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When Khaman Maluach’s freshman season at Duke University ended in April, the biggest question about the 7-foot-2 big man’s ability to play in the NBA had nothing to do with his shooting, size or skill.

It had everything to do with his passport.

His enormous wingspan and potential made Maluach, who was born in South Sudan and raised in Uganda, the youngest player at last summer’s Paris Olympics, playing for the South Sudanese national team while sharing the court with U.S. stars such as Kevin Durant and Bam Adebayo. Months later, after an all-conference season at Duke, there appeared little keeping him with nimble feet and shot-blocking prowess from the NBA.

Yet on April 5, hours before the Blue Devils lost in the national semifinals of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and nearly three months before the NBA draft, that future appeared in flux. All visas held by South Sudanese passport holders were being revoked, the State Department announced.

Questions immediately arose about whether Maluach would be eligible to be selected. But thanks to a little-known division of the NBA few have heard of, he’s set to walk across the Barclays Center stage in Brooklyn, New York, on Wednesday night.

“People always ask me: ‘What do you do at the NBA? What do international basketball operations do?’” Troy Justice, the NBA’s senior vice president and head of international basketball, said in an interview. “And we say we make dreams come true. We give people an opportunity that wouldn’t have it otherwise.”

For more than three decades, the NBA has made its mission exporting basketball to the world. In 1992, as a “Dream Team” of NBA players dominated the Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, and became a billboard for the league’s star power globally, the league had just 21 international players. By last fall, a record-tying 125 — from a record-tying 43 countries — accounted for nearly one-third of the league. The league “expects that to continue to grow and expand,” Justice said.

The demographic changes have reshaped the league. Though 48 of the first 49 Most Valuable Player award winners in NBA history hailed from the United States, 10 of the last 21 MVP awards have gone to foreign-born stars, including each of the last seven. When the Thunder’s NBA championship parade passed through the streets of Oklahoma City on Tuesday, the title trophy was held by players from seven countries, including Canadian-born MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

As the NBA has brought basketball to the world, the often-thorny logistics of bringing the world’s players to the NBA have fallen to the league’s arm of international basketball operations. Its staff of 38, operating out of offices in 14 countries, have expertise in immigration law and visa issues, as well as relationships with governments around the world, that have allowed the league to grow those global ambitions.

“What we’re seeing right now is at a time in which all the domestic leagues, NBA and WNBA included, are expanding their international footprint, the population of the world is growing and immigration processes are becoming more complicated,” said Travis Murphy, an immigration consultant to the NBA and former diplomat. “And so it really is kind of this perfect storm of the global growth of leagues seeking to broaden their footprint, expand into more countries. At the same time, it’s more difficult than ever to travel around the world. And that’s not just international passports coming into the States. It’s also U.S. passports.”

By creating basketball “schools” for youth players, as well as establishing Basketball Without Borders camps and academies abroad for elite-level teenagers, the NBA has tried to build, in effect, a funnel to discover and then develop its next generation of players. Justice said the NBA’s international reach extends to 30 million coaches, referees and youth players annually.

Among them is Maluach.

Born in Rumbek, South Sudan, Maluach fled the country with his mother and a few siblings at a young age for Uganda, where he was raised playing primarily soccer, with the nearest basketball court from his home a 40-minute walk away. He did not begin playing basketball until 2019, at age 12, after he was spotted by a scout who worked with the NBA’s African operations. The scout called Brendan McKillop, an NBA associate vice president and head of Elite Basketball, to share that he might have found a prospect.

By 14, Maluach had earned a spot in a Senegal-based academy operated by the NBA, whose feeder program eventually placed him on rosters in the NBA’s Basketball Africa League, playing for teams based in South Sudan, Senegal and Uganda. As he improved, the NBA continued to open more doors, from participating in Basketball Without Borders camps, where he won most valuable player, to in front of NBA scouts at the league’s annual minor-league showcase and later at a showcase during its All-Star weekend last year.

At each stop, the NBA’s international operations team worked to smooth his travel from one country to the next, just as it does with all of its international players. That work continued this spring after the State Department’s action against South Sudan, as Maluach stayed in the United States to train ahead of the draft.

“We’ve been on this journey … with Khaman since age 14, and we’re going to continue on this journey with him through the rest of his career, and we’ll continue on this journey with him post his career,” Justice said. “These are lifelong commitments that we make to all of our international players.”

