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Rice student-athlete honored with courage award

By Nate Mink
Special to NCAA.org

HOUSTON — Eighteen-year-old Arsalan Kazemi had reached his breaking point, six hours into an interrogation at George Bush International Airport.

Awake for the last 48 hours, confronted by three U.S. immigration officials who asked him bluntly if he was a terrorist, Kazemi, believed to be the first Iranian-born athlete to play NCAA Division I basketball, had just one thing on his mind, and it wasn’t basketball, the sport for which he left his parents back home to come to America to pursue a life dream of playing in the National Basketball Association.

Please, send me back. I just want to sleep on the plane. 

Kazemi, now a sophomore forward at Rice announced as the winner of the United States Basketball Writers Association’s Most Courageous Award on Friday, has had to carry a tremendous burden while chasing a career in professional basketball, persevering through bigotry and discrimination to carry the flag and blaze a path for Iranian-born basketball players to pursue their goals in a country still wary of the nation blacklisted by former president George W. Bush.

“The stuff that they’re hearing about Iran is not true,” said Kazemi at a breakfast where he received the award. “I heard about some of the people are like, ‘Is there a war going on inside Iran?’ That is not true.”

There is no misconception about Iran’s brief basketball history. Hamed Haddadi was the first Iranian to ever play in the NBA.

That’s about it — until Kazemi.

He averaged 15.2 points and 11 rebounds per game this season for Rice, of Conference USA.

Also playing on the Iranian national team, Kazemi has had to travel back and forth from the United States. The second time he returned to America, he was questioned for three hours. The most recent trip? Ninety minutes.

“Every time I’m going back home and coming back it’s getting a lot easier,” he said.

Nothing surprises him. He knew it would not be easy playing here — he traveled more than 500 miles to Dubai to secure a visa that would simply allow him to play in United States.

Then, there was the incident at the Houston airport.

But as Kazemi continues to excel on the hardwood at Tudor Fieldhouse, the decision to leave his parents for the first time in his life and pioneer a path into uncharted waters — with unknown consequences — became worth it.

“Half of me was telling me to just wait a little bit because you’re going to see a new world,” Kazemi recalled of his arrival in America. “Hindsight, it was a good decision for me. I’m happy for the decision that I made.”

Nate Mink is a senior in the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism at Penn State University.