Norman Blick has spent much of his life finding another way.
When the basketball door opened in Jinja, he walked through it almost by accident.
When Kenya offered him a better education in the sport, he traveled overnight by bus to return home and play for Sky Jammers without his coaches’ knowledge.
When Qatar wanted a big man, he adapted-even though they eventually discovered he was not one.
When clubs changed, contracts failed, and coaches frustrated him, he found another team.
And when basketball itself appeared to be finished with him, he found another reason to stay close to it.
‘I’m thinking I should not keep it to myself. I should give it back, or in other words, let it live on,’ Norman says.
That may be the simplest way to understand the man behind one of Uganda’s most enduring basketball careers.
A different beginning
He did not even set out to play basketball. ‘I started out as a footballer,’ he says.
But influenced by his school friends in Jinja, most of whom were basketball players, the tide naturally turned. He followed them, started trying the game, and gradually fell in love with it.
His mother initially saw sports as a distraction from his books. Then she began seeing her son’s name in the newspapers.
‘She became my number one fan,’ he recalls. The transformation was rapid.
From Jinja, Norman went to St. Joseph’s College Ombaci in Arua, where he became part of a small basketball community. Then came Kenya, where a week-long camp with KCI impressed coaches enough to offer him a place in Nairobi.
It was there that his understanding of basketball changed.
‘I realized the basketball I knew was actually mediocre basketball,’ he says. ‘There, they train you how to live, eat, sleep, and think basketball while keeping your grades up at the same time.’
It was not simply about becoming a better player; it was about becoming a student-athlete.
The workload was relentless: classes, gym sessions, individual skills, team practices, and even training with the girls’ team before joining the boys. By evening, he was exhausted.
Overnight passion
But the game was already becoming an obsession. So much so that Norman would secretly leave Nairobi on Friday night, arrive in Uganda on Saturday morning, play a league game for Sky Jammers, board another bus to Kenya on Sunday, and be in class on Monday.
‘That was the passion I had for the game,’ he tells me on my podcast, The Game of Life.
Clearly, the journeys were far from glamorous. Country buses, taxis, and long nights became part of the price of playing for the team he had grown up around.
Yet those trips were also about giving back. He brought ideas and plays from Kenya to Sky Jammers, helping transform a side that had once lost games by 30, 40, or 50 points into one capable of competing with the best.
Championship feeling
In 2001 came the moment that changed everything. Sky Jammers beat defending champions Power in the finals, and Norman still remembers that championship as his best.
‘Definitely, it was my best,’ he says. ‘Because it was really made at home.’
More titles followed with Nkumba Marines, Power, and Warriors. There were international club spells in Qatar and Congo, a stint in the UK, and a career that stretched across roughly two decades.
Beyond home
In Qatar, the difference was stark. For perhaps the first time, basketball was simply a profession.
‘I didn’t have to work. I didn’t have to study. It was strictly basketball.’
The contract came with things he had not always known: proper payment, housing, equipment, and structure. He played for both the junior and senior teams before a foreign-player rule effectively ended his stay.
He returned home, and his career continued. There were championships, changing clubs, disappointments, and moments when he wondered whether he had reached the end. He even worked as a teller in a bank before a chance encounter with a manager persuaded him to return to basketball.
When it hurt
‘I had to go do this. So I joined. I mean, it’s what you love.’ That encounter was with current FUBA president Nasser Sserunjogi, who was then in active management at KIU Titans.
His love for the game was tested at KCCA and JKL Dolphins, where he struggled for playing time despite his experience. At JKL, he eventually reached a breaking point. ‘I said, ‘I think I’m done with basketball.” But the game kept calling.
His national-team journey was equally complicated. He captained Uganda and remembers the pride of representing his country, but also the indignities.
Uganda sometimes traveled abroad by bus, arrived without proper accommodation, and played opponents who appeared to inhabit another sporting universe. ‘We didn’t look like a national team,’ he says.
He remembers arriving for one game having barely settled, while the opposition-Rwanda-stepped off a bus looking like professionals, headphones on and national colors perfectly presented.
‘We had already lost from there.’ Yet there were still moments of genuine progress.
Under better organization over time, training conditions improved. Players received shoes, ate properly, and stayed together in camp. In due time, Uganda beat Kenya and Rwanda to qualify for their first-ever AfroBasket in 2015.
Then came another painful moment. Funds were limited, and some players were omitted from the team selected for the next assignment. Norman was one of them.
‘Being handpicked just like that, right there and then, I said, ‘I’m done.’ That’s when I retired.’
He felt he belonged, yet he was left out. ‘I was still there. Definitely, I should have been there.’ He walked away.
He did return, but two years later came what became the final break. Norman was left out of the traveling team for an AfroBasket qualifier in Egypt after presenting an expired passport. He never returned to the national team setup.
Finding his way
When a drinking problem almost claimed it all while he was still at Power, he absorbed the pain and, with the help of family and church, somehow found his way back.
Now, steadily finding his path, he is channeling that energy into shaping the next generation.
His days are increasingly about children rather than trophies. He works with schools and hundreds of young players. At one primary school alone, he says he works with about 300 children over weekends.
His initiative, Strong Minds, Strong Bodies Through Basketball, grew from seeing children who loved the game but could not afford shoes. Some played barefoot.
A bigger dream
He started a shoe drive, bought jerseys, training equipment, and basketballs, and found ways to turn even small school spaces into courts.
At Kisaakye Nursery and Primary School in Mengo, he says teachers reported that P7 pupils were improving their grades after taking up basketball.
The vision is bigger. ‘If I can get as many kids to the national team, that would be my greatest achievement,’ he says.
He wants an academy that is more than a name on paper: a physical base where children can train, study, and eventually move into university or professional basketball.
Lessons unlearned
Norman also wants to correct a failure he knows personally. His generation was not properly prepared for contracts, money, business, or life after sports.
‘We were never taught how to handle money-or even how to earn it.’
He remembers signing contracts without understanding them fully, dealing directly with managers, and wondering whether he was being cheated.
Now he wants younger athletes to have the advisers his generation lacked.
‘Those who are just learning need not go through what others have gone through.’
That is the final evolution of Norman Blick. The player who once traveled overnight to play a Saturday game is now trying to build roads for children who may one day travel much further.
His greatest achievement, he suggests, may not be another championship. It may be seeing one of those children reach the national team, college, or Europe-or simply discover that basketball can change the direction of a life.
For a man who spent 20 years adapting to whatever the game demanded, perhaps this is the most fitting role of all: not walking away from basketball, but making sure it lives on.