When Maluach arrived in the United States last summer, after having played in the Olympics, he held an F-1 visa, commonly used for international student-athletes in the United States. When that visa was no longer valid after three months, Maluach’s I-20 kept him legally in status. Because of the fluctuating policies in the United States that added South Sudan to the travel ban list, he has not been able to leave the country since President Donald Trump took office in January. Trump signed a proclamation this month banning nationals from 12 countries from entering the United States, and the State Department later reportedly signaled it was considering expanding the travel ban. South Sudan was among the countries potentially affected.

As Maluach’s lone season at Duke ended, the NBA began paperwork for him to receive a B-1/B-2 business tourist visa, which is pending, according to the league. Should Maluach be drafted Wednesday or Thursday as expected, the NBA will begin the process of acquiring either a P-1 visa — the typical professional athlete visa for the United States — or the Canadian version if he is drafted by the Toronto Raptors.

Though Maluach entered the United States legally and was never considered in danger of being deported despite the State Department’s revocation of South Sudanese visas, the Trump administration’s policies toward South Sudan have added a layer of complexity to his professional future, nonetheless. If he is drafted by one of the 29 U.S.-based NBA teams, he would still travel internationally to Canada, to face the Raptors, and potentially elsewhere for preseason or regular-season games, and that travel would require additional steps for him to re-enter the country every time he leaves. The league would start by filing a petition through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that would last the length of his initial contract. But every time he would want to return to the United States, he would first be required to interview at a U.S. embassy.

Whereas the NBA once handled around 400 immigration and visa cases a year, Justice said, it now handles well over 2,000. Ensuring players’ movement around the world requires close relationships with multiple governments, starting with the United States.

Living in the United States while holding a passport from a country whose visas have been revoked or could face a travel ban creates immense uncertainty. But “it’s less of a nightmare for athletes, because there’s the blanket exemption for athletes coming to participate in major sports competitions,” said Jeff Joseph, the president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. The NBA helped lobby the U.S. government to create its “national interest” exemption in the summer of 2020 to help its players return from abroad to take part in the restart of the season amid the pandemic, Murphy said.

The NBA has managed its relationship with the U.S. government through multiple administrations in part by acting as a diplomatic partner. It has created a “Hoops for Troops” program, and its works have involved former NBA and WNBA players in a sports envoy program sponsored by a division of the State Department.

Organizing travel has become more complicated, Murphy said, “not necessarily because of any one administration, but more just a reflection of the global immigration landscape.”

Asked how the State Department works with professional sports leagues to approve visas for foreign-born players, a spokesperson for the agency said, in part, that “every applicant for a U.S. visa undergoes extensive security screening to ensure that individuals who pose a threat to the United States, its citizens, or its national interests do not obtain visas. This comprehensive screening continues throughout the validity period of the visa.”

Though the NBA officially entered its offseason Monday, the work doesn’t end for the international operations team’s work handling visas and immigration and growing its grassroots base. Along with this week’s NBA draft, the league is hosting this week a “rising stars” tournament featuring youth players from 11 countries. Next month, its annual Summer League takes place in Las Vegas. There is also a volunteer coach program run by the Basketball Africa League and a handful of other commitments requiring the work of the international operations group.

“It’s this whole process because it very much matters where the individual is from and what passport they hold,” Murphy said. “And so it may be a Nigerian athlete that we’re trying to get into Singapore, and those requirements might be different than what it is for an American or a different nationality.

“So it’s managing that, navigating that, making sure you have the right information and then building those relationships with embassies, consulates and foreign governments, as well as our own U.S. government, to make sure that you can get things done when the time comes.”

On Tuesday, the night before Maluach was expected to be drafted and learn which city he will soon call home, Justice and others inside the NBA’s international operations staff took Maluach and a few of his siblings to dinner.

To McKillop, who first met Maluach as a raw, 14-year-old soccer player, draft night is not only a celebration for players who are selected but also “the culmination of years and years of work for our NBA Academy staff based around the world, who spend almost every minute of every day with them.”

“I don’t think Khaman would ever say this, but he has not had an easy life, going from South Sudan to Uganda, moving thousands of miles away from his family at age 14,” McKillop added. “And then he gets to this point where, especially in today’s college basketball landscape, where schools are lining up to throw hundreds of thousands of dollars at him, and as he’s having success, agents are clamoring to represent him, and when kids are put into that situation, it’s easy for them to forget who they are and where they came from.

“And that is not a concern at all when it comes to Khaman; he is as humble a young man that has ever come through this program. We are thrilled that he has this opportunity in front of him.”

An opportunity made possible, behind the scenes, by the NBA.

