If you’re like me, then you already know that maybe the very most important web page in an Internet stuffed with compelling basketball research is the Basketball-Reference Birth Places page. The only thing that’s wrong with this enchanting walk down NBA history is it has been filed under the Frivolities category on the same website. There’s nothing frivolous about it.
While it is interesting to hop around the nifty fifty and find some absolutely dynamite trivia nuggets — James Johnson is from Wyoming?! — what’s most interesting here is tracking players who were born in other countries. At this point in basketball history, it really, truly is a delight that there are such lengthy and rich basketball histories in countries like Lithuania, Slovenia, Australia. But right now, what really excites me is when a player becomes the very first person in their home country to enter the NBA.
It’s an accomplishment that borders on the impossible. For starters, making it into the NBA is just about impossible. But also most people on the planet are eliminated from contention right when they exit the womb. Consider the example of baseball. The talent pipelines from Japan, Korea and Latin America to the big leagues are well-established, but it’s the pre-industrial age, baseball-wise, for most countries around the world. Contrast that with the truly globe-spanning reach of basketball, which is about equally as likely to find a player in the Netherlands or Nigeria, Bulgaria or the Bahamas.
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Although there are a few false hits in there — such as the Canadian Steve Nash being the only player ever born in South Africa — there are 81 countries who have sent a player to the NBA. Look, there’s only 233 countries in all, and that’s including about 30, like Monaco or the Vatican City, that are, charitably, the size of a small town. There could be a time, eventually, when every country on the globe is accounted for.
As for the 2017-18 season, we have yet to see a player debut from a new country. This is actually really uncommon. Since the start of the 2015-16 year, we’ve seen players from four new countries enter the league: Ben Bentil (Ghana), Salah Majri (Tunisia), Jakob Poeltl (Austria) and Edy Tavares, whose home country of Cape Verde is only the 172nd-largest on the planet. But with an assist from the new two-way contract system, there’s a plausible path to seeing some new debuts before the season is over.
The Second Men In
While there aren’t any first-ever players who have debuted so far, there are three rookies who are only the second-ever player to enter the league from their home country.
- Lauri Markkanen / Finland: Markkanen was beaten by about 15 years by Hanno Mottola, who played with the Hawks from 2000-02. It looks like Mottola was born in the wrong generation: at 6-foot-11, he shot a respectable 33.3 percent on 3-point shots in college at Utah under Rick Majerus. The paint-bound NBA limited Mottola to only 16 attempts in 155 games.
- Abdel Nader / Egypt: This one is just on the edge of counting at all, with Nader moving to America basically as a toddler. Both Egyptian NBA players were in the building when Nader’s Celtics played the Sixers: Philly broadcaster Alaa Abdelnaby is the other. (However, it looks like Abdelnaby moved stateside as a toddler as well.)
- Cedi Osman / Republic of Macedonia: Just like Markkanen and Finland, the first player from Macedonia was somehow also a center for the Hawks who played exactly two years. Although Pero Antic’s NBA stats of 17.4 minutes and 6.3 points per game don’t look like much now, boy did he make an impact on our hearts.
The two-way man
There’s currently one player on a two-way contract who would represent a new country if and when he gets into a game: Chris Boucher of the Warriors. Boucher was born in Saint Lucia, the 189th-largest country in the world, which has fewer people than Modesto, California. Boucher is still recovering from a torn ACL he endured last month, but it sure looks like he could be one of two prospects the Warriors were wise to secure out of the University of Oregon, alongside Jordan Bell.
The G League Prospects
Admittedly, none of these guys have gotten a ton of minutes yet, even in the G League. So while their NBA prospects are currently low, you never know who is going to come out with the next Jonathon Simmons-style career-making explosion.
- Peter Jok / Northern Arizona Suns / Sudan: Alright, so here’s a geopolitical conundrum on top of that as well — there have been four players in league history who have come from South Sudan, including Luol Deng and Thon Maker. However, South Sudan only became its own country in 2011. Jok has only appeared in one game for Northern Arizona so far.
- Amjyot Singh / Oklahoma City Blue / India: Unfortunately, the Satnam Singh experiment quietly came to an end. After getting selected deep in the second round of the 2015 NBA Draft by the Mavericks as a potential moonshot development project, the 7-foot Satnam Singh played incredibly sparingly in two G League seasons. Oklahoma City picked up Amjyot from the UBA (United Basketball Alliance), a professional league that started in India in 2015.
- Buay Tuach / Westchester Knicks / Ethiopia: The most populated country in Africa is Nigeria, home to nine NBA players, including all-time legend Hakeem Olajuwon. Even though Ethiopia is next on the list of populous countries, we still have yet to see a player from there. This is despite active NBA players coming in from Cameroon, Mali, Senegal — which, all three combined would not be as large as Ethiopia’s 102-million people. Tuach will have had advice from a surprising source on how to make it into the NBA: his collegiate coach at tiny Loyola Marymount was none other than former Bobcats coach Mike Dunlap.