Nine things you didn't know about the first Indian in NBA

Satnam Singh Bhamara, a 19-year-old boy, who hails from the Ballo Ke village in Punjab, has made history by becoming the first Indian to be drafted by the Dallas Mavericks in the 2015 National Basketball Association (NBA) Draft that took place on June 25. Here’s a quick fact file about Bhamara and the significance of his achievement:

1. Bhamara was drafted by the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks as the 52nd pick of the 2015 NBA Draft. Most experts, who had predicted Bhamara would get drafted, had slotted him to go between the 50th and 60th picks.

2. Bhamara had pre-draft day workouts for as many as seven NBA teams in the lead up to the 2015 Draft. Besides working out with the Mavericks, Bhamara’s pre-draft workouts included being called up by teams like the Houston Rockets, San Antonio Spurs and the Portland Trail Blazers.

3. Bhamara took to the game of basketball quite late. He hadn’t even tried his hand at hoops until he was ten years old. But because of his height at that age (Bhamara was already five-feet-nine by the age of ten), his father’s friends recommended that he took to the game. Consequently, by the age of 13, Bhamara had already made his first dunk. Bhamara currently stands at seven-feet-two and weighs 290 pounds.

4. Bhamara’s father, Balbir Singh Bhamara, is also seven-feet-two. His grandmother on his father’s side is six-feet-nine. Bhamara’s father is a farmer and Bhamara spent much of his early childhood days (before basketball happened) helping his father out in the fields.

5. Bhamara’s big break in his growth as a hoops player happened when at the age of 14 he was selected as one of eight players to be sent on a scholarship to the IMG basketball academy in Florida in 2010. He has been with the academy for the last five years where he played for the postgraduate team and averaged 9.2 points, 8.4 rebounds and 2.2 blocks in less than 20 minutes per game for the number two team in the country.

6. Bhamara surprised many earlier this year when he was declared for the NBA Draft after he couldn't secure a college scholarship, but he's now the first player since the NBA put age restrictions in place in 2005 to enter the league without first playing in college, a professional foreign league or the D-League.

7. The franchise that drafted Bhamara, the Dallas Mavericks, is one of the NBA’s most competitive teams, having made the playoffs in 14 of the last 15 NBA seasons. The Mavericks also won the NBA championship in 2011, with their head coach Rick Carlisle rated by many as amongst the top three coaches in the league. The Mavs also boast of future hall-of-fame player, Dirk Nowitzki, who is arguably the greatest international player to ever play in the NBA.

8. It is difficult to say whether Bhamara will get to play with the Mavs from the very beginning of the 2015-16 NBA season. Instead, he could be sent to the Mavericks’s D-League affiliate, the Texas Legends, where he could work on honing his game. Given that he has age on his side, the D-League experience would be invaluable for Bhamara, who could well be India’s biggest sporting sensation in the next few years.

9. Earlier this year, Sim Bhullar became the first player of Indian descent (Bhullar’s parents are Indian, but he is a Canadian citizen) to play for an NBA team when he was called up on a ten-day contract to play for the Sacramento Kings. But Bhamara hails from India and so holds bragging rights of being the first-ever Indian to be drafted into the NBA.