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The National Basketball Association (NBA) is the premier professional basketball league in the world. Founded it 1946 as the Basketball Association of America, it became the NBA after merging with the National Basketball League. The league currently consists of 29 teams in the United States and one in Canada. There have only been a few Asian American players in the league's history.

The first was Wataru Misaka in 1947–48. The Japanese American was also the first non-white player and the first of Asian descent to play in the league. The first black player did not enter the league until three years later in 1950. After Mikasa, there was not an Asian American in the NBA until almost 30 years later, when Raymond Townsend entered the league in 1978. Part Filipino, he also became the first player of Filipino descent in the league. Other biracial players followed, including part-Japanese players Corey Gaines in the 1980s, Rex Walters in the 1990s, and Robert Swift in the 2000s.

Jeremy Lin became the first high-profile Asian American in NBA history after an impressive stretch of play with the New York Knicks in 2012 inspired a global following known as Linsanity. He was also the first NBA player to actively identify himself as an Asian American to the public and be recognized by them as such. Asian Americans related to the American-born Lin more than they did with Yao Ming, the Chinese national who became the first Asian NBA star in the 2000s. As a member of the Los Angeles Lakers in 2015, Lin and rookie Jordan Clarkson, who is half-Filipino, became the first Asian Americans to start together in the backcourt in NBA history. In 2021, Clarkson became the first Asian American to win the NBA Sixth Man of the Year Award. Filipino American Jalen Green became the highest-drafted Asian American player ever in 2021, when he was selected second overall in by the Houston Rockets. Jaylin Williams, selected in the second round of the 2022 NBA draft, was the first player of Vietnamese descent to be drafted in the NBA.