ANOTHER BAHAMIAN KID KAI JONES JOINS THE NBA

30 July 2021

So Kai Jones ( shown with his parents Casprintina and Deyvon Jones) is another  Bahamian to join the ranks of the multimillionaires in the American National Basketball Association. That’s him with his parents all out in pink.  Bold fellow. Real men wear pink.  But the serious point beside the congratulations is the profile of a new generation of Bahamians, Black Bahamians who have come and will come into fabulous wealth by dint not of family inheritance or Bahamian government connections but  due to their talent and perseverance and that of their parents.  His Mom and Dad have obviously done a good job. The question for us is what does this mean for The Bahamas.  You have to thank people like Geron Sands and former Senator Greg Burrows for example and others who helped to found the Freedom Farm baseball and other baseball programmes that ultimately gave rise to Jazz Chisolm and at least three others who are now playing pro ball in the U. S.  These kids came again not from known families.  They will like Shaunae Miller and Stephen Gardener have an outsize influence we predict on the politics of The Bahamas if they use their wealth properly and they save their money.  Like Sidney Poitier, the Bahamian actor, before all of them, they all have so far looked back to see what they could do to help The Bahamas.  Mychael Thompson, Rick Fox,  Buddy Hield,  Deandrea Ayton, Jazz Chisolm.  The list is getting longer.  We think that this speaks well for our country.  We also think that this will help to break the political log jam that we find ourselves in where the same people keep getting elected to Parliament from the same families and with the same connections in the economy going to the same people. In fact, we will do our utmost to urge these new wealthy and influential people not to waste that money, to save it, to use it for good to make The Bahamas a much better place to live in than the one in which they grew up and left. Congratulations young man and to all the others out there to come. As he said to the press: “ 242 to the world.”