Asian NBA History

[Kings]

1947: Wataru Misaka
Wataru Misaka ("Wat Misaka") is officially the first Asian to play in the NBA. From Utah college, he was a Japanese American point guard (5'7") who was on the 1947-1948 New York NBA team roster. He played a total of 3 games in his NBA career.

1981: Yasutaka "Chibi" Okayama
A towering 7'10" Japanese basketball player from the University of Osaka in Japan. He was selected by the Golden State Warriors in the 8th round in the 1981 draft. However, he never showed up in America during the NBA season, so he has no offical NBA playing stats.

1987: Song Tao
Song Tao was selected by the Atlanta Hawks in the 3rd round of the 1987 draft. He was a 6'10" forward on the Chinese National Basketball team. However, a knee injury during a pre-season NBA game ended his NBA career prematurely.

1995: Ma Jian
The Chinese American, 6'7" forward was a starter on the Utah college basketball team. He made it to the 1995 L.A. Clippers pre-season roster. However, he was the last player to be trimmed from the regular-season roster, and has been playing in the Chinese basketbal leagues since.

1997: Ri Myong Hun
More than a dozen NBA teams expressed interest in signing the 7'9" Ri Myong Hun (also known as Michael Ri) from North Korea, when he tried to enter the NBA as a free agent. However, unfavorable diplomatic relations between North Korea and the United States prevented Ri from entering the U.S.A and joining the NBA.

1999: Wang Zhizhi
The Dallas Mavericks selected Wang Zhizhi in the second round (36th pick overall) of the 1999 NBA Draft. His first game wasn't until April 5, 2001, because of commitments with the Chinese National basketball team.

2000: Hu Weidong
Hu Weidong, a 6'6" shooting guard nicknamed "Chinese Jordan", was offered a 10-day short-term contract with the Orlando Magic, but Hu got injured at practice in China and didn't go.

2002: Mengke Bateer
The Denver Nuggets signed Menk Bateer on Feb. 26, 2002 as a free agent. His first game was on Feb. 27, 2002 against Golden State. An estimated 400 million Chinese viewers tuned in on March 3, 2002 when Bateer (Nuggets) faced Wang (Mavericks) as the game was broadcast live in China on CCTV.

2002: Yao Ming
The Houston Rockets selected Yao Ming as the number one overall draft pick.

2002: Hsin-an (Sean) Chen
Sean Chen, a Taiwanese point guard (6'5"), was on the Sacramento Kings pre-season roster. He got cut from the regular season roster.

2003: Xue Yuyang
Dallas Mavericks drafted 7'0" center Xue Yuyang 2nd round, 57th pick overall, and immediately traded him to Denver Nuggets on the draft day.

2003: Yuta Tabuse
Yuta Tabuse, a 5'9" point guard from Japan, was invited to Denver Nuggets training camp and played NBA pre-season games. He also represented Dallas Mavericks in the Summer League. Got cut from the regular season roster.

2004: Ha Seung-Jin
Ha Seung-Jin is picked in second round (46th overall) of NBA draft by the Portland Trailblazers. The 19 year old center from South Korea, listed at 7'4" and 325 pounds.

[Czarkazem13]

''Wat'' A Player

Catching up with ''Wat'' Misaka, first NBA player of Asian descentJackie Robinson and Wataru "Wat" Misaka are inextricably linked.


It was 1947 and both were pioneers in integrating professional sports. While Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball, Misaka did the same in basketball with much less fanfare. More than half a century before the Dallas Mavericks drafted China's Wang Zhizhi in 1999, the New York Knicks drafted Misaka, the first NBA player of Asian descent, in the first round.

Misaka, a 5-7 guard, appeared in three games and scored seven points for the 1947-48 Knicks before he was cut for reasons never made clear to him. But he recalls his brief stint in the NBA as a pleasant one.

"We had training camp in Bear Mountain and Carl Braun was my roommate," said Misaka, 77. "Even after we returned to New York we remained very friendly and he had me out to his place out on Long Island a couple of times."

A Japanese-American, Misaka was born in Ogden, Utah, and, except for his time with the Knicks and a stint in the military, has lived in the area his whole life. After playing for Weber Junior College (now Weber State University) in Ogden, he helped guide the University of Utah to the 1944 NCAA and 1947 NIT championships and was inducted into the Utah Sports hall of Fame in 1999. Two years before, he was inducted into the Japanese-American National Bowling Hall of Fame.

