- Programming note: "Race In America: A Candid Conversation" will air Wednesday night following Giants coverage on NBC Sports Bay Area.
Bill Duffy was at the NBA awards ceremony in Los Angeles, where one of his clients, Mavericks forward Luka Dončić, was named Rookie of the Year. Though that was cause for celebration, Duffy’s antennae went beyond Luka.
He realized that Luka, a native of Slovenia, had something in common with nearly every player that won a major award.
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The MVP, Giannis Antetokounmpo, was a Nigerian born in Greece. The Defensive Player of the Year, Rudy Gobert, was from France. The Most Improved Player, Pascal Siakam, was born In Cameroon.
If not for Lou Williams, born in the USA, foreign players would have accomplished a clean sweep of the NBA’s individual awards. As is, they made a statement about their place in the American game.
"They’re playing basketball at earlier ages in other parts of the world, and you’re starting to see more and more talent emerge," says Duffy, an NBA power agent and a guest on "Race in America: A Candid Conversation," following Giants baseball Wednesday night on NBC Sports Bay Area.
Now in his fourth decade representing NBA players, Duffy has endured largely because of his powers of observation. He notices the little things before they become big things. What he saw coming in 2018 is playing out in multiple ways in 2021.
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The internationals are here, in the U.S., and they’re going to keep coming.
Serbia’s Nikola Jokic and Cameroon’s Joel Embiid finished 1-2 in the 2021 MVP race and are NBA’s top centers.
Antetokounmpo, who finished fourth in the MVP voting, is the league’s best power forward. He was named MVP the two previous seasons, and this month earned NBA Finals MVP after leading the Milwaukee Bucks to their first championship in 50 years.
And, meanwhile, Gobert was named DPOY for the third time in four seasons.
The sixth-place finisher in the MVP voting was Dončić, who is all of 22 years old.
Joining Duffy as a guest on “Race in America” is Jama Mahlalela, who this summer left the Toronto Raptors' coaching staff to become an assistant with the Warriors under Steve Kerr. Mahlalela was born in Swaziland (now Eswatini), a tiny country in southeast Africa, but immigrated to Toronto as a child.
It was in Canada that he became a basketball junkie, and it was at the University of British Columbia that Mahlalela became a star guard. He has been coaching at various levels, in various countries, for nearly half his life. Long enough to issue a warning.
"There’s a ton of players from the (African) continent who are really going to take the NBA by storm," he says. "They already have. But in the next five to 10 years, I would envision MVPs and Finals MVPs being from the continent with some regularity.
"There’s a Canadian group as well. ... Seeing the way that the game is growing, America is not the king anymore."
That much is apparent in Tokyo, where Team USA continues to be the favorite to win gold but already realizes the road through the Olympics will have plenty of bumps and barriers. The loss to France last weekend in the opener was an alarm to which Gregg Popovich’s squad responded with a 120-66 roasting of Iran on Tuesday.
The Iranians, however, might be the last “easy” win for Team USA. The Czech Republic is next on the schedule. Earning gold might be as challenging as defending Giannis or Luka, one of four Duffy clients with active NBA All-Star status hoping to follow previous Duffy clients Steve Nash (Canadian citizen) and Yao Ming (China) into the Hall of Fame.
There will be more. As more players from foreign lands make their way to and through the NBA, the league will become precisely as late commissioner David Stern visualized. A global league for a global game.
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With players borrowing from all cultures. How many American-born NBA players have added the “eurostep” move? How many have made the move to shoot fadeaways off one foot, a weapon Dirk Nowitzki brought over from Germany?
Duffy is determined to keep his agency, BDA Sports Management/BDA Sports International, on the crest of the future.
"Every continent, whether it’s Australia or Africa or Western and Eastern Europe, basketball is pretty much the second sport," he says. "The reason they have this success -- it’s like in baseball, with players from the Caribbean or the Dominican -- is it’s an amazing way for them to amass wealth. So, they put a lot of energy and focus into it. There’s also an immigrant mentality, where they really have to work and develop themselves."