Basketball superstar Jimmy Enabu retires
Sep 25, 2019
What a sad day for the sport. A dark day for the City Oilers. A great loss for the Uganda Silverbacks. A dagger to the heart of the basketball faithful.
Jimmy Enabu. File Photo
NBL Playoffs
Best-of-three quarter-finals
Women: KIU 69 Nkumba 55
(KIU win series 2-0)
Men: KIU 69 Warriors 59
(Series tied 1-1)
Today, Lugogo
Women: Ndejje v KCCA
Men: Ndejje v Oilers
At the peak of his celestial powers, the legendary Jimmy Enabu has retired from basketball.
What a sad day for the sport. A dark day for the City Oilers. A great loss for the Uganda Silverbacks. A dagger to the heart of the basketball faithful.
Enabu has enrolled into flying school to fulfil a family desire, a writing-on-the-wall he resisted for several years as he rewrote the pages of Uganda's basketball history.
Captain David Enabu, an accomplished pilot, is Jimmy's father and has always expected his son to join him in the revered flying craft.
Jimmy could not resist any longer, walking away almost suddenly — just as everyone expected to see him lead another Oilers NBL and Zone V title run-in.
Jimmy, only 31, enjoyed a normal basketball year, playing the entire 2019 regular season and Uganda's Zone five AfroChan campaign, looking every bit the NBL's most explosive player of the last seven seasons.
Who could have thought we were watching the last days of a maestro? It all seems hard to believe, like a nightmare that will soon end but as Oilers general manager Santur Mohammed confirmed, it is really the end.
"Jimmy is done as a basketball player," a despondent Mohammed told New Vision Sport.
"He is a good kid and did not want to go against his family. He's in class from 8am to 6pm and he cannot leave Kajjansi to come train with us at Luzira, so he is done."
Enabu retires as a seven-time NBL champion, two-time Zone V clubs champion, two-time Afrobasket finalist, 2016 Zone V MVP, 2014 & 2016 Finals MVP among many other accolades.
He retires as national captain, Oilers captain and the best player in Uganda.
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