St. John's Edge centre Singh to join team after visa issues
CBC News | Posted: October 30, 2018 7:22 PM | Last Updated: October 30, 2018
Satnam Singh first Indian-born player to be drafted into the NBA
When the St. John's Edge took to the court to train on Tuesday, the team was without one of its newest players.
The team signed Punjab, India native Satnam Singh to a one-year NBL Canada contract in early September, but Singh struggled to get a work visa in time to join the Edge for the start of pre-season training.
On Monday, he began using Twitter to appeal to government officials in both India and Canada to get him to St. John's.
Singh even tweeted to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to help with his situation.
But there was good news from Edge head coach Doug Plumb on Tuesday — the tweet worked, and Singh had gotten a visa.
"Satnam actually tweeted, I believe it was the prime minister of India, and he got it done. He reached out, they reached out to someone here locally, and they helped him out and pushed it through," he said.
One in a billion
The struggle for a visa is just the latest hurdle in Singh's unconventional path to professional basketball.
He left his hometown in rural India at age 14 to pursue a basketball scholarship in Florida, before becoming the first Indian-born player drafted by an NBA team when he was selected in the second round by the Dallas Mavericks in 2015.
Singh's journey was even the subject of a Netflix documentary called One in a Billion.
But it was his size that interested the Edge, and Plumb said securing the tallest player in the league — at seven feet two inches tall — gives the club a distinct advantage on the floor.
It just adds a whole other variable in terms of different ways you can defend the ball. - Doug Plumb
"Just with his physical size, like anytime you have someone who has to duck when they they walk through the door, it just adds a whole other variable in terms of different ways you can defend the ball," said the coach.
"It puts pressure on the defence … it makes a world of a difference, so we're looking forward to [having] him."
'I just want to see the size of this man'
Edge player and reigning NBL Canada MVP Carl English was also excited by the big man's ability.
"Satnam's coming on Friday, I mean, I just want to see the size of this man when he gets here," English said.
And with Singh on the roster, the team will be in Grand Falls-Windsor on Saturday to begin a training camp and team bonding experience outside of St. John's.
Plumb said it's all part of building on the team's strong inaugural season last year to build the strongest team possible.
"I think it's always a work in progress in pro basketball, there's so many variables that you can't always control," he said.
"Last year we had to put it together really quickly, and we kind of had to get the 12 best players and just make it fit, whereas this year we had a longer recruiting period so we could kind of go and get the guys we wanted to get."
With files from Jeremy Eaton