It lasted approximately ten minutes. The sight of a veteran of nearly 100 NBA games shooting baskets in the dark blue of Brighton Bears.

This has been a season like no other in the history of the club and the saga of Olumide Oyedeji's on-off signing for the Bears was one of its more remarkable chapters.

Oyedeji, the 6ft 10in power-forward looking to carve a new career in Europe after spells with Seattle and Orlando, was due to make his Bears debut at Cholet on Tuesday.

Instead, the whole thing was aborted at the 11th hour and pretty much the 59th minute after he was advised that playing for Brighton would jeopardise possible moves to Ljublana, Skipper Bologna or most intriguingly, Brighton's ULEB Cup rivals, Sopot.

Bears' chief Nick Nurse might not be happy about some of the complications of the deal being revealed, but it does illustrate the length to which he and the Bears went to bring in a player of massive quality and considerable reputation to the club.

Word of a possible new deal for the Nigerian giant, who parted company with Iliaskos after recording 28 points and 14 rebounds in a win over Apollon in the Greek league, came through on Monday.

OO's arrival at the team's country retreat near Cholet was delayed until late on Tuesday afternoon.

He arrived by taxi from Nantes airport, grabbed a quick bowl of pasta and saw a few minutes of game tape as Nurse ran his side through Cholet's men to watch.

Then it was upstairs for an hour's rest, an hour spent mainly on the telephone discussing possible new deals.

Still, though, there was no hint of the late twist to come.

Even as Bears made the ten minute coach ride to Cholet's arena, the only talk regarding OO was about which squad number he would be given.

Oyedeji joined in the initial pre-game shoot-around but, when Nurse called his men in for a final team talk, it became clear all was not well.

Instead of joining his new colleagues, OO stayed out on court.

Then came confirmation from the Bears' locker room. "He's not playing after all."

Nurse said: "Probably I could have made him commit and play throughout the ULEB Cup but I didn't want to do that given the circumstances.

"He would have been cup- tied, he could have got injured and he could have put any deal in jeopardy.

"I've only done what I would expect from a coach who had a player who I wanted to sign."

What sort of boost that news gave Cholet can only be guessed at. From Bears' arrival on Monday the question being asked throughout the local basketball community was: "Where is the NBA player?"

One experienced British basketball reporter reckoned Bears would have won convincingly had OO played.

Just as they may well have won at Ionikos without the enforced absence of Tom Frederick and Andrew Alleyne.

Nurse was less committal. He said: "I don't know what would have happened had he played. I kind of like our rhythm and I do not know how he would have affected that.

"Cholet did get a lot of offensive rebounds though and that's what he is supposed to be able to stop.

"It's difficult for us. I like my guys but we had the opportunity to bring a higher level of player in and it's not really going to work out. But sometimes you roll the dice and it pays off, sometimes it doesn't.

"It's not going to work out this time but we wish him well."

Maybe Oyedeji would have struggled to settle in so quickly. There was certainly a look of bewilderment on his face when Yorick Williams tried a bit of cheeky Mancunian humour on him at the pre-game get-together.

The expression on OO's face as he returned to the team's chateau after the game, however, suggested he was devasted not to have played a part.

He said: "I don't like sitting and watching. I didn't have a sleepless night and come all the way here to watch the game."

With that the big man checked his array of state-of-the-art mobile phones and switched on his laptop as the tunes came thick and fast over his headphones.

Nothing too heavy. Just Usher, 50 cent, Jay-Z and a reworking of the old Kurtis Blow track which used to blast out in basketball venues in the mid-Eighties: "They're playing basketball, we love that basketball."

If only they had let OO play a bit of basketball in western France.