DONGGUAN, China — In the hours before Canada took the floor for their opening game of the FIBA World Cup, Melvin Ejim was glued to his iPhone, watching a beautiful scene play out half a world away.
His wife Samantha gave birth to their second son Miles at 9:20 p.m. Saturday in Georgia — or 9:20 the next morning in China, right before Ejim had to join his Canadian teammates for pre-game meetings.
"It was just really loving, amazing experience. It was a great birth. I literally watched it all from my iPhone," Ejim said with a wide smile.
The 28-year-old, who's a cornerstone of the national program and one of the team's most versatile players, had nine points, six rebounds and a pair of steals hours later in Canada's 108-92 loss Sunday to Australia.
Ejim and Canada's coaching staff knew his baby would arrive during the six weeks he'd be on the road. Samantha's contractions started during Saturday's practice, and he warned coach Nick Nurse he'd likely be on his phone a bit more, and eventually sneak away to be with his wife via Facetime.
"(Nurse) said 'Absolutely. Whatever you need. Obviously there is the game of basketball and then there's the game of life and this is an important part of that," said Ejim. "He was completely supportive of me and whatever decision I made and luckily it didn't interfere with anything that we had going on over here."
Nurse could relate. His son Rocky was born during the Toronto Raptors' championship run.
Ejim, who met his wife in his freshman year at Iowa State, managed to get a bit of sleep Saturday night, and woke up at 6 a.m. to find his wife was in the pool — they'd decided on a home birth — surrounded by family members, four girlfriends, and their midwife.
Six hours after Miles arrived, Ejim was on the court for Canada's first game.
"Went into the game, tried to play hard, tried to do what we could," Ejim said. "But (Samantha's) great. She's unbelievable. She made it easy for me to come out here and play while she is taking care of stuff on the homefront."
The couple has another son Deuce, who's three. Miles was named after "Miles Morales," the Marvel Comics character in the movie "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse."
"It's funny, my son Deuce fell in love with (that movie)," Ejim said. "We were trying to find some 'M' names and he really liked the name Miles and really gravitated to the character, and so we kind of had Miles as one of the names we wanted. So that just solidified the deal for us. It was just a funny little story."
The Toronto native, who plays for pro club Unicaja in Malaga, Spain, looks forward to meeting his son when the Canadian team heads home from China in a couple of weeks. Until then?
"I've been Facetiming with him pretty much whenever they are not sleeping," Ejim said. "I'm calling them, we're talking and looking, comparing and seeing who he looks like and stuff like that."
Ejim isn't the only Canadian player who sacrificed plenty to be in China. Thomas Scrubb married his wife Catherine Traer a day before travelling to Toronto for training camp. Scrubb said they might take a honeymoon next summer.
Canada faces Lithuania on Tuesday, then caps the preliminary round on Thursday against Senegal.
Lori Ewing, The Canadian Press
