NBLC Alumni: Nick Okorie

6'1

Guard

From Houston, Texas

Tenure: 2012-2017

3xAll-NBLC

In his ten years as a professional basketball player, Nick Okorie has been on a long and fruitful athletic journey which has taken him everywhere, though he keeps coming back to Canada.

An all-district player at Kempner High, where he averaged 19.7 points per game as a senior, Okorie graduated to join the SPC Texans in the NJCAA. Finishing his freshman year with 12.2 points and 3.4 rebounds per game, as a sophomore he scored 29 points in the championship game, helping SPC take the title, beating the Salt Lake Bruins 67-56.

The following season he transferred to Division 1 of the NCAA. As a member of the Texas Tech Red Rangers, he played 29 games, starting in 19 and as a senior achieved the third-best scoring average on the team (10.8 points per game) along with a career-best 34 points against the Colorado Buffaloes.

In 2010 he played 26 games for Vilpas in Finland, scoring 15.7 points per game, later averaging 13.2 points for Saar Pfalz in Germany. Following that he made his debut in the NBL Canada, signing with the Oshawa Power.

At the end of the 2012-13 season, Okorie had averaged 19.0 points and 4.3 assists in 39 games played, which earned him a spot on the All-NBLC third team, consolation for falling shot of a playoff spot. The following season he began playing for the Summerside Storm before re-joining the Power, who were now in Mississauga. He scored 41 points on November 11th for Mississauga against the Storm, which would be the best individual scoring performance of the season. The Power, meanwhile, ended up falling at the first hurdle in the post-season.

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Okorie began the 2014-15 season with Aalborg in Denmark, where he averaged 23.2 points in 12 games, before moving back to Prince Edward Island, re-signing with the Storm. With 16.7 points averaged in 18 games, he helped his new team reach the Atlantic Division finals, where they eventually lost to Halifax. He was compensated for missing out on a finals place with his third straight NBLC third team honour.

In the off-season Okorie joined with the London Lightning, going on to play 33 games in the season and finishing with averages of 13.6 points and 4.5 assists per game. As a member of the Lightning he passed two thousand NBL Canada career points, at the time a milestone only few had hit before. Before the season's end, he left Canada for Flyers Wels in Austria.

Okorie could not stay away from Canada for long, though, rejoining the Island Storm at the start of the 2016-17 season, eventually transferring to the Niagara River Lions. Across the whole season he averaged 16.3 points, 4.5 assists and 3.3 rebounds per game and, finishing the season with the River Lions, would not get to play in the post-season. It would bring his NBLC scoring total to 2821 points, the second highest total to date, behind only Anthony Anderson.

That would turn out to be his last NBL Canada season. From there he made the move to Brazil, where he first averaged 12.7 points per game for Salvador in addition to competing with them in the group stage of the Liga Sudamericana. Following this he played for Vasco De Gama in Rio de Janeiro and, in 2020, signed for Al Shurtah in Iraq.

While Okorie went without winning a championship in his NBLC tenure, he has left an indelible legacy on the league. He remains the second-highest all-time scorer behind Anthony Anderson and among the top ten for games played. The loyalty he has shown to the league has earned him a place in NBLC history as well as in the memories of fans to this day.