Kevin Durant won’t be the only former Texas men’s basketball player at the upcoming Olympics.
Former Texas guard and current Houston Rockets assistant coach Royal Ivey will serve as the head coach for the 2024 South Sudan Olympic men’s basketball team. Ivey has been the head coach of the national team of South Sudan in a paret-time role since AfroBasket 2021, the first major tournament that the country participated in. Over the next two summers, Ivey guided South Sudan to an 11-1 record in African qualifying to reach the 2023 World Cup. Ivey also coached the team to a 101-78 victory over Angola at the World Cup in the Philippines in September that secured an automatic Olympic qualifying spot from Africa.
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A four-year starter at both point guard and shooting guard during his career at Texas from 2001-04, Ivey earned multiple All- Big 12 defensive selections while playing for the Longhorns. He played in 492 career NBA games over a total of nine seasons before beginning his coaching career as an assistant coach for the Oklahoma City Blue of the NBA Development League in 2014. He’s been an assistant in the NBA since 2016.
South Sudan, which gained independence from Sudan in 2011 after decades of conflict, has only been a member of the International Olympic Committee since 2015. It’s entire basketball program is funded by former NBA All-Star Luol Deng, a South Sudanese native who is the president of the South Sudan Basketball Federation. He attended the same prep school (Blair Academy in Blairstown, N.J.) in the United States as Ivey.
The South Sudan National Team will compete at the Paris Olympics July 26-Aug. 11. As part of Group C, South Sudan will face Durant and the United States on July 31.
Durant, who earned the Naismith College Player of the Year Award during his lone season at Texas in 2006-07, will compete in his fourth Olympics and has the opportunity to become the first U.S. men’s basketball player to win four gold medals.