Correction: The original version of this story referred to South Sudan facing a travel ban from the Trump administration. Only neighboring Sudan is facing a travel ban. The State Department has instead revoked existing visas and prevented the issuance of new visas to those from South Sudan.
Khaman Maluach was talking about the unprecedented route he took to the 2025 NBA Draft with a mixture of awe and inevitability last month, and no mention of the political headwinds that awaited him at the end of it. His explanation involved a Disney movie about Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Maluach, a 7-foot-2 NBA draft lottery prospect, started down this path six years ago by showing up at a camp in Uganda organized by former NBA player Luol Deng. He was a refugee from war-torn South Sudan who played soccer until he got too tall and suddenly appeared on a new sport’s radar. He was inspired most of all by Antetokounmpo, the son of Nigerian immigrants but born and raised in Greece.
“I watched his movie,” Maluach said, referencing the 2022 film, “Rise,” that chronicles Antetokounmpo and his brothers’ journey to the United States and the NBA. “But just his story, his background coming from Greece and then coming to America.”
Maluach didn’t linger long on that last part, as his advisors prefer given the geopolitics now swirling around the beginning of his career.
He is not just an intriguing player in this year’s NBA draft class because of his 9-foot-6 standing reach, readymade rim protection skills and rapid ascent into an elite prospect. This 18-year-old is also the only potential draftee hailing from a country currently dealing with the revocation of visas by the United States.
He’s both the next potential face for the NBA’s decades-long investment in an African basketball developmental pipeline and an unintended consequence of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
“They’re trying to use leverage against these countries, and oftentimes it’s through visa issuance,” said Philadelphia-based immigration attorney Adam Solow. “This kid is caught up in the middle of that.”
Trump visa bans: How they impact 2025 NBA draft, Khaman Maluach
A quirk related to Maluach’s visa situation will play out on Wednesday night at the 2025 NBA Draft. The NBA is preparing for the complicated scenario that would be triggered if Maluach were to be taken by the Toronto Raptors with the No. 9 overall pick.
Given the current Trump administration policy related to South Sudan, Maluach would have to apply for a United States tourism visa and a waiver to South Sudan’s visa ban any time he enters the United States if he plays for the Raptors, according to the NBA. That would also be in addition to having to obtain a Canadian work visa. The Raptors had to cross the United States border from Canada for road games 19 times based on their 2024-25 schedule.
If Maluach were to be drafted by any of the 29 other NBA teams, the league told USA TODAY Sports he would only have to apply for a waiver upon re-entering the United States each time his future team played at Toronto. The league acknowledged Maluach’s situation is more complex than the typical draftee.
But the NBA’s evolution into an international business, with MVP winners from outside the United States the past seven years, has often put the league at the forefront of immigration issues that arise due to events and policies occurring around the world outside the realm of sport.
Maluach became the league’s most prominent case of this in 2025 on the same day Duke played in the Final Four in April. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced visa and travel restrictions on South Sudan that remain in place ahead of the start to the NBA draft.
“Enforcing our nation’s immigration laws is critically important to the national security and public safety of the United States,” a State Department spokesperson wrote in a statement provided to USA TODAY Sports on June 20. “In accordance with the April 5 decision made by Secretary Rubio, the Department took appropriate steps to revoke visas held by South Sudanese passport holders. South Sudanese passport holders who were notified of their visa revocation are not required to depart the United States before their Admit Until Date. Any future travel to the United States will require a new visa application.”
The spokesperson added that the State Department does not generally comment on actions related to specific visa cases due to concerns about privacy and visa confidentiality. More details about the policy related to South Sudan have emerged in court.
A federal judge in Massachusetts ruled on May 21 that the Trump administration violated a previous order when it attempted to send migrants convicted of serious crimes in the United States to third countries – in this case, South Sudan – without providing clear information and ample time to raise any concerns about being sent to that country. But the Supreme Court agreed on Monday, June 23 to pause that order in a 6-3 decision, allowing migrants to be deported to third countries, including South Sudan.
It also included a clause providing an exemption for “any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives, traveling for the World Cup, Olympics, or other major sporting event as determined by the Secretary of State.”
The NBA told USA TODAY Sports the league does not believe Maluach is in danger of being deported and it is comfortable with the process to apply for a waiver to the South Sudan visa restrictions based on how often it runs into complex international visa situations, including the travel bans Trump instituted during his first term in the White House.
“The NBA has a voice in this that is bigger and louder and more influential,” said Ksenia Maiorova, an Orlando, Florida-based immigration attorney who works extensively with international college athletes to obtain visas.
Maluach, according to the NBA, had been playing at Duke on a student visa and the university has been helping him during the transition between his college season and the draft. Upon being drafted Wednesday, Maluach would be eligible to apply for an O1 or P1 visa given by the United States to professional athletes and those with ‘extraordinary abilities.’
Duke, through an athletics department spokesperson, declined to comment when USA TODAY Sports sought comment on its role in Maluach’s visa situation. Maluach told USA TODAY Sports at the NBA Draft combine in May that his representatives at Klutch Sports are dealing with any potential visa issues. A spokesperson at Klutch Sports declined to comment when reached by USA TODAY Sports.
“I let them handle that and focus on what’s important to me and what’s ahead of me,” Maluach said.
Why Khaman Maluach is so important for NBA in Africa
They all use some variation of the same phrase to describe Khaman Maluach, even the biggest star of the 2025 NBA Draft.
‘Everything about him is so pure,’ said Cooper Flagg, Maluach’s teammate at Duke this past season and the presumptive No. 1 pick this year. ‘Some people you can just tell their intentions and whether they are pure. Khaman is one of those people.”
The NBA sees a model for future African players in Maluach.
He joined the NBA Academy Africa as a 14-year-old, leaving his family in Uganda to join a first-of-its-kind elite basketball training center in Senegal despite having never played organized basketball before. In just a few years’ time, he blossomed in a program the NBA began in 2017 to “double down on a new way of player development and investment on the continent,” according to Troy Justice, the NBA’s senior vice president of international basketball.
Maluach eventually competed against professionals for three seasons in the Basketball Africa League (BAL) through a partnership between the league and NBA Academy Africa, and also impressed scouts at Basketball Without Borders camps and G League showcases. He then played for South Sudan’s first Olympic basketball team at the 2024 Paris Games. Maluach said the NBA Academy program “not only shaped me on the basketball court, but … I had to learn to be a man off the basketball court and the Academy helped me through all that.”
More than 50 African basketball players have earned Division-I scholarships through NBA Academy Africa, with two already in the NBA. But none of them are the level of prospect Maluach became in short order. He is expected to be the first first-round draft pick to emerge from NBA Academy Africa.
“Draft night is going to be life-changing for him,” Justice said. “His (journey) has been very unique, special in a lot of ways because it connects all his dots. It literally shows the NBA’s complete pathway.”
Maluach is part of a wave of players that has seen multiple generations of Africans like them make it to the NBA from seemingly remote circumstances. He believed those around him when they said he could do it, too. Only how quickly he got here seems far-fetched to him at this point.
Maluach is still considered a work-in-progress by NBA scouts because of his limited experience, with an offensive skill set and on-court instincts that will require patience from the team that drafts him. But his length and defensive potential, and the reality he’s much closer to the start of his career than any other prospect on the board, could make him a top-10 pick if the mock drafts are correct.
Maluach thinks about the possibility with wonder, unbothered by the conflicts going on around him, just like when he arrived at that first basketball camp and his road to the NBA draft really began.
“I saw a lot of tall people happy, and I was like, ‘This is where I belong,’” Maluach said.