Okay, so today I got this idea stuck in my head. Been watching some basketball highlights, you know how it is, and I started wondering, have there been any players from Iran in the NBA? Just a random thought, really, that popped up while I was watching some old game clips.
So, first thing I did was just open up my browser on my computer. Didn’t do anything fancy. Typed in something simple like “iran nba players” or maybe “nba players from iran”, can’t remember exactly which one I tried first, you know how searching goes. Hit enter and just waited to see what the internet would spit back out at me.
Right away, one name kept showing up pretty much everywhere I looked on the results page. Hamed Haddadi. Seemed like he was the main guy, maybe the only guy? I clicked around a bit, just reading the little descriptions under the results, didn’t need to go too deep into any single page immediately.
What I Found Out
Yeah, after looking through a few results, it looked like Haddadi was basically the answer to my question. Found out he was actually the first Iranian to ever play in the NBA, which is pretty neat when you think about it.
So the main finding was:
- Hamed Haddadi – That’s the name that stuck. Big guy, played center position.
Saw mentions that he played for a couple of different teams. The Memphis Grizzlies name came up, and I think maybe the Phoenix Suns too for a little while? Honestly, I didn’t spend hours digging into his detailed stats or exactly how many games he played each season. I just wanted to confirm if anyone from Iran had made it and played in the league. It was pretty clear he was the pioneer, the one who actually got court time in regular NBA games.
I spent a few more minutes searching, tried slightly different wording like “list of iranian basketball players nba” just to double-check, make sure I wasn’t missing someone obvious. But nope, everything really just kept pointing back to Haddadi. Maybe there were others drafted or who played in summer league games or something, I don’t know for sure, wasn’t really digging for that level of detail. My main curiosity was about who actually played in the real league games.
So, yeah. That was my little research journey for today. Started with a simple question that just popped into my head, did some basic searching online using common sense terms, and got my answer pretty quick. Seems like Hamed Haddadi is the one and, as far as I could easily find, the only Iranian NBA player to date. Interesting bit of trivia I picked up.
