattoo on his arm - The Game Chose Me. Despite not picking up a ball for that game until he was nine years old and living in a country that had never produced anything close to an NBA player, he is one of the brightest spots on a struggling NBA team’s roster. Later in that adolescence there are pictures of a young Sefolosha wearing a cap of what would be his first team, and a self-portrait he drew shows him wearing a Bulls uniform 13 years before he ever actually donned one.

Still not convinced? Thabo’s first pro team, Vevey, was also the first pro team of his current head coach, Jim Boylan.

Born along le Lac Leman, in French Switzerland on May 2 1984, Sefolosha is truly a world citizen. His parents, Patrick and Christine, met and fell in love in South Africa in the early ’80’s. The ignorant, legalized racial separation laws of Apartheid were still enforced then, so by law the mixed race couple - Christine is white, Patrick is black - were unable to wed in Patrick’s homeland.

Moving to Christine’s native land of Switzerland, the couple wed in 1982. His background is similar to that of fellow Bull Joakim Noah, as Thabo explains in lovably broken English on his website:

I’m having a lot of fun with Joachim Noah. We had different journeys but our families are similar, they are also metis-african-european and his 2 parents are also artists.

Christine (a painter) and Patrick (a writer and saxophonist in The Malpoets) divorced in 1993, but their lives dedicated to their passions inspired Thabo to chase his own.

At 16, when asked that silly question by his high school guidance counselor - what do you want to do with your life? - Thabo replied that he planned on becoming a professional basketball player, and one day playing in America for an NBA team.

As his mother Christine recalls, the guidance counselor’s immediate response was typical of his dream-crushing profession - “The guy laughed… He said, ‘I’m coming back to talk to you in three days, so think about what you seriously want to do.’” Thankfully for Switzerland, the Bulls and most importantly himself, Thabo quickly forgot about the silly counselor’s criticism and chased his dream.

Originally a futbol player, he started playing basketball at the age of nine along with his brother Kgomotso, following an invitation from a neighbor to play the game at a local club, Blonay. His addiction to the ball game played with your hands started soon afterwards, and he quickly worked his way up through the weak Swiss basketball ranks.

By 17, he was playing professional basketball in Switzerland’s top pro league for Vevey. Only a year later, Thabo left home and moved up to the more competitive French professional leagues. He started out riding the pine, but it was only a matter of time before his natural talent shone through and he was playing big minutes on his club’s top team.

In the middle of his third year there, he made the French All-Star game and was making a name for himself in Europe. He ended up being nominated for the best-named award in all of professional sports - Bossman of the Year (best European player who is not French).

Like any young star athlete worth his salt, he soon had a contract dispute with his team and ended up switching over to the Italian club Biella. He delicately explained the situation in an interview with HoopsHype.com:

Last summer, I had the chance to renegotiate my contract with the club. We were supposed to reach an agreement, but when my agent and the president started talking, they couldn’t agree on a contract.

Following a standout year in Italy, Thabo proved good enough to be noticed by NBA scouts, including Chicago’s chief European scout, Ivica Dukan, who recommended him to GM John Paxson. The rest is history - he was drafted 13th overall in the 2006 draft by the 76ers and immediately traded to the Bulls.

Despite filling an immediate need for Chicago as a tall, defensive-minded guard to complement the diminutive Kirk Hinrich and Ben Gordon, Thabo saw little action in his rookie season. Playing in 71 games, he averaged 2.2 rebounds, 0.8 assists and 3.6 points. He did impress then-coach Scott Skiles enough to get important minutes in the playoffs, where he appeared in nine of the Bulls ten postseason matches.

Like many Bulls, though, Thabo failed to carry his success from last season into the current one. He struggled mightly over the first month of the season, making less than 29% of his shots. There were games where I wondered how he ever made the NBA, as he looked to be one of the worst shooters I had ever seen.

