Their Parents Fled War. Now South Sudan’s Young Team Is in the Olympics.

When South Sudan’s young basketball team took to the court for an exhibition game against America’s basketball royalty, there were few expectations that they could hold on against the likes of LeBron James and Stephen Curry. Then they lost by just one point, 101-100, stunning not only their loyal followers, but also the team’s players, who had grown up revering the N.B.A. stars.

The South Sudanese will face the United States again Wednesday, this time at the Paris Olympics, and with the Americans now on notice, the odds are distinctly against the African team. But for many of their fans in Africa and elsewhere, that is beside the point.

The way they see it, it is a bit of a miracle that a team of refugees and their descendants, whose home country is just 13 years old and has suffered through devastating wars, made it to the Olympics at all.

Despite having no place of their own to train, the team won the only slot open to Africa for men’s basketball. They already beat the odds by not only coming within a hair of winning against the Americans — James made the winning layup with just 8 seconds remaining — but also by beating Puerto Rico in their first match of the Games in Paris.

“South Sudan and its people are known all over the world now,” said Aninyesi Tereza Mark, a 33-year-old university lecturer in the South Sudanese capital, Juba. “We are very proud of them and we are happy.”

South Sudan is the world’s youngest country. It won its freedom from neighboring Sudan only in 2011, and since then, has suffered through a civil war that has claimed the lives of some 400,000 people and displaced more than 4 million. While a shaky peace deal has been in place since 2018, inter-communal violence persists. Poverty and corruption are endemic.