It had come down to Game Six – give or take. City Oilers win it and Judgement Day is postponed to Friday, but should Namuwongo Blazers subject the 10-time champions to their fourth successive finals series defeat, it would be all over. New dawn!
The clock ticked, and the ball arced through the air, a fleeting prayer in a cauldron of noise. The rim rattled, the crowd erupted, and the floor vibrated – literally, Tonny Drileba swore it – with the weight of a ‘nation’s relief’.
Oilers stranglehold
In that moment, on a sweaty Wednesday night of November 5, 2025, Namuwongo Blazers clinched the National Basketball League (NBL) title, snapping the Oilers’ 10-year stranglehold.
Drileba, the soft-spoken point guard with a scholar’s mind and a soldier’s grit, was at the heart of it.
His ninth championship, his first with the Blazers, was more than a trophy; it was a revolution.
Basketball love at first sight
Drileba’s story did not begin in the spotlight but in the shadows of Kampala’s courts, where a boy from Revival Junior School trailed his big brother Patrick Yiki to Mengo Senior Secondary School.
It was 2005, and young Drileba, barely in Primary Five, watched his brother hoop with a hunger that would define him.
‘He was calm, soft-spoken,’ Drileba, whose name means ‘good luck,’ recalled, ‘and that shaped me.’
Basketball wasn’t just a game; it was a language of discipline, learned in a household where his father, a technical drawing teacher, and his late mother, a businesswoman with a heart as wide as Lake Victoria, instilled order and empathy.
‘We had a curfew, no alcohol, no clubs,’ Drileba, who sat across from me in The Game of Life Podcast studio narrating his odyssey in such polished detail only comparable to his dad’s carpentry work, intimated to me. ‘To this day, nightlife feels alien.’
That discipline forged a player who, by 2011, was captaining Mengo to a national schools championship title.
Attracting Oilers attention
Yet, Drileba’s rise was never loud. He joined Abacode, a Mengo community club born from a French-Canadian initiative, and helped propel it from Division Three.
By 2015, City Oilers, the brewing ‘dictator’ of Ugandan basketball, had come calling.
Ben Komakech, a legend whose game Drileba studied like scripture, recommended him.
‘I didn’t even know the Oilers management was watching,’ he said of a standout game against UCU JV.
The Oilers signed him, and the fledgling dynasty embraced a new cog. Eight championships followed, each a masterclass in Drileba’s understated brilliance.
Student of the game
He was the facilitator, the coach on the floor, breaking down plays with a notebook full of scribbled tendencies – how many times an opponent went left, who favored the pick-and-roll.
‘I’m an extension of the coach,’ narrated the point guard, a mantra that earned him praise from former Silverbacks assistant coach and current Portland Trail Blazers assistant GM, Mike Schmitz.
According to Silverbacks national team manager Albert Ahabwe, Schmitz told him during a qualification phase to the 2021 Fiba AfroBasket in Alexandria, Egypt that Drileba’s game intelligence was so good he could walk into an NBA assistant coaching role ‘today.’
This hit deep, and then Silverbacks
Yet, 2018 stands out, not for tactics but for heart. Reeling from his mother’s death, Drileba played through grief, some of his teammates perhaps unaware of the weight he carried.
‘I keep things private,’ he admitted. ‘I’d laugh, joke, play – no one knew.’
The national team noticed and beckoned him over. In 2019, at the Zone 5 tournament in Kampala, Drileba donned the number 12 jersey – Stephen Omony’s, a giant of Ugandan basketball who was injured at the time.
Team manager Ahabwe handed it to him with a charge: ‘You’ll do this jersey proud.’ Drileba did, leading Uganda to a breakthrough.
By 2021, he was guarding stars like Cape Verde’s Ivan Almeida on the road to AfroBasket in Kigali.
Battered and bandaged from the physical strains subjected to him by Egypt and Morocco in Alexandria, he limped into coach George Galanopoulos’s room and literally begged for the assignment.
‘I was all over him,’ Drileba said, grinning. Almeida scored seven points and Uganda won – the Silverbacks adding to their earlier victory over Morocco to advance to the final phase of qualification.
Reliving AfroBasket in Kigali
At AfroBasket in Kigali after the Silverbacks had beaten Morocco, again, to book a slot at the table of men, Uganda finished sixth, beating Nigeria and Cameroon.
‘We actually thought we could go all the way,’ Drileba declared,’ yes we did.’ Was the conviction bred by the coach or the players? ‘Both,’ emphasised Drilaba. ‘We had the belief and determination. Just finer margins cost us.
