His mum was raising five kids alone in a small Cameroonian town. At 14, he was hustling to sell second-hand basketball shoes so he could pay his own school fees. Today Godlove Cham is head coach at the NBA Basketball School in Dubai.
Godlove grew up in Wum, in north-west Cameroon, with no coach and no court of his own. He taught himself the game from coaching films and from waiting at 6am for a man who dribbled past his house every morning. When a sponsor offered to pay him to play for a senior team, he asked for something else: an education.
In this episode, Kaila Colbin talks with Godlove about the tough love that shaped him, coaching kids for free for years before anyone paid him, being hired by the NBA Basketball School without an interview, and what separates the young players who make it from the ones who don't.
FOLLOW GODLOVE
LinkedIn: @godlovecham https://www.linkedin.com/in/godlovecham
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Hunger & Heart is a podcast about the intersection of wild ambition and fierce compassion, hosted by Kaila Colbin | Raw Conversations with sports legends.