How 'heritage players' are helping Vietnam build a basketball culture

One day in 1980, a teenager named Nelson Nguyen left home in Da Nang, Vietnam.

He got onto a barge with hundreds of others fleeing their war-torn country, and disembarked at a Hong Kong refugee camp after three days at sea. It took two more months before he could send his parents a telegram to tell them he was alive. From Hong Kong he went to Washington, D.C., and then to southern California, where he raised a son who loved basketball.

Horace Nguyen grew up watching Kobe Bryant lead the Los Angeles Lakers to five championships. Nelson set up a hoop at home and cheered as his son played for the local rec league and travel teams, then his high school and university. As graduation approached in the spring of 2016, Horace doubted he would make a professional team – but he didn’t want to give up on his dream.

Recommended: Why there's been a big drop in women coaches under Title IX

Then he heard that the Vietnam Basketball Association, the country’s first major pro league, was holding tryouts in Los Angeles ahead of its inaugural season. A few months later, Horace was flying to join the Da Nang Dragons, in a coastal city not wholly unlike L.A.: miles of palm tree-lined beaches, bright tropical sunshine, and an increasing number of sleek high-rises.

“When I came over to join the VBA, on both my mom and dad’s side it was their first time watching basketball,” Horace said. “And now they’re in love.”

Basketball is becoming big business in Vietnam – and an experiment in building a sports culture essentially from scratch. Key to its sales pitch are so-called heritage players like Horace: a dozen VBA athletes who grew up outside Vietnam, mostly in the United States, and have at least one Vietnamese parent or grandparent. Many are children of refugees. Today, they’re often star players in a league whose existence underscores Vietnam’s transformation in a single generation, from war-torn and isolated to booming and internationalized.