Before the Tip-Off: The Caribbean Bloodlines in the NBA

With the season weeks away, the league's Caribbean thread runs through the Dominican Republic's national-team stars and a widening group of island-born players.

The NBA season is still weeks from tip-off, which makes the quiet weeks of the calendar the right time to map the Caribbean's place in it. It is smaller than the region's footprint in baseball, but it is growing, and it runs most clearly through the Dominican Republic.

The Dominican thread

The Dominican Republic has put the region's most recognizable names on NBA floors and behind its own national team, with veteran big man Al Horford, born in the Dominican Republic, the longest-standing example, and Karl-Anthony Towns, who has represented the Dominican Republic internationally, the most prominent of the current generation. Their national-team service is what ties the league back to the islands, turning an American competition into something Caribbean fans follow as partly their own.

The college on-ramp

The path into the league still runs through American college basketball, which is why the Ledger will cover the NCAA game as the Caribbean's on-ramp rather than as a foreign curiosity. The island recruit who signs with a Division I program in the autumn is the NBA prospect of two or three years on, and that is the story to follow through the winter.

The honest note for this desk: at this point in the calendar there are no games to report, only rosters and preparation. We will carry results once the pre-season opens in October, and until then we cover the league as what it is for the region right now, a pipeline and a point of pride.

Sources: NBA and FIBA national-team records for the Dominican Republic (Horford, Towns); league calendar per the NBA. Rosters are as recorded ahead of the 2026-27 season.