Harare — The National Basketball Association (NBA) in the United States, which has hundreds of players from across the globe - including Africa - is without a doubt the greatest level of professional basketball. The continent's impact on the NBA is undeniable, with many of today's stars having African roots. Legendary basketball players with African ancestry, like Hakeem Olajuwon, were instrumental in creating the NBA as we know it today.
At the start of the 2022-2023 season, NBA rosters had 16 players who were born in Africa, while 35 players had at least one African parent.
These are some of the top performing NBA players, all of whom were born in Africa or have African-born parents, who are currently creating plays on the court.
Giannis Antetokounmpo, often considered the best player in the NBA, may be known as "The Greek Freak", but his parents are Nigerian. Born in Greece, Antetokounmpo is widely regarded as one of the greatest power forwards and one of the greatest European players of all time.
Antetokounmpo began playing basketball for the youth teams of Filathlitikos in Athens where he was raised. The Eastern Conference voting leader in 2019, 2020, and 2023, Antetokounmpo was selected to seven All-Star games, including selection as an All-Star captain in each of those years.
Already considered one of the most decorated players in NBA history, he earned back-to-back NBA Most Valuable Player Awards in 2019 and 2020, joining LeBron James and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the only players to accomplish this feat before turning 26. He was the third player, behind Michael Jordan (1988) and Hakeem Olajuwon (1994), to win both titles in the same season, along with his MVP honors, when he was voted the NBA Defensive Player of the Year in 2020.
Antetokounmpo won the Finals MVP award in 2021 after leading the Milwaukee Bucks to their first NBA title since 1971. He was named to the NBA 75th Anniversary Team in the same year, which recognised him as one of the league's all-time greatest players.
The Bucks were the betting favourites to win the NBA title in 2023, but they lost to the Miami Heat in what may have been a great upset in playoff history. Since the 1968–1969 Baltimore Bullets, the Bucks are the only team to have the greatest regular season record and only win one or no games postseason.
Joel Embiid is a professional player from Cameroon who plays for the Philadelphia 76ers in the NBA. Embiid is also a citizen of France and the United States and played collegiate basketball for Kansas Jayhawks for one season before being selected third overall by the Philadelphia 76ers in the 2014 NBA Draft.
In 2023, he won the NBA MVP award for the first time, defeating Denver Nuggets' Nikola Jokic, a two-time winner. The 29-year-old Yaoundé native averaged 33.1 points to win his second consecutive scoring championship, 10.2 rebounds per game, and equalled a career best with 4.2 assists per game. Since Allen Iverson in 2001, Embiid is the first member of the 76ers to win league MVP.
Nicknamed The Process, Embiid played in 66 games, the second-highest total of his career, but again was hit with injuries in the ongoing playoffs. He was sidelined with a sprained right knee that cost him one game of the playoff sweep against Brooklyn Nets and the opening game of the Eastern Conference semifinals against Boston Celtics. Now, the NBA championship run of the Philadelphia 76ers may come down to Embiid's injury. The Sixers are attempting to capture their first NBA championship since 1983 and make it through the second round for the first time since 2001, the last year a Sixer earned the MVP award.
Pascal Siakam was born in Doula, Cameroon, and began playing basketball when he was 16. He was exceedingly raw, yet there was no denying his brilliance. Siakam was drafted in the first round of the 2016 NBA draft. He was the 2019 Most Improved Player, an NBA champion, a two-time All-Star and a two-time All-NBA selection. He is possibly the best player on the Toronto Raptors side. Basketball Without Borders helped Siakam into the NBA, when his journey began in Douala, and he is a rising young talent in the NBA.
Victor Oladipo was born in Maryland, USA, to a Nigerian mother and a father who spent most of his life in Sierra Leone. Oladipo lived most of his childhood in the US, and after an outstanding collegiate career, he reached the second round of the 2013 NBA Draft by the Orlando Magic as a strong prospect. He made an immediate impression, placing second in the voting for Rookie of the Year. Oladipo, currently a guard for the Miami Heat, tore the patellar tendon in his left knee in the fourth quarter of the Milwaukee Bucks' Game 3 of the 2023 NBA playoffs, and will miss the rest of the postseason.
Serge Ibaka, from Congo (Brazzaville) was a stalwart in the NBA ever since being chosen in the first round of the 2008 draft. Ibaka's path to the pros is unique compared to the others on this list since, prior to getting picked, he never attended any prep schools or universities in the United States. At 16, he relocated from the Congo to Spain to start his professional career. His early game development was helped by playing against professionals at such a young age. Ibaka has a reputation of being a defensive enforcer, and has made the NBA First Team All-Defensive three times in his career. Ibaka, who is now 32 years old, is playing for the Milwaukee Bucks in the NBA playoffs.
Jonathan Kuminga may be the youngest member on our list, but the talent he already demonstrated in his brief NBA career cemented his position as a potential game-changer in the future. The 20-year-old power forward for the Golden State Warriors was born in Goma in the conflict-torn North Kivu province, the regional capital of the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo's North Kivu province. At age 16, he moved from the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo to the U.S. for recruitment exposure and to develop his skills.
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Other African players include Gorgui Sy Dieng, a Senegalese professional basketball player for the San Antonio Spurs, and Bismack Biyombo Sumba, born in Lubumbashi, a copper mining city of about 1.5 million people in DR Congo, for the Phoenix Suns.
There are currently 19 players of Nigerian origin on the NBA roster. These include Joshua Aloiye Okogie who plays for the Phoenix Suns, Udoka Timothy Azubuike for the Utah Jazz and Al-Farouq Ajiede Aminu, a Nigerian-American professional basketball player who last played for the Chicago Bulls. Aminu plays internationally with the Nigeria national basketball team.
The race for the 2023 NBA championship is under way. There are only eight teams left in the NBA, and they are all prepared to compete for a spot that would advance them to the conference finals. Basketball fans' attention will be focused on the NBA Playoffs until mid-June, 2023, when a new champion will emerge.
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