Manute Bol

Mackey listed it as October 16, 1962, on Cleveland State documents, but believed Bol was actually much older.

Bol did not speak or write English at the time of his arrival in Cleveland.

He improved his English skills after months of classes at ESL Language Centers at Case Western Reserve University, but not enough to qualify for enrollment at Cleveland State.

Bol never played a game for Cleveland State.

Five years later, Cleveland State was placed on two years' probation for providing improper financial assistance to Bol and two other African players.

Again with Feeley's influence, Bol declared his intention to play professionally in the National Basketball Association (NBA).

Bol started playing soccer in 1972 but abandoned the game because he was too tall.

During his later teens, Bol started playing basketball in Sudan, for several years with teams in Wau and Khartoum, where he experienced prejudice from the northern Sudanese majority.

"I learned I was 7 foot 7 in 1979, when I was grown. I was about 18 or 19."

Coach Don Feeley, formerly the basketball coach at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey, traveled to Sudan to coach and held clinics for the Sudanese national team in 1982.

Feeley convinced Bol to go to the United States and play basketball.

With Feeley's input, Bol first landed in Cleveland.

According to Cleveland State University basketball coach Kevin Mackey, Bol could not provide a record of his birth date.

The San Diego Clippers drafted him in the 1983 NBA draft as the 97th overall pick.

Clippers head coach Jim Lynam received a call about Bol from Feeley, whom he knew from coaching circles.

"So, I said, 'Have you told anyone else about this?'" Lynam recalled.

"Feeley said the only one in the NBA he had called was Frank Layden at Utah. He said Frank said he couldn't take another big guy like this. He already had Mark Eaton. I was the second guy Feeley had called. I told him he didn't have to call anyone else."

After the June 1983 draft, Lynam traveled to Cleveland and watched Bol play pickup games.

In speaking with Bol, through a fellow Sudanese player, Lynam learned that he had become hesitant about playing professionally because he did not know the language well enough to understand coaches.

Lynam said, "One of the things everyone was looking at was his passport. His passport said he was 19 years old. His passport also said he was five feet two."

When Lynam asked Bol about the discrepancy between his real height and his passport height, Bol said he had been sitting down when measured by Sudan officials.

Language and passport concerns were set aside when the NBA ruled that Bol had not been eligible for the draft as he had not declared 45 days before the draft as required and declared the pick invalid.

With the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) questioning his eligibility for NCAA Division I basketball, Bol enrolled at the University of Bridgeport, an NCAA Division II school with an English program for foreign students.

He played for the Purple Knights in the 1984–85 season.

His coach was Bruce Webster, a friend of Feeley.

After he played college basketball for the Bridgeport Purple Knights, Bol was selected by the Washington Bullets in the 1985 NBA draft.

Bol played for the Bullets and three other teams over the course of his NBA career, which lasted from 1985 to 1995.

A center, Bol is considered among the best shot-blockers in the history of the sport and is the only NBA player to retire with more career blocked shots than points scored.

Manute Bol (d. June 19, 2010) was a Sudanese-American professional basketball player and political activist.

Listed at 7ft 6in or 7ft 7in tall, Bol was one of the tallest players in the history of the National Basketball Association (NBA).

, he ranked second in NBA history in blocked shots per game and 16th in total blocked shots.

Bol was notable for his efforts to promote human rights in his native Sudan and aid for Sudanese refugees.

Manute Bol was born to Madute and Okwok Bol in Turalei, Sudan (now South Sudan), and raised near Gogrial.

Bol's father, a Dinka tribal elder, gave him the name Manute, which means "special blessing".

Bol had no formal record of his birthdate.

Bol came from a family of extraordinarily tall men and women.

He said: "My mother was 6ft 10in, my father 6ft 8in, and my sister is 6ft 8in. And my great-grandfather was even taller—7ft 10in."

His ethnic group, the Dinka, and the Nilotic people of which they are a part, are among the tallest populations in the world.

Bol's hometown, Turalei, is the origin of other exceptionally tall people, including 7 foot 3½ inches tall (2.22 meters) basketball player Ring Ayuel.

"I was born in a village where you cannot measure yourself," Bol reflected.