Foreign Born Celtics – Julius Nwosu

Now that you have a general understanding of this premise of Foreign Born Celtics, I am going to pull out all the stops (Well we still have Rick Fox and Dino Radja left).  This player could fit two categories of both Celtic Foreigner and Obscure Celtic (might have to start one when I run out of foreigners to introduce), Julius Nwosu was blessed to even call himself a Boston Celtic.

Born on May 1^st, 1971 in Nkwere, Nigeria, Julius began his playing career at Liberty University in Virginia.  Julius has played in 14 different counties during his 14-year career playing professional basketball.

You will not see a photo of Julius wearing a Celtics jersey because he never played in a regular season game for the Boston Celtics.  Although he was under contract with the Milwaukee Bucks, Boston Celtics, Toronto Raptors, Seattle Supersonics (tear) and the Utah Jazz, he never played for any of these teams.  He di play 23 games for the San Antonio Spurs early in his career.  Most of his career highlights come from leagues other than the NBA.

In 1996, before joining the Celtics, Nwosu won the Russian league title with CSKA Moscow.  He also won the French league crown with EB Pau-Orthez (French team duh) in 2001.  Julius helped the Red Bull Thunder of the Philippine Basketball Association reach the Commissioner’s Cup in 2002.  He has actually won 2 PBA Commissioner’s cups.

Other random teams that you will be hearing about for the first time in life because of Julius include Caceres CB (93-94),  Galatasaray Café Crown (98), Avtodor Saratov (98), Isuzu Giba Cats (00-01), Sporting (02-04), CSU Asesoft Ploiesti (05-06), Al Jalaa (06-07), and Ararat (07).  Bonus points if you can name at least 3 of these team’s countries without google. (Or any other search engine)

Julius stood at 6 foot 8 inches and weighed around 255 lbs for his career.  A smaller but heavier power forward, he would be a skinner Glen Davis without any finesse.  The last trace of Nwosu we saw was in the 2006 FIBA World Championships with his native country of Nigeria.  Now we know everything about a player who has probably played on more continents than any other player in the world.