At the age of 16 and off the back of six weeks coaching at St Augustine High School in New Jersey during the basketball off-season he was a 7ft 1inch high jumper and to this day insists that track and field is his first love. When Deng isn't listening, Mensah-Bonsu loves to tell the story of how at high school in the USA he would be competing against his future GB basketball colleague and would casually enter the competition at 6ft 2in or 6ft 3in, the height at which Deng, more of a 400m runner, would crash out