Manute Bol

Manute Bol was born to Madute and Okwok Bol in Turalei or Gogrial, Sudan (now South Sudan) and raised near Gogrial. Bol's father, a Dinka tribal elder, gave him the name Manute, which means "special blessing".[4] Bol had no formal record of his birthdate.[5][6][7]

Bol came from a family of extraordinarily tall men and women. "My mother was 6 ft 10 in (2.08 m), my father 6 ft 8 in (2.03 m), and my sister is 6 ft 8 in (2.03 m)", he said. "And my great-grandfather was even taller—7 ft 10 in (2.39 m)." His ethnic group, the Dinka, and the Nilotic people[8] of which they are a part, are among the tallest populations in the world. Bol's hometown, Turalei, is the origin of other exceptionally tall people, including 7 ft 4 in (2.24 m) basketball player Ring Ayuel.[9] "I was born in a village, where you cannot measure yourself," Bol reflected. "I learned I was 7 foot 7 in 1979, when I was grown. I was about 18 or 19."[10]

Bol started playing soccer in 1972 but abandoned the game because he was too tall.[11] During his later teens, Bol started playing basketball in Sudan, for several years with teams in Wau and Khartoum, where he experienced prejudice from the northern Sudanese majority.[12]

Coach Don Feeley, formerly the basketball coach at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey, traveled to Sudan to coach and held clinics for the Sudanese national team in 1982. Feeley eventually convinced Bol to go to the United States and play basketball.[13][14]

With Feeley's input, Bol first landed in Cleveland. According to Cleveland State University basketball coach Kevin Mackey, Bol could not provide a record of his birth date. Mackey listed it as October 16, 1962 on Cleveland State documents, but believed Bol was actually much older.[5][6][7] Bol did not speak or write English at the time of his arrival in Cleveland. He improved his English skills after months of classes at ELS Language Centers at Case Western Reserve University, but not enough to qualify for enrollment at Cleveland State. Bol never played a game for Cleveland State. (Five years later, Cleveland State was placed on two years' probation for providing improper financial assistance to Bol and two other African players.)[15][16]

Again with Feeley's influence, Bol declared his intention to play professionally in the NBA. The Los Angeles Clippers drafted him in the fifth round of the 1983 NBA draft (97th overall). Clippers Coach Jim Lynam received a call about Bol from Feeley, whom he knew from coaching circles. "So, I said, 'Have you told anyone else about this?'", Lynam recalled. "Feeley said the only one in the NBA he had called was Frank Layden at Utah. He said Frank said he couldn't take another big guy like this. He already had Mark Eaton. I was the second guy Feeley had called. I told him he didn't have to call anyone else."[17]

After the June 1983 draft, Lynam traveled to Cleveland and watched Bol play pickup games. In speaking with Bol, through a fellow Sudanese player, Lynam learned that he had become hesitant about playing professionally because he did not know the language well enough to understand coaches.[17] Lynam said, "One of the things everyone was looking at was his passport. His passport said he was 19 years old. His passport also said he was five feet two." When Lynam asked Bol about the discrepancy between his real height and his passport height, Bol said he had been sitting down when measured by Sudan officials.[17]

Language and passport concerns were set aside when the NBA ruled that Bol had not been eligible for the draft and declared the pick invalid. Bol had not declared 45 days before the draft as required.[18]

With the NCAA questioning his eligibility for NCAA Division I basketball, Bol enrolled at the University of Bridgeport, an NCAA Division II school with an English program for foreign students. There he played for the Purple Knights in the 1984–85 season. His coach was Bruce Webster, a friend of Feeley. Bol averaged 22.5 points, 13.5 rebounds, and 7.1 blocks per game for Bridgeport. The team, which previously drew 500–600 spectators, routinely sold out the 1,800-seat gym.[18] With Bol, Bridgeport qualified for the 1985 NCAA Division II Men's Basketball Tournament.[16]

Bol turned professional in May 1985, signing with the Rhode Island Gulls of the spring United States Basketball League.[19][20][21] Going into the 1985 NBA draft, scouts believed that Bol needed another year or two of college, but Bol opted for the draft because he felt it was the only way to earn enough money to get his sister out of Sudan, which was in a state of political unrest at the time.[18] In 1985, the Washington Bullets drafted Bol as the seventh pick in the second round (31st overall).[22] He played in the NBA for ten seasons, from 1985 to 1995, spending parts of four seasons with the Bullets, parts of three with the Golden State Warriors, parts of four with the Philadelphia 76ers, and part of one with the Miami Heat.

