Naturalization (Jordan, Qatar and Lebanon)

[fadikhatib]

also john abi zeid very famous during the iraqi war. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Abizaid he is of lebanese origins..ABI ZEID IS LEBANESE SURNAME.

Also the owners of the sacrmento kings NBA TEAM ARE LEBANESE THE MAALOUF ( PURE LEBANESE SURNAME) BROTHERS ARE THE OWNERS..

[jxuusa]

I have proof that you have three north korean players...

You are no more than a kid or completely ignorant guy.. if you had a small idea about Lebanon and its relations to siryia you wouldn't have posted this link.. pathetic..

Oooh North Koreans, they're exotic.

[el scorcho]

East Asian Guys,

Lets not argue with the other posters on here. You know that without import players, Lebanon, Jordan, Qatar, and the Phillipines, would not be good in basketball. I mean, even the Iranian coach complained about it.

The Philippines doesn't have any import in their team now. All the players are half Filipino, with at least one Filipino parent. Even stricter than FIBA rules.

[TheShot]

The Philippines doesn't have any import in their team now. All the players are half Filipino, with at least one Filipino parent. Even stricter than FIBA rules.

Doesn't every Philipino want CJ Giles on the team? He has no philipino blood in him. Btw, what is Pennisi? Is he naturalized or is he like 1/4 philipino?

[phevergy]

Doesn't every Philipino want CJ Giles on the team? He has no philipino blood in him. Btw, what is Pennisi? Is he naturalized or is he like 1/4 philipino?

Penissi is suffering from vetiligo

[Lewis]

Doesn't every Philipino want CJ Giles on the team? He has no philipino blood in him. Btw, what is Pennisi? Is he naturalized or is he like 1/4 philipino?

"F"ilipino

[Cammomile]

The athletics world body (iaaf) now requires three years residency before a naturalized athlete can compete.

Growing up in the cool, thin air of the Kenyan highlands helped turn Stephen Cherono into a world-class runner. He honed his skills jumping over rocks and streams in his native land, following the tracks of his older brother, Abraham, and a phalanx of other Kenyan champions. At last week's World Championships in Athletics in Paris, he not only beat his brother in a thrilling 3,000-m steeplechase; he also scored a gold medal for his home country: Qatar.

Qatar? That's right. Last month the lithe 20-year-old middle-distance man swapped his Kenyan passport for a Qatari one and took a new name, Saif Saaeed Shaheen. At the time, the sudden ID change, and a reported salary agreement of $1,000 a month for the rest of Shaheen's life, raised eyebrows in the sporting community. But Shaheen's victory for Qatar last week — which caused Kenya to lose an event it had won at each of the last six World Championships and every Olympic Games it attended since 1968 — raised full-scale alarms about the buying of athletes. Would teams from poorer countries now face regular poaching by rich ones? Should athletes be able to change flags as easily as, well, track shoes? Grumblings that Cherono had sold out were encouraged when his own brother failed to congratulate him after they crossed the finish line.

The International Association of Athletics Federations — which organizes the World Championships — joined in the consternation. "One week you're Kenyan, a week later you're Qatari, you change your name, and very clearly for financial reasons — this is what we call morally weird," I.A.A.F. general secretary Istvan Gyulai tells TIME. He says there have been around 60 requests for "transfer of allegiance" in the last two years alone. Even some transnationals think enough is enough. Says the formerly Jamaican sprinter Merlene Ottey, who fell out with the Jamaican track federation and ran her first World Championships race for Slovenia in Paris: "If athletes are doing it just for the money, I think they should tighten the rules." The I.A.A.F. promptly ordered a study to examine and perhaps stiffen relevant rules. Athletes are now required to wait three years before competing under a new flag unless the sporting federations in both countries agree to the transfer — which both Kenya and Qatar did — in which case the delay drops to one year.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...480231,00.html

Fiba should try this. I'm not against naturalization just speed-naturalization

yeah..naturalization is ok as long it was not done Via FEDEX quick delivery

[FARIDOON]

What if we naturalize an American basketball player and upon returning to USA for vacation, he will be question by US Immigration because he is carrying an Iranian Passport...


Iranian Arsalan Kazemi poised to make NCAA hoop history in '09

BY EBENEZER SAMUEL
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER
Saturday, November 15th 2008, 12:55 PM


The questions just kept coming, rapid-fire, like bullets from a machine gun. Eighteen-year-old Arsalan Kazemi was in a nervous sweat. He was running out of answers.
He was standing at an immigration desk near the main concourse at Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport watching others file past.
He was surrounded by three uniformed officials. They wanted to know why this tall kid from Iran was trying to enter the United States, why in January. They wanted to know where his family was. They wanted to know if he was an Iranian soldier. They wanted to know everything.
This was no welcoming committee.
"I'm here to play basketball," he said. "I'm supposed to meet my coach."
They didn't believe him.
They brought him over to Anthony Ibrahim, the man Kazemi said was his coach, then walked him back to the desk. The interrogation was far from over. One official was gruff; another calm. Another kept calling Ibrahim, standing 30 yards away on his cell phone, to confirm Kazemi's answers.
They still didn't believe him. Kazemi had had enough.
"I'm not a terrorist," he snapped. "If you don't believe me, deport me."
It took six hours of questioning before Kazemi was allowed passage. He approached Ibrahim, alone and distraught.
"What I am trying to do," he told his coach, "will be very, very difficult."
Arsalan Kazemi came to the United States aiming to become the first Iranian-born athlete to play NCAA basketball. And even before that lengthy interrogation, he knew it wouldn't be easy.
His mission is two-pronged. The 6-7 Kazemi, who is now a senior at The Patterson School in North Carolina, seeks to cut a path from Iran to the college hardwood and contribute toward smoothing relations between two countries in the process.
Yes, he knows his country has been blacklisted by the U.S., labeled part of President Bush's "Axis of Evil," a collection of countries seeking weapons of mass destruction and promoting terrorism. And he knows of the Iranian students who stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran nearly 30 years ago and held 52 U.S. diplomats hostage for 444 days. And he knows of the decades of anti-Iranian sentiment that followed.
Before letting him board a plane bound for Houston in January, father Yousef and mother Roya warned their son not to tell anyone he was Iranian.
"They said it wasn't safe," he says.
He didn't listen. So, when a man at a North Carolina gas station asked him where he was from, Kazemi told the truth.
"The guy said, ‘I am going to kill you,'" Kazemi recalls. "Then he said he was joking. At first, I was scared. If you are me, wouldn't you be, too?"

[jxuusa]

Wow this kid is really drawn some attention from the Big 12 and Conference USA teams. More international presence in college basketball is always a good thing. And I find it funny, how Texas and that region are such red states, which usually shun anyone not America, would be filled with many foreign cultures and embrace athletes from all these different cultures.

[SNIPER]

Russia is the same crap, they done it once though, you guys are acting like thugs but your culture sucks, you need to bring in players to be elite in Asia.

Mechantaf, sabah khoury,Fadi el Khatib, badr Makki, Vicken Eskedjian and other Lebanse players were mVPs of many asian club's ABC and arab major competitions and not Vogel or Vroman (when they played for Leb)

2 words from our culture dedicated to you: Fuck You

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