With the National Basketball Association (NBA) finals just around the corner, many basketball fans and enthusiasts in Kenya can’t wait to see who carries the day between the two elite teams.
But away from that, our country is fortunate enough to have close ties with one of the leading scorers and greatest power forwards of all time.
He goes by the name of Dirk Nowitzki who plays for the Dallas Mavericks and boasts of 30,000 points through his 21-year career in the league.
Nowitzki, who is German is married to Jessica Olsson a Kenyan-born and partly raised woman. Olsson is the daughter of a Kenyan mother and a Swedish father who was mostly raised in Sweden but chose to keep and embrace her Kenyan identity and she made news when she brought her superstar husband to her home in Nanyuki for “ruracio” last year
.“We went to Kenya to see cucu,” Nowitzki told 'lifestyle' a South African magazine during an interview last year, pronouncing the kikuyu word for grandmother perfectly.
He even went on to add that he traversed Kenya for a week in a low-key affair, from the Mount Kenya region to Nairobi to Mombasa despite being one of the biggest names in basketball.
He has also stressed the importance of exposing the couple’s three children to their Kenyan heritage numerous times. Their firstborn daughter is called Malaika.