ALBANY, N.Y. — Workers digging at Manhattan’s World Trade Center site 15 years ago made an improbable discovery: sodden timbers from a boat built during the Revolutionary War that had been buried more than two centuries earlier.

Now, over 600 pieces from the 50-foot vessel are being painstakingly put back together at the New York State Museum. After years on the water and centuries underground, the boat is becoming a museum exhibit.

Arrayed like giant puzzle pieces on the museum floor, research assistants and volunteers recently spent weeks cleaning the timbers with picks and brushes before reconstruction could even begin.

Though researchers believe the ship was a gunboat built in 1775 to defend Philadelphia, they still don’t know all the places it traveled to or why it ended up apparently neglected along the Manhattan shore before ending up in a landfill around the 1790s.

“The public can come and contemplate the mysteries around this ship,” said Michael Lucas, the museum’s curator of historical archaeology. “Because like anything from the past, we have pieces of information. We don’t have the whole story.”

From landfill to museum piece

The rebuilding caps years of rescue and preservation work that began in July 2010 when a section of the boat was found 22 feet below street level.

Curved timbers from the hull were discovered by a crew working on an underground parking facility at the World Trade Center site, near where the Twin Towers stood before the 9/11 attacks.

The wood was muddy, but well preserved after centuries in the oxygen-poor earth. A previously constructed slurry wall went right through the boat, though timbers comprising about 30 feet of its rear and middle sections were carefully recovered. Part of the bow was recovered the next summer on the other side of the subterranean wall.

The timbers were shipped more than 1,400 miles to Texas A&M’s Center for Maritime Archaeology and Conservation.

Each of the 600 pieces underwent a three-dimensional scan and spent years in preservative fluids before being placed in a giant freeze-dryer to remove moisture. Then they were wrapped in more than a mile of foam and shipped to the state museum in Albany.

While the museum is 130 miles up the Hudson River from lower Manhattan, it boasts enough space to display the ship. The reconstruction work is being done in an exhibition space, so visitors can watch the weathered wooden skeleton slowly take the form of a partially reconstructed boat.

Work is expected to finish around the end of the month, said Peter Fix, an associate research scientist at the Center for Maritime Archaeology and Conservation who is overseeing the rebuilding.

On a recent day, Lucas took time out to talk to passing museum visitors about the vessel and how it was found.

Explaining the work taking place behind him, he told one group: “Who would have thought in a million years, ‘someday, this is going to be in a museum?’”

A nautical mystery remains

Researchers knew they found a boat under the streets of Manhattan. But what kind?

Analysis of the timbers showed they came from trees cut down in the Philadelphia area in the early 1770s, pointing to the ship being built in a yard near the city.

It was probably built hastily. The wood is knotty, and timbers were fastened with iron spikes. That allowed for faster construction, though the metal corrodes over time in seawater.

Researchers now hypothesize the boat was built in Philadelphia in the summer of 1775, months after the first shots of the Revolutionary War were fired at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. Thirteen gunboats were built that summer to protect Philadelphia from potential hostile forces coming up the Delaware River. The gunboats featured cannons pointing from their bows and could carry 30 or more men.

“They were really pushing, pushing, pushing to get these boats out there to stop any British that might start coming up the Delaware,” Fix said.

Historical records indicate at least one of those 13 gunboats was later taken by the British. And there is some evidence that the boat now being restored was used by the British, including a pewter button with “52” inscribed on it. That likely came from the uniform of soldier with the British Army’s 52nd Regiment of Foot, which was active in the war.

It’s also possible that the vessel headed south to the Caribbean, where the British redirected thousands of troops during the war. Its timbers show signs of damage from mollusks known as shipworms, which are native to warmer waters.

Still, it’s unclear how the boat ended up in Manhattan and why it apparently spent years partially in the water along shore. By the 1790s, it was out of commission and then covered over as part of a project to expand Manhattan farther out into the Hudson River. By that time, the mast and other parts of the Revolutionary War ship had apparently been stripped.

“It’s an important piece of history,” Lucas said. “It’s also a nice artifact that you can really build a lot of stories around.”

This is a free article for Diddy on Trial newsletter subscribers. Sign up to get exclusive reporting and analysis throughout Sean Combs’ federal trial.

The U.S. government rested its case against Diddy today — and then, exactly two hours later, so did his defense team.

In total, federal prosecutors called 34 witnesses across more than six weeks, presenting jurors with graphic evidence of what they allege was a ruthless criminal enterprise orchestrated by the hip-hop tycoon.

