Talk:T. J. Leaf

Citizenship?
American-Israeli? He was born in Israel, but there is no citation or reference in the article that he has ever become an American citizen. Shouldn't this be changed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.16.133.100 (talk) 00:09, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

It looks like there's been a bit of back-and-forth with "American-Israeli" vs. "Israeli-American" revisions. At present, I believe the "American-Israeli" designation is most appropriate for the following reasons:
 * T.J. Leaf was born in Tel Aviv, Israel to American parents making him a natural-born American citizen at birth.
 * Israeli nationality law is based on the principle of jus sanguinis and not jus soli, so the "having been born in Israel" angle that I've seen referenced in "Israeli-American" revisions is likely irrelevant.
 * Having said that, his father, Brad Leaf, who played basketball professionally in Israel for seventeen years, purportedly obtained questionable papers to allow himself to be naturalized as an Israeli citizen. Based on my online readings, it's a little unclear whether T.J. had Israeli citizenship from birth as a result of Brad's status.
 * T.J. spent the first 2.5 years of his life in Israel while his father was wrapping up his professional basketball career before the family returned to the U.S. and settled in California, where T.J., a natural-born American citizen, spent the next roughly 17.5 years of his life.
 * T.J. had originally been involved with the USA Basketball youth program, but was cut by Sean Miller from the United States men's national under-19 basketball team and subsequently joined the Israel national under-18 team.
 * T.J.'s tenure with Israeli basketball has thus far has been limited to the 2015 FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship Division B, which is not a senior-level tournament and occurred while he was still an amateur high school athlete.
 * According to an interview with Bleacher Report, T.J. discussed his time with the Israeli national team as follows: "Not having any family there, being in a different culture, not knowing anybody going in — and a lot of [the other players] speak a different language — it grew me up a lot culture-wise and maturity-wise. But it was awesome being there, where I’m from, and just having a good time."

-- &#32;IcepickEldorado (talk) 11:48, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I had undid my initial revert, leaving your change to "American-Israeli" thinking I could go either way . However, with your points above, I'm slightly more inclined to go back to "Israeli-American", as it seems he likely got naturalized for Israel only before joining the national team.  Do you have a preference?—Bagumba (talk) 12:11, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I saw your revisions, but wasn't really targeting those specifically. I've been monitoring this page for a while and noticed that it's happened a few times. It sounds like we're in agreement, but I thought the general style was for the "primary" citizenship to be listed first. So in this case I would think "American-Israeli" makes more sense. Wouldn't the "Israeli-American" label imply that he was an Israeli who subsequently adopted American citizenship? Maybe I'm missing something, but that's how I had been thinking about it. –IcepickEldorado (talk) 2:57, 13 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I guess I was thinking more in lines with hyphenated Americans, whereby it's usually ethnicity first followed by "American" (e.g. Chinese-American). It becomes ambiguous when the hyphenated format is used with a dual citizen, as a reader wouldn't know offhand that they are an Isreali citizen as opposed to (more commonly) being of Israeli descent. If it's really relevant to list both nationalities in the first sentence, maybe we need to state that he is a dual citizen first e.g. "a dual-citizen American–Israeli".  I'm not sure if we can say he identifies more with one nationality over the other (e.g. like Ben Simmons being thought of as Australian more than American).  Leaf only lived in Israell the first two years of his life, but he did play for their youth national team.—Bagumba (talk) 08:27, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

His new team
Someone pls add him as a member of the Thunder now. It has been confirmed by Wojnarowski. Pls add to it for the benefit of all. Arnav Garg1312 (talk) 17:17, 24 November 2020 (UTC)