Greek basketball great Nick Galis has voiced support for a Greek-Nigerian teenager in the country’s under-16 women’s national team who lashed out at racist abuse she says she has suffered.
In a social media post Wednesday, Galis said: “We support the girls and boys who are sweating in their blue and white jerseys, the only colors that matter for our national teams.”
He also posted a photograph of Lisa Itoya, 16, who said earlier in a social media post that “half of Greece may hate me simply because of the color of my skin.”
Itoya stood out in the U16 team’s games in Ioannina for the FIBA U16 Women’s EuroBasket, Division B, in which it won promotion to next summer’s Division A. Itoya had an average 18 points, 4 rebounds and 1.3 assists in four games.
“They tell me I don’t deserve to play in Greece, as if my worth as an athlete is determined by my skin color,” she wrote in her post. “So thank you for insulting a 16-year-old girl just because she is chasing her dream. You can judge me, you can doubt me, and you can try to bring me down, but you will never define me.”
