He stared out the window from the passenger seat of a Nissan Altima, his seat reclined slightly so that his head would not scrape the car’s ceiling. Chris Silva was 6’ 8” and a few days shy of 16 years old, and he had just landed at New York’s JFK Airport after the last of his four flights from his home country of Gabon to the United States, where he would now be living and playing basketball. The car’s driver was Tommy Sacks, an associate head coach at Roselle Catholic High in New Jersey, who had seen a 15-second video of Silva demonstrating some rudimentary basketball skills on an outdoor canopied court and saw enough to decide to help Silva move stateside and play for him.
Once a basketball novice from Gabon, Chris Silva is now a key piece for South Carolina