His minutes dwindled in December, only averaging 6.3 per game, and he was largely forgotten behind more prominent Bulls who were also playing far below their ability level. Thabo noted as much in his diary, writing that, “I’m not satisfied of my season beginning. I was expecting to play more and I wanted to have more impact in the team. Unfortunately, for different reasons, it didn’t happen.”

Clearly though, being the first Swiss ever to play in the NBA, Thabo is not one to give up. In the same entry he told his readers, “I’m still confident and I’m working hard everyday to reach my goals. That’s one of my resolution for 2008.”

Unlike me and most other people, Thabo managed to actually keep his resolution, and has been playing huge lately for the Bulls. Following Gordon’s return to the bench and Hinrich’s injury, Sefolosha made the most of the available minutes and worked his way into the starting lineup. He still has not been shooting particularly well - only 41% for January - but as he said about himself in the HoopsHype interview, Thabo is “an all-around player. I can rebound, run the court, play defense. I can score, too. I can say I do a little bit of everything.”

Indeed he has been doing a little bit of everything, especially filling up the box scores over the past five games, where he’s averaged: 2.2 assists, 2.2 steals, 6.2 rebounds, and a fine 11.6 points. The rebounding has been particularly impressive for a guard. Against Detroit last week, Thabo notched a double-double with 12 points and 13 rebounds.

And his talents extend beyond what statistics can capture, as he is one of the Bulls’ best defenders. At 6′7″, he is the only Bulls guard capable of matching up against the LeBron Jameses and Kobe Bryants of the league, an aspect the team has been sorely missing in the Paxson era.

What makes Thabo especially valuable is his ability to run the team on offense. While he’s clearly no Jason Kidd, he is more than capable of playing point guard at the NBA level. Considering that the same can probably not be said about Hinrich, and that Duhon simply is not an NBA starter, at this point Thabo is arguably the Bulls’ best option at the position.

In the five minutes after Kirk Hinrich took his first rest on Wednesday, Thabo played the one and orchestrated the Bulls offense. He managed to lead the Bulls to score on 6 of their 11 possessions. While that would be a hard rate to keep up over the course of a whole game (where teams typically have near 110 possessions) it would mean the Bulls were scoring 120 or so points per game. Not bad.

He also added a little offense of his own. Following a steal from Travis Diener, he ran the fast break and looked to pass to a streaking Tyrus Thomas, but instead kept the ball and dunked it home (still not as impressive as this play). He also did something that Hinrich - for some unknown reason -rarely does: attack the hoop. It’s a lot easier to score two feet from the basket than it is with a fadeaway 15-footer.

And it can’t be a coincidence that the first game Hinrich started in the backcourt with Thabo, Kirk had his best offensive output of the season.

While I may have gone a little too far in my effusive praise of Thabo, the facts remain that he is a 6′7″, defensive-oriented combo guard whose development is key to the Bulls present and future hopes. He seems to be becoming the player that GM John Paxson hoped he was getting in the 2006 draft, as he said shortly afterwards - “For a long time we had been looking for a bigger guard who could complement both Kirk Hinrich and Ben Gordon - someone who could defensively shut down guards with size when Kirk was on the floor, and someone who could also initiate offense when paired with Ben … Thabo [is] a really good fit.”

It is time for Sefolosha to replace Paxson’s favorite mistake, Kirk Hinrich, in the starting lineup. He turns the point guard position, which has been a matchup weakness for the Bulls, into a chance to use matchups in the team’s favor. If nothing else, perhaps moving Kirk to the bench can motivate him the same way it did Gordon.

Don’t be a fool and ignore destiny, John. There are powers at work here you couldn’t even begin to understand.

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Charlie is an aspiring writer and a caddy at Skokie Country Club. Odds are you will hear a lot about him in the years to come, so if you want to be the first kid on the block familiar with his work, click here.

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  1. [...] with Boylan as coach, he still hadn’t cracked the started lineup consistently. We hoped that would change: It is time for Sefolosha to replace Paxson’s favorite mistake, Kirk Hinrich, in the starting [...]

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