When Khaman Maluach’s freshman season at Duke University ended in April, the biggest question about the 7-foot-2 big man’s ability to play in the NBA had nothing to do with his shooting, size or skill.
It had everything to do with his passport
His enormous wingspan and potential made Maluach, who was born in South Sudan and raised in Uganda, the youngest player at last summer’s Paris Olympics, playing for the South Sudanese national team while sharing the court with U.S. stars such as Kevin Durant and Bam Adebayo. Months later, after an all-conference season at Duke, there appeared little keeping him with nimble feet and shot-blocking prowess from the NBA.
Yet on April 5, hours before the Blue Devils lost in the national semifinals of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and nearly three months before the NBA draft, that future appeared in flux. All visas held by South Sudanese passport holders were being revoked, the State Department announced.
Questions immediately arose about whether Maluach would be eligible to be selected. But thanks to a little-known division of the NBA few have heard of, he walked across the Barclays Center stage in Brooklyn, New York, on Wednesday night, as the 10th overall pick. He will begin his NBA career in Phoenix.
“People always ask me: ‘What do you do at the NBA? What do international basketball operations do?’” Troy Justice, the NBA’s senior vice president and head of international basketball, said in an interview. “And we say we make dreams come true. We give people an opportunity that wouldn’t have it otherwise.”
For more than three decades, the NBA has made its mission exporting basketball to the world. In 1992, as a “Dream Team” of NBA players dominated the Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, and became a billboard for the league’s star power globally, the league had just 21 international players. By last fall, a record-tying 125 — from a record-tying 43 countries — accounted for nearly one-third of the league. The league “expects that to continue to grow and expand,” Justice said.
The demographic changes have reshaped the league. Though 48 of the first 49 Most Valuable Player award winners in NBA history hailed from the United States, 10 of the last 21 MVP awards have gone to foreign-born stars, including each of the last seven. When the Thunder’s NBA championship parade passed through the streets of Oklahoma City on Tuesday, the title trophy was held by players from seven countries, including Canadian-born MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
As the NBA has brought basketball to the world, the often-thorny logistics of bringing the world’s players to the NBA have fallen to the league’s arm of international basketball operations. Its staff of 38, operating out of offices in 14 countries, have expertise in immigration law and visa issues, as well as relationships with governments around the world, that have allowed the league to grow those global ambitions.
“What we’re seeing right now is at a time in which all the domestic leagues, NBA and WNBA included, are expanding their international footprint, the population of the world is growing and immigration processes are becoming more complicated,” said Travis Murphy, an immigration consultant to the NBA and former diplomat. “And so it really is kind of this perfect storm of the global growth of leagues seeking to broaden their footprint, expand into more countries. At the same time, it’s more difficult than ever to travel around the world. And that’s not just international passports coming into the States. It’s also U.S. passports.”
By creating basketball “schools” for youth players, as well as establishing Basketball Without Borders camps and academies abroad for elite-level teenagers, the NBA has tried to build, in effect, a funnel to discover and then develop its next generation of players. Justice said the NBA’s international reach extends to 30 million coaches, referees and youth players annually.
Among them is Maluach.
Born in Rumbek, South Sudan, Maluach fled the country with his mother and a few siblings at a young age for Uganda, where he was raised playing primarily soccer, with the nearest basketball court from his home a 40-minute walk away. He did not begin playing basketball until 2019, at age 12, after he was spotted by a scout who worked with the NBA’s African operations. The scout called Brendan McKillop, an NBA associate vice president and head of Elite Basketball, to share that he might have found a prospect.
By 14, Maluach had earned a spot in a Senegal-based academy operated by the NBA, whose feeder program eventually placed him on rosters in the NBA’s Basketball Africa League, playing for teams based in South Sudan, Senegal and Uganda. As he improved, the NBA continued to open more doors, from participating in Basketball Without Borders camps, where he won most valuable player, to in front of NBA scouts at the league’s annual minor-league showcase and later at a showcase during its All-Star weekend last year.
At each stop, the NBA’s international operations team worked to smooth his travel from one country to the next, just as it does with all of its international players. That work continued this spring after the State Department’s action against South Sudan, as Maluach stayed in the United States to train ahead of the draft.
We’ve been on this journey … with Khaman since age 14, and we’re going to continue on this journey with him through the rest of his career, and we’ll continue on this journey with him post his career,” Justice said. “These are lifelong commitments that we make to all of our international players.”
When Maluach arrived in the United States last summer, after having played in the Olympics, he held an F-1 visa, commonly used for international student-athletes in the United States. When that visa was no longer valid after three months, Maluach’s I-20 kept him legally in status. Because of the fluctuating policies in the United States, he has not been able to leave the country since President Donald Trump took office in January. Trump signed a proclamation this month banning nationals from 12 countries from entering the United States, and the State Department later reportedly signaled it was considering expanding the travel ban. South Sudan was among the countries potentially affected.
As Maluach’s lone season at Duke ended, the NBA began paperwork for him to receive a B-1/B-2 business tourist visa, which is pending, according to the league. Because Maluach was drafted Wednesday by a U.S.-based team, the NBA will begin the process of acquiring a P-1 visa — the typical professional athlete visa for the United States.
Though Maluach entered the United States legally and was never considered in danger of being deported despite the State Department’s revocation of South Sudanese visas, the Trump administration’s policies toward South Sudan have added a layer of complexity to his professional future, nonetheless. If he is drafted by one of the 29 U.S.-based NBA teams, he would still travel internationally to Canada, to face the Raptors, and potentially elsewhere for preseason or regular-season games, and that travel would require additional steps for him to re-enter the country every time he leaves. The league would start by filing a petition through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that would last the length of his initial contract. But every time he would want to return to the United States, he would first be required to interview at a U.S. embassy’s
