Isaac
Earlier this year
Duop Reath's path to the NBA
Nice post on r/NBA recognising Reath's road to regular minutes in the NBA.
Against all odds, 27 year old rookie Duop Reath made the NBA after...growing up in a hut with no bed or shoes during a civil war that killed 2 million civilians, living in a refugee camp, playing in community college, getting cut after three summer leagues, and playing in four continents.Source; plus an article linked there.
Duop Reath grew up the eldest of seven children, in a hut with no bed or shoes, during the Second Sudanese Civil War. Without turning this into a history thread, the Sudanese civil wars are one of the most brutal and long-running conflicts that we in the West don't really hear about in the daily news - in one form or another, conflict has been going on between the mostly Muslim northern Sudan and the Christian southern Sudan since independence from the British in 1955, until southern independence in 2006. But, the second phase of the civil war lasted from 1983-2005, and may have claimed the most civilian casualties of any war since WW2 (obviously precise numbers are impossible to find). When he was 9, Reath's family moved to Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, where they stayed until a relative was able to move to Australia and sponsor Duop's family for citizenship. (side note: young Luol Deng ended up in the UK fleeing this same war).
Anyways it's pretty amazing that Reath and his family were able to overcome the war and lack of education, and find their way to a refugee camp and eventually to Australia, where Reath started playing basketball in high school (after starting out with soccer and Aussie football). He eventually was recruited by Lee College, a community college in Texas, before transferring to LSU for his junior and senior year (where he was teammates with Skylar Mays). After graduating, he played in Serbia, China, Australia, and Lebanon while being cut after three summer leagues (this past summer was his fourth summer league and he finally was offered a contract).
Truly an absolutely insane journey to the NBA and he deserves every bit of success.
To begin with, it's not too common that juco players end up in the NBA, although it does happen (Jimmy Butler and Jae Crowder come to mind).
It's extremely rare that he would go undrafted, play overseas for four years in four different leagues, play in 3 summer leagues without a training camp invite, and finally end up with a contract at age 27.
It's extraordinarily rare that Reath's family made it out of Kakuma refugee camp in under a year (many people stay there their entire lives because they have no home to go back to, and the average stay in that refugee camp is 19 years).
Blazers are rebuilding and down 3-4 centres injured (inc Ayton and Timelord), but minutes are minutes. Reath is averaging 11 and 7 in January in 26 minutes, with 37% 3P.
