For over a decade, the men’s National Basketball League has been a one-team story.
The City Oilers, with ten straight titles, have ruled Uganda’s basketball like kings who forgot how to lose. But tonight, at the Lugogo Indoor Arena, in Game Six of the 2025 Finals, those same kings face rebellion.
They trail 3–2 to the Namuwongo Blazers, a side once mocked as dreamers but now standing a single win away from ending an empire.
Tonight feels like a reckoning. You can feel the tension already. The crowd will not be kind to Oilers.
Rival fans, long silenced by ten years of Oilers dominance, will fill every seat to chant for the Blazers. They call the Oilers “the Dictators.” Tonight, the Dictators play to survive.
Since 2013, City Oilers have crushed every challenger that dared to stand in their path. Falcons, Power, UCU, KIU, Namuwongo. All have tried and failed.
Comebacks, sweeps, Game Sevens; they’ve seen them all and won them all.
In 2013, they beat Falcons 4–3. In 2014, they swept Power. In 2015, they outlasted UCU in game seven. They repeated it in 2019 and 2022. They have been the standard, the bar, the story.
But tonight feels different.
Namuwongo’s locker room is filled with ghosts of the Oilers’ past. Tonny Drileba, Jimmy Enabu, James Okello, and Ivan Muhwezi. Four of the men that helped build the Oilers dynasty, now wear Blazers red.
They know what it takes to win, but this time, they want to win against the team that made them champions.
And they have already shown what they are capable of. They’ve been the heartbeat of this run. In Games Three and Four, Drileba, who had returned from injury, tilted the series.
In Game Five, Okello led with 17 points, steadying his side as they snatched a 71–68 victory.
Every possession now carries history. Every basket feels like revenge.
The Oilers look mortal. Their shooting deserted them in Game Five, hitting only 3 of 18 from range.
Kurt Curry Wegscheider and Chad Bowie have carried them throughout this series, but basketball is not a two-man game. If the likes of Titus Lawal, Fayed Baale, and the bench don’t step up, the Oilers’ run may end tonight.
It’s strange to see a team so used to winning look so unsure.
Gravity, as Isaac Newton taught us, pulls everything back down eventually. And it seems even champions aren’t immune.
Everything that goes up must come down. The Oilers are feeling that pull, and tonight will decide whether they resist it or crash.
Game Six will be a story of power, pride, and legacy. If the Blazers win, they will make history, bringing an end to a dynasty that has towered over Ugandan basketball for twelve years.
But if the Oilers survive, we go to Game Seven. And history tells us that’s where they are most dangerous.
The Blazers have belief. The Oilers have experience. Only one will have the final word.
So as the lights dim at Lugogo and the crowd roars, one question lingers over the hardwood:
Is this the night the kings fall, or do the Dictators rise once more?
The game kicks off at 7 pm. Catch all the action Live on NBS Sport and AfroMobile.
