You must be very curious to know if there are any Mexicans in the NBA world. This article will speak about the presence of two popular Mexicans with great talents and dedication.
National Basketball Association or NBA is very famous for its great deal of basketball fever offered to many people even outside America. For many basketball players, they have been dreaming to enter any of the NBA teams for, as far as the Basketball history goes, NBA is the first ever to have the Basketball tournament.
NBA stars like Michael Jordan, Lebron James and Kobe Bryant are just some of the most sought after Basketball players. Their fame in the NBA brought them to become in demand not only in the Basketball industry but also in the show business.
However, even though there are a lot of potential “soon to be “ Michael Jordan, one must overcome many obstacles as these two Mexican basketball Players have gone through to just make it to the hot list of NBA teams.
The first ever Mexican who was able to penetrate in the NBA scene is Horacio Grey, who has a complete name of Horacio Llamas Grey. With his good height of 7’0’’ and weight of 250 pounds, Llamas could be considered as a powerful Center.
Because of his remarkable game, the scouts of Phoenix Suns were impressed and made him sign and play for them. He was then pronounced as the first ever Mexican to ever enter the NBA scene during his debut. He wears the 17 Jersey which is very meaningful for him for this is his bate of birth.
Llamas did have a great impact to the Phoenix community since this place has a lot of Hispanics residents. He was also featured in the Magazine of Sun’s and also of the famous basketball magazine, the “Fastbreak”. Llamas did not fail to inspire his Hispanics and other audiences during his first 20 games in his debut season. With a score of 34 points averaging to 1.7 points per game was a good start for this famous Mexican.
Moreover, because of the fact that the Sun’s wants to impress more Hispanics, they hired Daniel Santiago who also then played for the Suns. As the season went on, the Phoenix Suns have seen a very great trouble on Horacio’s performance making him play only a total of 143 minutes which is only 5 minutes per game in the season. His career was then going down like a melting ice. But this not stopped him from playing for the Mexican Basketball leagues.
Eduardo Najera is the second Mexican Basketball player to enter the NBA. Born on 11th of July, 1976, with a height of 6’8” and 106.6 kg, Najera is a good power forward. He has been considered to be a professional basketball player for 10 years.
Najera, when his potential was seen, started as a rookie for Dallas 4 times. He has an average of 2.4 rebounds and 3.3 points in a 10.8 minute play. He shot .523 from the field and scored a 10 points high season score versus the Milwaukee on the 31st of October, 2000.
As his NBA career goes on, his potential was still seen by other teams and they tried to acquire him from his original team. From the years 2005 to 2006, he then appeared playing for Denver, with average of 5.1 rebounds and 5.4 points in 22.9 minutes. This was his high time for his career that is why he continued to commit himself to playing basketball whole heartedly.
Najera is now currently playing for the Dallas after they have acquired him from the Bobcats. He played 46 games in the 2009-2010 seasons with an average of 2.5 rebounds and 3.4 points in a 14.9 minutes play. Because of positive career and performance for the NBA, this Mexican will undoubtedly become more and more known in the Basketball arena especially in the NBA.