Bol was active in charitable causes during and after his basketball career. He said he spent much of the money he made during his NBA career supporting various causes related to the war-ravaged nation of his birth, Sudan.[51]

Bol frequently visited Sudanese refugee camps, where he was treated like royalty. In 2001 the Sudanese government offered him the post of minister of sport. Bol, a Christian,[52] refused because one of the conditions was converting to Islam.[53]

Later, the Sudanese government hindered Bol from leaving the country, accusing him of supporting the Dinka-led Christian rebels, the Sudan People's Liberation Army. It refused to grant him an exit visa unless he came back with more money. Assistance from supporters in the United States, including Senator Joseph Lieberman, raised money to provide Bol with plane tickets to Cairo, Egypt. After six months of negotiations with U.S. consulate officials regarding refugee status, Bol and his family were finally able to leave Egypt and return to the United States.[53] He was admitted to the United States as a religious refugee in 2002 and settled in West Hartford, Connecticut.[41]

Bol established the Ring True Foundation to continue fund-raising for Sudanese refugees. He gave most of his earnings (an estimated $3.5 million) to their cause. In 2002 Fox TV agreed to broadcast the foundation's phone number in exchange for Bol's agreement to appear on their Celebrity Boxing show. After the referee goaded, "If you guys don't box, you won't get paid", he scored a third-round victory over former football player William "The Refrigerator" Perry.

In the fall of 2002, Bol signed a one-day contract with the Indianapolis Ice of the Central Hockey League. Though he could not skate, the publicity generated by his single-game appearance helped raise money to assist children in Sudan.[54] Bol once suited up as a horse jockey for similar reasons.

Bol was involved in the April 2006 Sudan Freedom Walk, a three-week march from the United Nations building in New York City to the United States Capitol in Washington, DC. The event was organized by Simon Deng, a former Sudanese swimming champion who was a longtime friend of Bol's. Deng, was enslaved from age 9 to 12, is from another tribe in Southern Sudan. His Sudan Freedom Walk focused on finding a solution to the genocide in Darfur (western Sudan) but also sought to raise awareness of the modern-day slavery and human-rights abuses throughout Sudan. Bol spoke in New York City at the start of the walk, and in Philadelphia at a rally organized by former hunger striker Nathan Kleinman.

Bol was also an advocate for reconciliation efforts, and worked to improve education in South Sudan. A Nicholas Kristof article[55] in The New York Times highlighted Bol's work for reconciliation and education with an organization called Sudan Sunrise. Bol first began working with Sudan Sunrise to raise awareness on issues of reconciliation in 2005. This included speaking at the United States Capitol and subsequently partnering with Sudan Sunrise to build schools across South Sudan that, in the spirit of reconciliation, would enroll students regardless of tribe or religion.[56]

Bol had six children with his first wife, Along, and four with his second wife, Ajok.[57] Bol's son Madut (born December 19, 1989) played college basketball at Southern University and graduated in 2013.[58] Another son, Bol Bol (born November 16, 1999), played for the Oregon Ducks in 2018–19. Bol Bol declared for the 2019 NBA draft and was taken 44th overall by the Miami Heat. He was subsequently traded to the Denver Nuggets.

