The story of Duop Reath’s journey to the Portland Trail Blazers continues to captivate the league. This week, ESPN’s Andrew Lopez wrote an outstanding mini-biography of Reath, from his childhood in South Sudan to his years in a refugee camp, eventually reaching Australia and discovering his love of basketball.
He was born in the village of Waat in what is now South Sudan in 1996, when the country was in the midst of the second Sudanese Civil War. He and his family lived in a small hut. He didn’t own a pair of shoes.