Despite the specter of World War II still fresh when he broke into the NBA, Misaka experienced little intolerance while with the Knicks.

"Whether real or not, I felt less prejudice against me in New York than I did anywhere else," said Misaka. "Playing for Utah (at Madison Square Garden), New Yorkers are great fans of underdogs and they really backed us up, even against St. John's. When I went back as a Knick, there were people who remembered me from playing for Utah and would say hello on the streets, sometimes."

A Utah Jazz (who else?) fan, Misaka has followed Wang's progress with great interest. And while Misaka is rooting for the 7-1 center to be a forerunner of an influx of Asian basketball talent, Misaka is unsure whether he will feel any kinship other than one of basketball when he finally sees Wang play.

"It's kind of strange," said Misaka, who turned down an offer to play for the Harlem Globetrotters so that he could return to school to earn a degree in engineering. "My parents were Japanese. But in my entire career, I played with whites, so I just feel like I'm just like the rest. The way it was and the way they treated me, I was just another basketball player."

[Czarkazem13]

Here is another article:

Asian Men Can Jump
The NBA’s First APA Player Remembers
By Sam Cacas, AAV Contributing Editor


He may not exactly be "like Mike," but the Japanese-American hoopster who played his way through World War II to become the NBA’s first-ever Asian-Pacific-American is still a star figure in APA sports history

February 8, 1999 - A little more than 52 years have passed since Wataru (Wat) Misaka stepped on a basketball court and became the first Asian Pacific American to play in the National Basketball Association. But to this 76-year-old native of Ogden, Utah, his shot at professional basketball "doesn’t seem like a long time ago."

Recalling his NBA and college basketball career from his home in Bountiful, Utah, Misaka emphasized that he "always felt athletically talented." In high school, he was a four-letter man--in football, baseball, basketball and track. At the University of Utah, he led the Utes to a National Collegiate Athletic Association championship in 1944 and a 1947 National Invitation Tournament. At the time, the NIT championship was a more highly coveted and acclaimed accomplishment in college basketball than the NCAA championship.

The Nisei’s forte was defense. "Though I was not much of a scorer, I defensed whoever I was guarding so they couldn’t dribble around me and I was also good at denying a pass to the person I was guarding," he said, vividly recalling a 1947 game against Kentucky in which he was assigned what had become a familiar task: guarding the opposing team’s highest-scoring player.

In typical "Wat" fashion, he completely shut down that Kentucky player, who was averaging 20 points per game at the time. Or almost completely.

"He scored one point on a free throw off a foul that I didn’t commit," Misaka admitted.

The nation’s first APA pro hoopster recalls that before the Second World War, the students, fans, and players generally treated him well. Since he lived outside of the western military exclusion zone, he avoided evacuation into a concentration camp, but he recalls visiting a friend at the Topaz, Arizona camp. Although he kept playing through the war, he remembers playing a college game in which some fans screamed, "Get the dirty Jap!"

Such experiences were not uncommon in his day-to-day life growing up in Ogden, Utah, especially after World War II started. "People would say, ‘You better get out of the way’ when I walked near them on the sidewalk, and many of them would try to pick fights with me."

Misaka felt it was "quite a compliment to be the number one pick of the Knicks in 1946 attributing the honor as well as his making the team to his collegiate reputation. But at the time it happened, he did not think much of it. "In those days, many players continued to stay in school to get more education and earn more money than they would playing pro basketball." In the three games Misaka played, he recalled playing about 10 minutes each game, and getting several steals.

"I was pretty much aware that I was the first Asian Pacific American to play in the league," he explained. "But my teammates were very cordial with me and thus I didn't dwell much on being a minority person." Misaka pointed out, however, that his NBA career was much too brief for him to make any judgment about his experience.

And 42 years after playing three games for the New York Knicks under the legendary coach Joe Lapchick, Misaka says it would be mere speculation to say he was cut because he was Japanese American. In retrospect, he say "I’m more upset now about being cut than I was when it happened, because looking back and seeing the players who didn’t get cut, I believe it was unfair for them to cut me."

