Four T&T bas­ket­ballers re­cent­ly vis­it­ed New York to par­tic­i­pate in the fi­nal phase of the 2019 Dig­i­cel NBA Jump­start Pro­gramme.

Mak­ing it to the fi­nal phase of the pro­gramme is no mean feat, as each of the 14 NBA Ex­pe­ri­ence win­ners had to progress through four phas­es, go­ing up against the best youth bas­ket­ballers in their coun­try, and then in the re­gion.

Over the last five years, Dig­i­cel and the NBA have part­nered to de­vel­op youth bas­ket­ball across the re­gion. The Dig­i­cel NBA Jump­start Pro­gramme pro­vides young boys and girls with the chance to be trained by NBA play­ers, coach­es and staff, to raise the qual­i­ty of the sport in the Caribbean.

In T&T, the four who won the Dig­i­cel NBA Jump­start New York Ex­pe­ri­ence were Jil­lisa Brig­gs, Je­lani Black­ett, Malique Lewis and Caris­sa Ram­di­al. Be­fore the New York Ex­pe­ri­ence, each camper would have been se­lect­ed from the Dig­i­cel Jump­start Elite Camp held in T&T over the sum­mer af­ter ben­e­fit­ting from ex­pert-lev­el coach­ing from the NBA team, that in­clud­ed for­mer NBA play­er Caron But­ler.

Brig­gs said, "My ex­pe­ri­ence with the Dig­i­cel NBA Jump­start New York NBA trip is one I def­i­nite­ly won’t for­get. My favourite part was get­ting ad­vice from dif­fer­ent peo­ple and lis­ten­ing to how they got to the NBA. I learnt that once you keep try­ing your best, you can be suc­cess­ful and reach far, I al­so learnt that I have what it takes but I need to work on my con­fi­dence a bit. I feel proud of my­self for achiev­ing such a good ex­pe­ri­ence and I am hap­py to share it with my fam­i­ly and friends."

In New York, they played 5V5 match­es with their US peers, ex­plored the city and went sight­see­ing, toured the NBA head­quar­ters and at­tend­ed two NBA games, where they were able to meet Ba­hami­an bas­ket­baller, Bud­dy Hield, who cur­rent­ly plays for the Sacra­men­to Kings.

"It's been a great ex­pe­ri­ence to watch how much these kids im­prove over the eight months that the Dig­i­cel NBA Jump­start Pro­gramme spans. Their game im­proves sig­nif­i­cant­ly, but not on­ly that, they ma­ture, im­prove their so­cial skills and take away from the ex­pe­ri­ence a greater sense of con­fi­dence in them­selves. That's what this pro­gramme is all about, tak­ing the raw tal­ent in these kids from across the re­gion and show­ing them how, with this tal­ent, they have the pow­er to change their own lives," said Tari Lovell, Spon­sor­ship Man­ag­er at Dig­i­cel Group.

"I have been very for­tu­nate to par­tic­i­pate in this plat­form for the last five years and to wit­ness first­hand the ded­i­ca­tion and com­mit­ment that the Dig­i­cel put to­wards the de­vel­op­ment of bas­ket­ball in the Caribbean. Look­ing for­ward to what is ahead of us so we can con­tin­ue to change the lives of thou­sands of kids with this amaz­ing pro­gramme,” said Daniel Soares, Di­rec­tor of Bas­ket­ball Op­er­a­tions (Latin Amer­i­ca).

In ad­di­tion to the Dig­i­cel NBA Jump­start pro­gramme, Dig­i­cel and the NBA have worked to­geth­er since 2015 to de­liv­er live games and ex­ten­sive NBA pro­gram­ming to more than 25 Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries through Sports­Max and the Sports­Max app – mak­ing Dig­i­cel the Of­fi­cial Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Part­ner of the NBA in the re­gion.

The 2019-20 NBA sea­son start­ed on Oc­to­ber 22 and bas­ket­ball fans can catch all the ac­tion, on-the-go, via the Sports­Max app.