Yet Drileba, 32 in December, is not known to give up. He wants more in national colours and will keep pushing for it.
‘The World Cup,’ he declared, ‘The World Cup and Olympics. One or both. That’s the dream. And we’re not far. The talent is there.’
Oilers to Blazers – the untold story
Back at City Oilers, where Drileba owes most of his basketball story – both at home and on the continent – national titles never stopped flowing.
But dynasties, even personal ones, can fray. By 2023, Drileba and teammates like James Okello and Jimmy Enabu felt stifled by the Oilers.
They strongly believed that they had given their all to the club and now wanted some modifications to their contracts to match life’s demands, seniority and their own aspirations.
‘We’d grown,’ he explained, ‘but they still saw us as kids.’ The breaking point came in Tanzania, during a Road to BAL qualifier.
Injured and exhausted, Drileba dragged himself onto the court after a desperate plea from coach Mandy Juruni.
‘I played the second half, made crucial plays, and we qualified,’ he said. Yet, Oilers’ reliance on foreign imports for BAL left Drileba feeling expendable.
‘You play all year, then they bring ‘real’ players,’ he complained, the wound still raw.
When management called them ‘ungrateful,’ Drileba had sat on a contract offer from DRC’s Chaux Sports reluctant to leave. ‘That hurt,’ he said.
But when Okello and Enabu departed, he followed, playing three months abroad before Blazers called.
Namuwongo Blazers weren’t just a team; they were a mission. Coach Stephen Nyeko and management saw Drileba, Okello, and Enabu, plus another former Oiler in Ivan Muhwezi, as the missing pieces.
‘The objective was clear: win the league, play BAL,’ Drileba told me. They rolled through the regular season, even trouncing the Oilers twice.
Chaotic start, and then, cometh the hour.
But the finals were chaotic. A scheduling dispute – Fuba’s insistence on a Friday start after Blazers, who had returned from the Road to BAL assignment just days earlier, expected Sunday – left the team scrambled.
‘We decided at 5 p.m. to play at 9,’ Drileba said. Oilers took a 2-0 lead, exploiting the disarray and Blazers’ fatigue and from BAL qualifiers.
Game three was do-or-die. Drileba, still nursing an injury, returned to orchestrate a comeback.
‘They’d never lost four in a row,’ he said of the Oilers, dissecting the series like a chess grandmaster. ‘We just needed one.’
They got it, then another, and another. By game six, Drileba’s calm under pressure – fixing teammate Arthur Wanyoto’s flare-up mid-game – set the tone.
That Wednesday, they closed it out, ending the Oilers’ stranglehold on the title and delivering Blazers their very first ever. Euphoria!
‘The floor vibrated,’ Drileba narrated, the memory electric. ‘It was a relief, for us, for the fans.’
Giving refugees a chance
Off the court, Drileba’s impact is quieter but no less profound. For over a decade, he has run free basketball clinics in Kampala’s slums and Nakivale refugee camp, Isingiro District, mentoring kids, securing bursaries, and teaching life skills.
In 2023, the Basketball Africa League honoured him with the Ubuntu Trophy, recognizing his community work. ‘It was humbling,’ he acknowledged.
‘Actually, people were shocked – they didn’t know.’ His next trip to Nakivale happened immediately when he stepped out of the studios, another chance to pass on the game that shaped him.
Drileba’s mantra is simple: ‘Anything worth doing, do it 100%.’ It’s why he played through pain, why he studies films of opponents like a professor, why he fights for every loose ball.
At 31, he surely still has some more fight in him. The World Cup dream stays, another BAL run awaits, and Blazers eye a dynasty of their own.
But for now, Drileba stands as Uganda’s silent warrior – a champion who speaks softly but carries a fight of a lion.
Drileba’s bio
Full name: Tonny Drileba
Date of birth: December 19, 1993 (31)
Place of birth: Kampala, Uganda
Ancestral home: Arua
Position: Point Guard, Namuwongo Blazers
Former club: City Oilers
Achievements
9 National Basketball League titles (8 with City Oilers, 1 with Namuwongo Blazers, 2025)
National Schools Championship with Mengo Senior Secondary School
2021 AfroBasket, 6th place with Uganda Silverbacks, beating Nigeria and Cameroon
Played in Fiba World Cup qualifiers, Zone 5 (2019), and Road to BAL
2023 Basketball Africa League Ubuntu Trophy for community impact
Fiba coaching certification
Off the Court
Runs free basketball clinics in Kampala slums and Nakivale refugee camp, mentoring youth and securing scholarships.
Mantra: ‘Anything worth doing, do it 100%.’