Khaman Maluach's Rise From South Sudanese Refugee to NBA Draft Pick

Khaman Maluach was born in Rumbek, South Sudan, and raised across the border in Uganda, where he began playing basketball at 13 before joining NBA Academy Africa, the league’s continental development program, at 14. That pathway carried him to Duke University for a single college season before the Houston Rockets selected him 10th overall in the 2025 NBA Draft at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, at age 18. His rights were traded to the Phoenix Suns the same night, as part of a broader deal centered on star forward Kevin Durant.

Maluach’s selection marked the highest draft position ever achieved by a player who came up through NBA Academy Africa or the Basketball Africa League, the specific development pathways the NBA has built to identify and train talent on the continent, and outlets covering African basketball framed the pick as validation of that pipeline’s growing ability to produce NBA-caliber talent from players who might otherwise have gone unnoticed by American college and professional scouts. Maluach himself spoke to that framing directly after being drafted, saying he felt a responsibility to inspire the next generation of African basketball players and describing himself as representing the whole of the continent rather than only South Sudan.

That specific record, the highest pick for an NBA Academy Africa or BAL alumnus, is worth distinguishing from a broader and inaccurate claim that sometimes circulates alongside it: that Maluach’s selection was the highest ever for any African-born player in NBA Draft history. It was not. Hakeem Olajuwon, born in Lagos, Nigeria, was selected first overall in the 1984 NBA Draft, a record that remains unmatched by any subsequently drafted African-born player, Maluach included. Maluach’s achievement is real and specific to the newer institutional pathway the NBA built specifically to develop African talent, a genuinely significant milestone in its own right that doesn’t require inflating into a larger record it doesn’t actually hold.

Maluach’s rise, from a childhood in Uganda as the child of South Sudanese parents to a first-round NBA pick within roughly four years of joining NBA Academy Africa, has been cited repeatedly as a case study in the program’s potential, one the league has continued pointing to as it expands basketball development infrastructure across the continent in the years since Maluach’s own path through it began.