America’s NBA is the biggest basketball league in the world.
Only the most elite players on the planet get to put on a jersey and hit the hardwood floor to represent one of the 30 teams across two conferences from October to June each year. And the stars the NBA has created are world-renowned. Almost everyone knows the name Michael Jordan, and most would recognise him as the greatest to ever play the game.
But there’s far more to the NBA than such global names, especially the association’s international aspects.
Take John Stockton, widely regarded as the best point guard to ever play the game. This American-born player with strong Irish roots retired in 2003 but still holds the record for most career assists with 15,608 overall set-ups. In his 19-year career he also set the overall record for most career steals with 3,265. It’ll be a long time before anyone playing today will catch up.
Sadly there has been no Irish-born player in the NBA since Pat Burke, who played his last US pro game in 2007 and retired in 2009. Though not chosen in the 1997 NBA Draft, the Auburn University graduate plied his trade in Spain and Greece before he was called up by the Orlando Magic in 2002, playing 64 games and averaging 4.3 points and 2.4 rebounds a game. On his second NBA stint in 2005-07, Burke played for the Phoenix Suns for two seasons before ending his basketball career in Europe.
With over 90 foreign players with citizenships in 41 different countries, the NBA is arguably more diverse today than it ever was. Young basketball players from all over the world strive to join those elite players allowed to play on the highest level of the sport. Seeing so many different countries taking part in European and world championships, it’s obvious that basketball is not purely an ‘American’ sport.
Indeed, the continent of Africa is also known for producing top hoops talent, such as Congolese legend Dikembe Mutombo.
If you want to talk about Nigerian players in the NBA, you have to talk about 23-year-old Festus Ezeli, the only Nigerian-born player playing in the league right now (although the New Orleans Hornets’ Al-Farouq Aminu also has Nigerian heritage and has played for the national team),
In last year’s NBA Draft, Vanderbilt University’s Ezeli was the 30th overall pick, drafted by the Golden State Warriors, making the current season his rookie year. And he has been making an impression, averaging 2.5 points and 3.9 rebounds in about 14.6 minutes of play per game.
It’s astonishing to think that when Ezeli first arrived to the US in 2004, he had never played any kind of organised sport. “I didn’t know what I was doing,” he said in a 2011 interview. “Imagine someone who is 14 or 15 years old, and you’re teaching them as if they’re a six-year-old.”
Basketball’s reach is spreading worldwide, but it’s still underrated in many European countries. Of course soccer plays a big part in putting minority sports like basketball in its shadow. But it is good to know, especially for young up-and-coming players, that there is a place to play the game they love.
