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The recent death of Dikembe Mutombo and the start of the NBA regular season today highlight the fraught realities of building a talent pipeline between lower-income countries and the NBA

On Sept. 30, Basketball Hall of Famer Dikembe Mutombo passed away after a two-year battle with brain cancer. As a young NBA fan, I looked at Mutombo as someone both figuratively and literally larger than life.

Even as a fan of the Philadelphia 76ers, one of my favorite basketball memories was when Mutombo helped lead the Denver Nuggets to an upset of the No. 1-seed Seattle Supersonics, which featured an iconic highlight of Mutombo holding the final rebound as he celebrated on the ground. I later had the joy of watching him as a Sixer when the team made a run to the NBA Finals in 2001.

Mutombo’s legend went beyond his size, with an incredible backstory that might seem too unbelievable for a Hollywood script. academic scholarship at 21, originally . But after being recruited to play basketball, and knowing very little English, he majored in linguistics and diplomacy, earning internships with U.S. Rep. Robert Matsui and the World Bank.

My sister attended Georgetown, and Mutombo stories were common—with his intelligence, gregarious nature and success on the court making him a legend at the university. He was drafted by the Nuggets on the day after his 25th birthday and played 18 years with several teams, including the Houston Rockets, where he was a mentor to another international player, Yao Ming.

During his playing career, Mutombo began , started his own foundation to support his native Congo and served as the He also began working with , a program started by the NBA to encourage friendship and tolerance through basketball camps run globally.

The program was first introduced in 2001 in the Balkan states after the Yugoslav Wars, before entering Africa in 2003. It has become a pipeline for future all-stars like Pascal Siakam and Joel Embiid to earn college scholarships and be drafted into the NBA.

In 2023, the NBA had a record 125 international players on team rosters, with 19 of those players from African nations. The last six MVP awards have been won by three international players, two of whom, (born in Greece to Nigerian parents) have deep ties to Africa. Mutombo followed as a part of the first wave of African players to enter the NBA. There was a dramatic increase of international players entering the NBA that began with the fall of the Soviet Union and accelerated after the

Still-rare success

The success of players like Olajuwon, Mutombo and Embiid is still fairly rare in spite of the internationalization of basketball. 72% were from Canada or Europe, representative of the strong basketball pipeline within the Global North and evidence of the developmental resources maintained by these Western nations with strong youth programs and professional leagues.

Players who emerge from outside of these pipelines are often exceptional in , overcoming a lack of developmental support. Recent evidence of the wide gap in resources was the relative success of the , which challenged top teams in spite of there being no in the nation. , whose family escaped the war-torn country and settled in Great Britain before Deng enrolled at Duke for a year, becoming a two-time All-Star during his 15-year NBA career.

For every Deng, Antetokounmpo or Mutombo who make it to the NBA or other professional leagues around the world, like the , there are thousands of others who don’t. It is a lottery that creates competition domestically among lower-income groups, including members of the African diaspora in the United States, where social mobility only seems accessible.

The desire to leverage sports to achieve social mobility is not new, but it has become increasingly international as domestic sports leagues continue to globalize, driven by access through

Earlier efforts to globalize were focused on wealthier nations in Europe and Asia, with the NBA and NFL holding exhibitions in countries like . Since the 1970s, the NFL has attempted to expand beyond the United States, which officially launched in 1991. After NFL Europe folded in 2007, the league looked toward expanding beyond U.S. borders—self-tasked with expanding not only the NFL brand but American football in general.

The NBA, on the other hand, has focused on expanding as the top basketball league in the world, leveraging the international popularity of the sport. This growth was supported by the fall of the Iron Curtain and growth of professional basketball globally, driven both by television and the popularity of players like Michael Jordan. to allow their professionals into the Olympics led to the 1992 Dream Team, which only accelerated this growth.

Big in China

Understanding of how international players can expand the game, and brand, was further evidenced by the success of Yao Ming in popularizing the NBA in China. that can arise, considering the Chinese government’s requirement that Yao hand over half his earnings to the government, and later conflicts ignited when

The growth of basketball in Europe and has opened opportunities for American players to continue their professional basketball careers outside the United States and for top European athletes to play in the NBA. The stability of this pipeline, and the success of players like Olajuwon and Mutombo, led to Basketball without Borders. The NFL has run several international development and scouting programs since 2007, leading to the current . Dozens of international NFL players have entered the NFL through this program, creating a strong pipeline in countries like Nigeria, and supported by Osi Umenyiora, a Nigerian-British former NFL All-Pro.

However, the high cost of entry and potential for injury has limited this growth, leading the which will make its Olympic debut in the Summer 2028 Games in Los Angeles. NFL officials have mentioned hopes that it will have the same impact as the Dream Team had for NBA basketball. In a similar vein, FIBA has also been working to leverage 3x3 basketball to expand

This growth is not without complications. Along with walking a fine line between free speech, politics and growth—as evidenced by the conflict between the over Daryl Morey’s tweet in support of Hong Kong protesters, as well as 2024 —there are also claims of cultural and economic imperialism as leagues and their sponsorship partners leverage the sport and operate in other nations.

One of the clearest examples of this imperialism and cultural disconnect is represented in the , which is overseen by NBA Africa and FIBA. Early investors included Mutombo, with . These corporations are looking to leverage the league to expand their brand recognition, which furthers criticism regarding exploitation of labor and resources, .

There is clearly a disconnect between expectations and realities on the African continent, with and European leagues. Unsurprisingly, the BAL and NBA Africa are headquartered in South Africa, in the shadow of apartheid and colonialism.

Ethically fraught global expansion

In spite of these issues, NBA Africa is reportedly valued at over $1 billion, and similar to NBA China, much of the value, and investment, is based on access to potential consumers on the continent, whose population is nearing 1.4 billion. Also, similar to NBA China, there have been issues with the relationships formed to create these subsidiaries. Leaders in nations like Rwanda, Russia and Saudi Arabia have been accused of investing in sport to distract from human rights violations and improve their reputation on the world stage.

The NBA and NFL are far from the only corporations engaging in ethically fraught global expansion; however, the long Western history of exploiting of groups of color, particularly African Americans, only exacerbates concerns regarding globalization of North American sports leagues. Programs like Basketball without Borders present themselves as philanthropic but are actually investments to help expand corporate footprints and open pipelines to talent that removes players from their communities—mirroring similar pipelines between lower-income communities in the United States and major college athletics programs.

Mutombo’s passing reminds us of the positive and negative potential of global sports: the opportunity for social mobility, philanthropy and community, and the risk of widespread exploitation.

Top image: Men play basketball in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (Photo: )

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