Diddy’s lawyers chose not to call a single witness, though they submitted evidence and stipulations in their client’s defense. The rapper’s team also made what’s known as a Rule 29 motion to dismiss the case, arguing that prosecutors’ evidence wasn’t sufficient to stand up a conviction. U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian didn’t immediately decide on that request.

We’re now entering what’s likely to be the final phase of this trial. The jurors will get a break tomorrow while the judge and lawyers meet to hash out instructions for the 12-person panel. The attorneys are expected to deliver closing arguments starting Thursday.

Here’s what else you need to know about Day 29 of the trial:

• Teny Geragos, one of Diddy’s lawyers, cross-examined Joseph Cerciello, a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations. Geragos focused on a series of text messages suggesting that Diddy’s ex-girlfriend “Jane” played an active role in setting up hotel encounters with sex workers, including a man named Kabrale. (NBC News previously identified the sex worker as Cabral.)
• The jury was shown more explicit videos of “freak offs” featuring Jane and a sex worker named Paul. It initially appeared three jurors were having technical issues with their headsets as one 90-second clip played — but then it became clear they’d failed to turn them on properly. The marathon sexual encounters are at the heart of the government’s racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking case.

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🔎 The view from inside

By Adam Reiss, Chloe Melas, Katherine Koretski and Jing Feng

In a notable exchange near the end of the day, Subramanian asked Diddy how he was feeling. “I am doing great. Thank you, Your Honor,” the rapper replied. He added: “You’re doing an excellent job.”

Subramanian then tried to confirm that Diddy wouldn’t take the stand in his own defense: “Is it your decision not to testify?” Diddy replied: “That is my decision. That is totally my decision. My decision; I am making it.”

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👨‍⚖️ Analysis: Playing it safe

By Danny Cevallos

Today Diddy’s team made its motion for a judgment of acquittal after the government’s case, and the judge said he would decide on the motion. It’s a formality: The motion will surely be denied. The defense knows it will most likely be denied.

But the rules require that, in order to preserve arguments, the defense has to move for a Rule 29 judgment of acquittal after the prosecution rests.

I can count on one finger the number of Rule 29 motions I’ve seen granted in federal court. That’s because federal prosecutors generally don’t accidentally forget to put in evidence of a crime or its elements. No one on either side expects this motion to be granted. It’s more for preservation of the record for appeal. Still, judges often deny these motions right away, but that hasn’t happened just yet. Could that mean the motion has a chance? Most likely not.

Diddy’s defense team confirmed in court that it wouldn’t call witnesses and would be introducing exhibits only.

I’ve been asked whether the defense team called no witnesses because it is feeling confident. I’ve also been asked whether the defense called no witnesses because it thinks the case is hopeless. I’d say the answer is “neither.”

You don’t get to the level of these hugely successful defense attorneys by having a negative attitude. But at the same time, defense attorneys are never as Pollyannaish as the clients, who almost always think the prosecution has nothing on them and the cases are dogs.

The choice not to call witnesses is the safest, most risk-averse strategy. Whether Diddy’s lawyers are feeling optimistic or pessimistic, they are clearly one thing: practical.

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PSA: Every night during Diddy’s trial, NBC’s “Dateline” will drop special episodes of the “True Crime Weekly” podcast to get you up to speed. “Dateline” correspondent Andrea Canning chats with NBC News’ Chloe Melas and special guests — right in front of the courthouse. Listen here. 🎧

The FBI is returning counterterrorism agents who were ordered to focus on immigration cases back to their old jobs because of concern about potential threats from Iran, four people with direct knowledge of the matter told NBC News.

Don Holstead, the assistant director for counter terrorism, issued guidance over the weekend reassigning agents who work on counterterrorism, counterintelligence and cyber issues but had been sidetracked by immigration duties, two of the people said.

All four people said the move was related to the possibility of Iran’s retaliating against the United States for its recent military strikes against Iranian nuclear sites. NBC News has reported that Iranian officials threatened U.S. officials that they would unleash so-called sleeper cells inside the United States if it were attacked.

The FBI said it does not confirm or deny operational changes.

“However, we continuously assess and realign our resources to respond to the most pressing threats to our national security and to ensure the safety of the American people,” it said in a statement.

Past warnings

For months, current and former FBI officials have warned about a new requirement that FBI employees across the country, including some who specialize in national security, spend significant amounts of time helping Department of Homeland Security officers track down undocumented immigrants, which is not traditionally an FBI role.

FBI Director Kash Patel imposed the requirements pursuant to Trump administration executive orders.

