Written by Julia Montesano
As a young boy born in a city at the heart of the Sudanese civil war, basketball wasn’t the first thing on 10-year-old Mathiang Muo’s mind.
Instead of attending school, he was working as a domestic cleaner and earning just three dollars a day, leaving home for two months at a time before returning to spend one week with his family.
When he turned 11, Muo, along with his six siblings and his mother escaped to Egypt as refugees and had to wait two years to find a new place to live.
Eventually, he and his family were given the opportunity to come to Australia on humanitarian visas before settling into the country when Muo was a teenager.
His rollercoaster basketball career began from humble beginnings at a local park in Sydney, where he first developed his love for the sport.
After spending four years working on his craft down under, his talents took him to high school and college in the US.
What came next presented him with a feeling of ecstasy as the Perth Wildcats gifted him an opportunity to commence his professional career back in Australia in 2014.
However, that was all undone within two days of arriving at headquarters and suddenly it was agony that became the overwhelming feeling for the young up-and-comer.
“I got a two-year deal with Perth Wildcats in 2014 and started my professional career there,” Muo says.
“On my second day of official team practice, I ruptured my Achilles and was out for the season.
“I did all the rehab and came back within six months, I wasn’t 100 percent, but I came back.
“Then, they decided to cut me after my second pre-season game.
“I stuck around for a few weeks to keep myself in shape and train.
“One of the players did his hamstring so they gave me another contract but I didn’t play that much.
“I left in the third year of my contract.”
The dream didn’t end there for Muo though, taking his talents all over Australia from the Goldfields Giants in 2015, Brisbane Spartans in 2017, Hobart from 2017-2019, Bendigo in late 2019 and then to South West Metro Pirates in Queensland for 2020.
Now, the journeyman has returned to a place where the basketball gods have been both kind and unkind to him, Western Australia.
While the memories from his time at the Wildcats may be mixed, he does smile when he reflects on helping East Perth Eagles win their first ever State Basketball League (SBL) championship in the 2014 off-season.
Having signed with Geraldton for the 2021 NBL1 West season, Muo is facing a similar situation of needing to help a team rise up the table.
While the Buccaneers have struggled to climb the ladder (with five wins and 11 losses, they currently sit in 10th place), they’ve had two of the most memorable moments in NBL1 West history.
The first came earlier in the season when veteran Mathew Wundenberg launched a desperate shot from the other end of the court in the dying seconds of the game.
The crowd reaction went viral online but Muo was lucky enough to be on-court himself and explains how the moment felt.
“The first second after the shot went in, it felt unreal,” Muo says.
“I just looked at the ref then started jumping and celebrating, the whole crowd was celebrating, it was unreal.
“With Mat, we always say at practice, ‘give him the ball and get out of the way’.
“When the clock is running down he makes those shots for some reason.
“That was a beautiful shot by Mat, it was a hail mary but he did it.”
Muo had his own game-winning shot this last weekend in a crucial Buccs win over the Perth Redbacks at home.
Winning a game off your own hands is every child’s dream but for the 34-year-old, hitting the game-winner wasn’t even the best part.
“We wanted to keep the game as close as we could the whole game,” he remembers.
“When it came to the fourth quarter, they were denying me from getting the ball so my teammates picked up the pieces.
“Then in the last play it was tied with four seconds to go, the coach drew up a play where I was supposed to be a decoy, I was supposed to come out and catch and shoot, so it was a play drawn out for me.
“They played great defence in the last seconds and I just happened to slip behind Louis Timms, exactly where we drew it up.
“I knew the ball was going to be there and I knew I had to take the shot.
“To have fans in the stands for that game was beautiful.
“That was the best thing that happened all season.
“It’s good to give the fans something to appreciate for the season.”
The celebration continued for Muo during the week, not only from his buzzer-beater, but from also hearing the news that fellow South Sudanese representative Emmanuel Malou has earned his first NBL contract with the Adelaide 36ers.
Muo says that the signing is not only great for Malou himself but for the wider South Sudanese community.
“First of all, for ‘Manny’ Malou, that’s a well-deserved great achievement,” he explains.
“He was trying for a long time so I’m very happy for him.
“He’s a really, really good player.
“Having all these young South Sudanese guys getting the opportunity to play in the NBL and overseas is a great achievement on their part.
“They’re putting South Sudan on the map.
“It gives the young generation something to strive for instead of just hanging out in the street and doing the norm.
“You can actually work on something and become something.
“Having ‘Manny’ Malou out there is a great thing for the young kids.
“He’s a good role model for them.”
In terms of his own NBL ambitions, Muo is simply happy to see where his basketball takes him.
“If the opportunity presents itself, I’m always open to that,” he says.
“We’ll see, whatever happens, happens.
“I do everything I can to put myself in this position every year so if it comes, it comes.
“If it doesn’t, I’ll keep doing what I do best, which is having fun and enjoying myself while playing the game I love.”