He added that it was rare for a college player – especially a number one pick like himself – to be cut from a team. In those days, playing college basketball was the high point of any organized basketball player's career since the professional basketball leagues were not yet firmly established, explained Misaka. "It came as a complete surprise to me," he said. "While I have no evidence of any racial animosity on the part of the coach, I was given no explanation for being cut by the team owner – Ned Irish – who only told me that the coach made the decision."

Misaka later turned down an offer from basketball mogul Abe Saperstein to play for the Harlem Globetrotters in order to return to school, where he later earned an engineering degree. He went on to work for the Sperry company in Utah for more than 20 years before retiring and working as a contract manufacturer in Bountiful.

Very few APAs have tried to follow in Misaka’s NBA journey. According to league records, a Chinese national player made the Los Angeles Clippers in 1994, but chose to play on his country’s Olympic team before the regular season started and has never returned; a few mixed-race APAs played briefly during the last 20 years. But 52 years after leading the way for future Asian Pacific Americans, Misaka is "very hopeful that there will soon be another person of Asian descent playing in the NBA."

[jramoyo]

Addition to the above list, I think Rony Seikaly should be mentioned as he is from Lebanon. Also, Johnny Abarrientos from the Philippines was also offered a contract by the Charlotte Hornets.

[Nikoo]

^
and PavelP too-he was born in Sibir
Tom Meschery

[swyyyguy]

yuta tabuse is so cool looking.

[bognut]

yuta tabuse is so cool looking.

yuta tabuse is fat! dont ya think so?

[kerouac82]

Just to add:

Raymond Townsend, out of UCLA, was drafted by the Golden State Warriors in the first round of the 1978 draft. He averaged 4.7 points in three seasons.

His mother was a Filipina from Batangas province.

Avelino "Samboy" Lim was also rumored to have been offered a contract by the Lakers in the 1980's, but stayed in the Philippines instead.

[Burndvinyard]

Just to add:

Raymond Townsend, out of UCLA, was drafted by the Golden State Warriors in the first round of the 1978 draft. He averaged 4.7 points in three seasons.

His mother was a Filipina from Batangas province.

Avelino "Samboy" Lim was also rumored to have been offered a contract by the Lakers in the 1980's, but stayed in the Philippines instead.

I was 7 years old way back then when i met "Tito Raymond", as my folks in Alitagtag, Batangas wanted us to call the "American" guy, when he visited our house in Alitagtag, Batangas (during the Marcos era, my granny was the town mayor)together with the likes of PBA stars Freddie Hubalde, Freddie Webb, Atoy Co, etc. for an exhibition game during the town fiesta. Vivid memories... Raymond Townsend is a Pinoy. :-)

On Samboy Lim, the NBA offer did not materialize after he was severely injured in a game between San Miguel and Purefoods. His Purefoods guard/forward friend Jojo "Jolas" Lastimosa was the culprit.

[BBallfanJ]

Don't forget Liu Wei, Yao's old teammate from Shanghai. He was on Sacramento's pre-season roster a few years ago and got cut before the start of the regular season. He played against Yao's Rockets in the China exhibition games.

[alermac]

1981: Yasutaka "Chibi" Okayama
A towering 7'10" Japanese basketball player from the University of Osaka in Japan. He was selected by the Golden State Warriors in the 8th round in the 1981 draft. However, he never showed up in America during the NBA season, so he has no offical NBA playing stats.

7'10''? Holy crap!

[Sit]

I was also wondering... any word on if Xue Yuyang still wants to make the NBA? Technically, he can still go to the NBA and uphold his contact right?

[rikhardur]

7'10''? Holy crap!

Looks at that face:

[Burndvinyard]

1947: Wataru Misaka


1981: Yasutaka "Chibi" Okayama
A towering 7'10" Japanese basketball player from the University of Osaka in Japan. He was selected by the Golden State Warriors in the 8th round in the 1981 draft. However, he never showed up in America during the NBA season, so he has no offical NBA playing stats.

hhmmm....Ricardo Brown of PBA's San Miguel Beermen (and one of PBA's best 25 players of all time) was drafted by the Houston Rockets this year (1981)...you missed this one bro...Ricardo Brown is a Filipino....

[Nikoo]

Tom Meschery

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/m/meschto01.html

Fear the mustacho