It may be time for the National Basketball Association to consider changing its name to the International Basketball Association.
For six consecutive seasons, foreign-born basketball stars have dominated the NBA’s Most Valuable Player Award. Serbia’s Nikola Jokic has received the award three times, Greece’s Giannis Antetokounmpo twice and Joel Embiid, a naturalized U.S. citizen but raised in Cameroon, has claimed it once. And if we go back further to 2013, more than half of the No. 1 overall draft picks were born outside the US.
Currently Luka Dončić, a 25-year-old Slovenian; Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, a 26-year-old Canadian’; and brilliant 20-year-old Frenchman Victor Wembanyama look like they will be the faces of the league once LeBron James finally retires.
The NBA does indeed have one record of 125 foreign-born playersaccounting for more than 35% of the league’s limited roster spots. The league claims representatives from countries such as Japan, Brazil, Lebanon, the Bahamas, China and beyond, making it the most diverse league outside of European football.
And we can add Mexico to the ranks of countries eager to produce the kind of global talent that has already flooded the league.
Mexico is not only closely linked to the US through migration, proximity and economy, but is also where the most NBA games (33) have been played, next to the United States and Canada. Since 1992, when the NBA began its annual Mexico Game (which started as an exhibition between the San Antonio Spurs and Houston Rockets to draw fans across the border), the league has steadily expanded its radius to La República Mexicana.
This year, Mexico City hosted the Washington Wizards against the Miami Heat during Día de Muertos weekend. In front of a sold-out crowd of 20,328, a colorful swirl of larger-than-life catrinas, papel picado ofrendas and mariachis stole the show in a stunning Heat win.
After three decades, the NBA reaches critical mass among Mexican fans (ranked as a top 10 market by NBA League Pass subscriptions). The country also seems ready to produce a new generation of players.
One of those ballers is Karim López from Hermosillo, Sonora. Although the 6-foot-1, 17-year-old won’t be eligible for the NBA until 2025, he is expected to be a top lottery pick, which would make him the first Mexican-born athlete to reach such heights.
Currently, López hoops in Australia’s National Basketball League Next Star program – a regime that has developed several prospects, including NBA All-Star LaMelo Ball and recent NBA lottery picks Alex Sarr, RJ Hampton and Ousmane Dieng. López has already impressed for the New Zealand Breakers, who somewhat confusingly play in Australia’s National Basketball League, where he leads the team in rebounds during his rookie campaign. López also plays for Mexico’s senior national team, where he has competed in Olympic qualifiers and is set to become the country’s big player in the future.
And yet, when most spectators think of Mexican sports, they rarely, if ever, conjure up the image of a basketball star. That’s because Mexico has never produced a true NBA standout, despite being the 10th most populous country in the world and next door to the world’s largest basketball market.
Only six Mexican nationals – Horacio Llamas, Eduardo Najera, Gustavo Ayon, Jorge Gutierrez, Juan Toscano-Andesron and Jaime Jaquez Jr. – have competed in the NBA, four of whom were born in Mexico (Toscano-Anderson and Jaquez were born and raised in the US, who later claimed dual citizenship and adapted to Mexico).
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is excited about his vision to broaden the sport’s appeal in Mexico.
“We believe we are the fastest growing sport in Mexico… We know the talent exists and we know the interest exists, but it is a little frustrating that we don’t have greater representation from Mexico in the NBA,” Silver said on a visit to Mexico earlier this month.
“I think back to the expansion into Canada, almost exactly 30 years ago [in 1995]. We expanded to [Toronto and Vancouver]we had two players from Canada. [In 2024] we had 28 [active] players from Canada.”
While the NBA hasn’t invested in Mexico in the same way it has in Canada, the league is beginning to shift its gaze south. In 2017, the league installed NBA Academy Latin America – the NBA’s premier development center – in the state of San Luis Potosí, the first and only of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. The league followed that in 2019 with the announcement that the Capitanes de Ciudad de México, a Mexican-owned basketball franchise, would enter the NBA’s G League circuit.
Llamas, who became the NBA’s first-ever Mexican-born player when he signed for the Phoenix Suns in 1997, has become an ambassador for basketball in his country. But even Llamas admits that Mexico’s basketball pipeline is disorganized and dysfunctional, without a clear path to the NBA.
“We need to emulate countries like Canada,” says Llamas. “When they played under 17 [a few years ago]they defeated the US. If you work and take the time to grow talent with good coaches, you will get results. We haven’t organized our timelines for the kids [in Mexico]. That’s what moves you forward.”
He cites a lack of basic knowledge taught early on, which leads to players developing basic skills later in their development rather than improving their technique before reaching the national team.
NBA México content creator Eduardo Villalpando agrees with Llamas, also citing the lack of professional infrastructure and limited playing time for Mexicans in the top national leagues.
“There is a lack of infrastructure,” says Villalpando. “In Mexico they allow a maximum of eight internationals in the team. You want to pay someone who has played in America and has experience in the Summer League and G League. Development will be difficult because the Mexican players will not spend as much time on the field. The LNBP [Mexico’s top basketball league] promotes Mexican players on social media, but they don’t change the rules to get more Mexican players. They don’t really touch the floor.”
Outside of Gael Bonilla – a 21-year-old forward who started his playing career with FC Barcelona as a teenager and is a standout for Mexico’s senior national unit and Los Diablos Rojos de México – the majority of star players in the LNBP come from abroad.
“In terms of development, there are so many different entities operating at the same time in Mexico that people think the diversity of competitions would help, but it can be counterproductive,” said Mitchell Thompson, assistant coach of the Mexican women’s national team and a former coach of the NBA Academy Latin America. “There are several men’s and women’s competitions [in Mexico] who really don’t interact with each other. If you look at the best development systems in Europe, you have a deep tradition of consistency. Luka [Dončić] was with the same development ecosystem in Europe [until he reached the NBA]. They are world famous for their consistency. That doesn’t happen in Mexico.”
There are also obvious issues with financial inequality and the reality that the average Mexican man is 6 feet tall. However, Llamas – a 6-foot-1, 280-pound colossus – disputes the idea that genetics limits Mexican players by recounting the countless teenagers he has encountered in Mexico who reach 6-foot-4 . But, he says, they simply don’t have access to adequate training or exposure to programs that might otherwise provide scholarships and opportunities through athletics.
“I come from a small town. I know that struggle,” says Llamas. ‘If you live it, you don’t call it a struggle. It’s just life. These children work alongside their parents and collect fruit or work in agriculture, so they are naturally strong, but they do not have the opportunity to exercise once or twice a week because they are so far from the [urban] centers. They are eliminated to be selected. That’s sad. I think we can get better in that sense by improving at the state level, and that then leads to the national team. The organization can do much better.”
But with the increasing visibility of players of Mexican descent like Toscano-Anderson and Jaquez, who organize several youth camps on both sides of the border, and programs like Bilingual basketballthat works with immigrant and indigenous communities in Spanish and native dialects in North America, it is more possible than ever for a Mexican-born star to reach the NBA.