Bol spoke Dinka and Arabic before mastering English.[59]

Despite initially knowing little English or Western culture upon arriving in the United States, Bol adjusted and was widely regarded as well-rounded, inquisitive, and well-read. He developed a strong friendship with Charles Barkley, who remarked, "If everyone in the world was a Manute Bol, it's a world I'd want to live in. He's smart. He reads The New York Times. He knows what's going on in a lot of subjects. He's not one of these just-basketball guys".[60]

During his time in Egypt, Bol ran a basketball school in Cairo. One of his pupils was a fellow Sudanese refugee, Former NBA player Luol Deng, the son of a former Sudanese cabinet minister. Deng later moved to the United States to further his basketball career, maintaining a close relationship with Bol.[61]

In July 2004, Bol was seriously injured in a car accident in Colchester, Connecticut; he was ejected from a taxi that hit a guardrail and overturned, resulting in a broken neck.[62] The driver was under the influence, with a suspended license.[63] Because his fortunes were mostly donated to Sudan, he was financially ruined because he had no health insurance.[44] When he recovered from his injuries, he moved to Olathe, Kansas.[41]

On June 19, 2010, Bol died from acute kidney failure and complications from Stevens–Johnson syndrome at the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville, Virginia.[41][64] He is buried in South Sudan.[65]

Funeral service and tributes

Bol's memorial service at the National Cathedral

Bol's memorial service was held on June 29, 2010, at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, DC. His body lay in an eight-foot-long, specially-built casket.[66]

After his death, tributes to Bol's career and charitable works came from around the United States and the world.[67][68][69] His former teams, and the NBA, issued statements in recognition of his impact on the sport of basketball and on Sudan.[70][71][72] U.S. Senator Sam Brownback paid tribute to Bol on the floor of the United States Senate.[73]

Bol was also given tributes by former National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane, Sudan's Ambassador to the United States Akec Khoc Acieu, and vice president of the National Basketball Players Association Rory Sparrow.[66] Sparrow called Bol "a giant off the court" who should be remembered for humanitarian work and his basketball career.[66] Brownback recalled, "He literally gave his life for his people. He went over [to Sudan], he was sick. He stayed longer than he should have. He probably contracted this ailment that took his life while in Sudan, and he didn't have to do that. He was an NBA basketball player. He could have stayed here and had an easy life. I've never seen anybody use his celebrity status more nor give his life more completely to a group of people than Manute Bol did. It makes me look at efforts that I do as not enough."

Ambassador Khoc said, "Manute had a very great heart for his country and people. He did everything to support anybody in need of shoes, blankets, health service, food, and people who were struggling. He went to see them and to encourage them to continue their struggle for their rights, for their freedoms. Manute embodied everything we can think of in Sudan. Reconciling warring groups between the north and south, in Darfur he was working for reconciliation between Darfur and the south and between Darfur and the rest of Sudan. So Manute was a voice for hope."

Sudan Sunrise founder Tom Prichard said that Bol's work to reconcile former enemies lives on. "Manute's legacy and vision of education and reconciliation, his determination to grow grassroots reconciliation—whether that reconciliation is expressed in a country that divides or holds together, wherever the boundary lines are drawn. Manute stood for grassroots reconciliation."[74] He added, "There's no question Manute gave his life for his country."[75][75]

• Bol was inducted into the University of Bridgeport Athletics Hall of Fame, Class of 2010.[76]

• On January 27 2015, the Golden State Warriors honored Bol with a Manute Bol bobble head giveaway. The team sponsored a giveaway of 10,000 of the tallest bobble heads in franchise history, at 10 inches.[77][78]

• The "Manute Bol Court" was built and constructed in South Sudan by the Luol Deng Foundation in 2015.[79][80]

• The Manute Bol Peace Builders Basketball Tournament is held annually throughout Sudan.[81]

• In 2016, Bol was inducted into the Fairfield County Sports Hall of Fame.[82][83]

• List of National Basketball Association players with most blocks in a game
• List of tallest players in National Basketball Association history
• List of tallest people

• "Manute Bol at NBA.com". Archived from the original on 2010-04-09. Retrieved 2011-07-07.CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown (link)
• Career NBA stats at Basketball-reference.com
• NBA.com
• Player Profile (InterBasket)
• Manute Bol on IMDb
• Montville, Leigh (1993). Manute: The Center of Two Worlds. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0671749286.