In recent years there have been a handful of prospects leaving the comfort of home testing the waters in Oceania’s NBL — the likes of R.J. Hampton, Ousmane Dieng, and most notably LaMelo Ball back in 2020, to name a few.
You can certainly see the appeal not only in terms of locale but the appeal of playing in a professional league with great crowds with and against some hard-nosed players where you will grow up in a hurry.
For R.J. Hampton, his reasoning for playing in the NBL was “to live like a pro and to play with grown men and not have to juggle books and basketball and just focus on my main goal.