Many current and former bureau officials had expressed concern that given the FBI’s limited resources, crucial national security threats could get less attention because of the focus on immigration. There have also been a series of departures from key national security jobs in the Justice Department and the FBI. NBC News reported this week on a so-called brain drain from national security positions due to resignation in both agencies.

“The firings and retirements have had some effect, but the greater impact is from the top-down redirection of FBI resources to immigration and to cartels,” said an FBI employee who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The counterterrorism mission has been fundamentally redefined to treat drug cartels as designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations. That has consumed huge resources across the FBI field and at HQ and at DOJ.”

Traditionally, cartels and criminals have been investigated by the criminal sections of the FBI and the Justice Department, while terrorism came under each organization’s national security sections, staffed by different people, FBI employees said.

In theory, if cartels are now international terrorist organizations, the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division should manage those cases, the employees added, but agents from that division are not experts in cartels.

At the same time, many criminal squads do not usually work with intelligence information and do not operate in facilities designed to protect classified documents.

The FBI is relatively small — 38,000 employees, many of them not agents, officials said. So shifting agents to new missions has an impact.

“When you shift to make the border the top priority, you necessarily lower other priorities,” the FBI employee said. “The FBI doesn’t admit it, but it’s math.”

A second FBI employee said the shift of agents toward immigration had affected the bureau. “We were already spread pretty thin. It will only take one crisis to really stress the system,” the second FBI employee said. “On the terrorism front, I think the only way we will see the impact, unfortunately, is when something bad happens.”

A third FBI employee praised the reallocation of resources in the wake of the threats from Iran.

“Guess they are realizing this whole national security thing is important, after all,” the employee said.

Cutbacks at DHS

A senior DHS official and a former DHS official said there have been cuts to the several offices involved in DHS’ counterterrorism efforts since Trump returned to office.

Those who have been fired or reassigned include “a lot of really highly intelligent, highly qualified people,” the senior official said. They have decades of experience in intelligence gathering, screening and vetting people for possible terror ties, working with communities to prevent possible attacks and working with law enforcement to stop attackers.

“It was a small team, but it has been much reduced,” the official said, noting that at least six people in the department’s office of policy who handled counterterrorism were fired or reassigned.

The official, who has worked under several administrations, said regular meetings on counterterrorism with top DHS officials were rescheduled and eventually canceled. “The focus is immigration and not counterterrorism,” the senior DHS official said.

Senior leaders at DHS’ Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships were fired or reassigned because of a perception the office was focused on right-wing domestic extremist groups, the official said. But the office’s mission was to build local partnerships and administer grants to prevent violence and terrorism motivated by ideologies across the political spectrum.

One of the most talked-about staff members of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency has left the federal government, continuing a stream of DOGE-related departures.

Edward Coristine, the 19-year-old nicknamed “Big Balls” who joined DOGE as one of its original staffers, has left his job and the administration entirely, a White House spokesperson said Tuesday. The spokesperson did not provide details.

An account under Coristine’s name on X, verified by NBC News, also said that he had left.

Coristine drew wide attention not only because of his nickname but also because of his youthfulness and his job history, having previously been fired from an internship at a cybersecurity firm for leaking company secrets, according to Bloomberg News. Wired magazine earlier reported his departure from the Trump administration.

His age and lack of experience came to symbolize DOGE for many of its critics, including federal workers and congressional Democrats who said it was acting recklessly in its quest to slash spending.

Coristine did not respond to an emailed request for comment Tuesday. The circumstances of his departure were not immediately clear.

He is the latest DOGE staffer to leave the Trump administration — a list that includes tech billionaire Elon Musk, who departed the White House late last month and launched a short-lived feud against President Donald Trump. Others who have left include Musk chief aide Steve Davis, according to The Wall Street Journal, and Amanda Scales, an employee of Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI, according to TechCrunch.

On X, the account under Coristine’s name said that he was “officially out” and that he couldn’t say much yet.

“Appreciate everyone who’s reached out. Feels good to finally breathe again,” the account said, joking that he was moving on to running a cryptocurrency scam.

“I’ll make a post explaining what happened soon,” the account said.

The same account said in February that he was starting a job at the State Department. Later that month, Coristine was listed in a directory as a senior adviser at the country’s top cybersecurity agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security, which falls under the Department of Homeland Security. When he left government, he was with the General Services Administration, the White House said.

In an interview with Fox News last month, Coristine asserted that there were “no checks and no accountability” in federal spending, despite statements by budget watchdogs to the contrary.

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