“I don’t know anything about Angola, but Angola’s in trouble,” Charles Barkley said before the Dream Team’s dominant 116-48 victory to open the 1992 Olympics.
Fast-forward to 2024, and the U.S. men’s basketball team needed a last-minute layup by LeBron James to stave off South Sudan 101-100 in exhibition play.
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International basketball competitions have become less predictable. Germany nearly defeated the U.S. in an exhibition game last month and knocked off a different roster of American NBA stars in the semifinals of the 2023 FIBA World Cup. Canada beat the U.S. in the bronze medal game of that same tournament and brought a squad featuring 11 current or former NBA players to Paris.
In the 1992 Olympics, there were 12 players with NBA experience across the non-U.S. teams. This year, there are 69.
Despite the wealth of international NBA talent in the tournament, the U.S. is still a heavy -600 favorite to win the gold medal on DraftKings. The Americans won their first two 2024 Olympic contests by 26 over Serbia and by 17 in a rematch over South Sudan. The rosters across the board in Paris, however, reflect the global development of the sport that has taken place over decades.
“The Dream Team performance in ‘92 was the original inspiration for international growth,” NBA head of international basketball operations Troy Justice said. “Fans all over the world were inspired by the level of talent and play. The inspiration creates this aspiration for young boys and girls around the world.”
There has been a steady rise in non-American players throughout NBA history: from eight on opening night of the 1983-84 season to 73 in 2003-04 and eventually to a record 125 in 2023-24, counting those on two-way contracts.
It’s not just the quantity of international players that has increased, but the quality as well. The last six NBA MVPs have been awarded to players born outside of the U.S., with second and third-place 2024 MVP finishers Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Luka Dončić hailing from Canada and Slovenia, respectively.
In the past decade, the biggest spikes have come from Canada (eight players in 2013-14 versus 26 in 2023-24) and Africa (seven players in 2013-14 up to 15 in 2023-24).
“In the case of Africa, what contributed tremendously was the focus on making the game accessible to young people, getting more young people to play the sport,” Basketball Africa League (BAL) president Amadou Gallo Fall said.
The NBA, along with FIBA, launched Basketball Without Borders (BWB) in Africa in 2003. Over the years, 19 BWB Africa camps have reached more than 1,600 participants, 13 of whom went on to play in the NBA. One of those was Luc Mbah a Moute, who eventually returned to Africa and helped discover NBA All-Stars Pascal Siakam and Joel Embiid.
The league has continued its investment in the continent, opening its Africa headquarters in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2010, as well as offices in Senegal (2021), Nigeria (2022), Egypt and Kenya (2023) more recently. NBA Academy Africa, a basketball training center in Senegal, opened in 2017 and has worked with dozens of future NCAA Division I players and two NBA players. BAL, a professional league featuring 12 teams across the continent and founded as a partnership between FIBA and NBA Africa, just concluded its fourth season in June.
The rapid global expansion of the talent pool has not come without problems. Over the past 15 years, a cottage industry of fly-by-night prep schools similar to Kanye West’s Donda Academy has sprung up in the U.S., luring international teenage players with promises of exposure to college recruiters and a shot at a pro career. While players such as Embiid have successfully navigated American prep schools as a stepping-stone to the NBA, many others have been scammed by less legitimate, or even completely phony, “academies” whose practices have been the subject of human-trafficking investigations. Young international players have experienced inadequate living conditions while attending unaccredited U.S. schools and been embroiled in student visa fraud scams that have left some deported after being cast aside by these bootleg preps.
The vast majority of NBA Academy Africa graduates are able to advance directly to the next level, whether college or professional, skipping the prep school step entirely. “We recognize as a professional sports league that we have recourses, but we’re not in a position to overhaul entire systems,” NBA head of international basketball development Chris Ebersole said. “Our view with the Academy is that we can create a system where we’re able to provide that education and provide a lot of that structure and infrastructure.”
South Sudan’s 2024 Olympics team is a testament to the foundation that the NBA has laid in Africa. Khaman Maluach, who first touched a basketball in 2019, is an NBA Academy Africa alumnus who also attended BWB in 2023, where he was named MVP of the camp, and played multiple seasons in BAL. The Duke commit and highly-ranked 2025 NBA Draft prospect is representing his country in Paris along with two other BAL players: Nuni Omot and Majok Deng.
South Sudan is the youngest country in the world, having gained independence in 2011, and underwent a civil war from 2013 to 2020. Former NBA All-Star Luol Deng has served as the president of the South Sudan Basketball Federation since 2019 and has funded many aspects of the program out of his own pocket due to his belief in the ability of basketball to catalyze unity…
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