Rising Sun in the NBA

Among the new foreign-born players on the NBA rosters as the season opened this week was 5-foot, 9-inch Yuta Tabuse of the Phoenix Suns, the first Japan-born player in NBA history. However:

The first NBA player of Japanese descent was Wataru Misaka. A 5-7 Japanese-American guard [who] was born in Ogden, Utah, Misaka attended Weber Junior College (now Weber State University), and was drafted by the New York Knicks in 1947. He played in three games in the 1947-48 season before being cut.

Tabuse also has a Utah connection of sorts. He played two seasons for Brigham Young University--Hawai‘i in 2001-2002.