Japan's former NBA players, Yuta Watanabe and Yuta Tabuse, are still professional athletes in the 2025-26 B.League season. Watanabe transitioned from a six-season NBA career to star for the Chiba Jets, while the pioneering Tabuse continues his historic career as a veteran for Utsunomiya Brex.
For a country that now follows every Rui Hachimura game and tracks Yuki Kawamura's path closely, Japan's list of former NBA players is still surprisingly short.
Yuta Watanabe
Yuta Watanabe
Position: SF
Age: 31
Height: 203 cm
Weight: 98 kg
Birth place: Japan
If we focus on Japanese-born players who played in the NBA regular season and have since moved on, the story comes down to two names: Yuta Tabuse and Yuta Watanabe.
One opened the door in 2004, while the other showed that a Japanese wing could survive, adapt, and last in the league for six seasons.
They are very different players, and their NBA careers were very different, too. However, together, they helped build the bridge between Japanese basketball and the NBA. Here is where they are now.
Yuta Watanabe: back home, still a major name
Credit AP - Scanpix
Watanabe is now with the Chiba Jets in Japan's B.League, averaging 12.8 points, 4.8 rebounds, and 1.9 assists through 43 games of the 2025-26 season.
Chiba is currently a top contender, sitting second in the standings with a 30-12 record, trailing only Utsunomiya in the latest standings.
That matters because Watanabe did not return to Japan to fade away quietly. He came back as a headline player capable of elevating the entire league's profile.
In NBA terms, he was never a star, but he was much more than a novelty act. Across 213 NBA games, Watanabe averaged 4.2 points and 2.3 rebounds.
He went undrafted in 2018 but fought his way into the league with Memphis. After stints in the G League and tenures with the Grizzlies, Raptors, Nets, and Suns, he concluded his NBA journey back in Memphis before returning home in 2024.
Yuta Tabuse: the original pioneer is still going
Credit REUTERS - Scanpix
If Watanabe proved a role player could last in the NBA, Tabuse was the first to make the NBA feel possible at all.
He became the first Japanese-born player to appear in an NBA regular-season game when he debuted for the Phoenix Suns on November 3, 2004, against Atlanta.
He played only four NBA games, but that tiny number does not reflect his importance. For Japanese basketball, those four games were historic.
What makes Tabuse's story even better is that it is not over. The 45-year-old is still on the Utsunomiya Brex roster in the 2025-26 season.
While his on-court role has diminished to a single B1 appearance this season, the fact that he remains part of a top-tier club over two decades after turning pro is a testament to his longevity.
Tabuse's path was a gritty pursuit of a dream, as he chased the NBA through camps, preseason battles, and the ABA. Though he lacked a lengthy NBA career, he achieved something equally important: he turned an impossible dream into reality.
The bigger picture
Japan's former players in the NBA story is short, but it is not small. Tabuse was the breakthrough, and Watanabe was the proof of concept.
One showed that a Japanese player could get there. The other showed that he could stay, adjust, and earn real minutes over multiple seasons.
And right now, both remain active participants in the Japanese basketball scene, albeit in different capacities.
Watanabe is a featured player on a title-chasing Chiba team, while Tabuse is a veteran symbol still attached to the winning culture of Utsunomiya. Neither is in the NBA anymore, but both remain at the forefront of the sport in Japan.
Nojus Stankevičius
Nojus Stankevičius began his basketball writing journey in 2023, when he started studying Journalism at Vilnius University. In 2024, he participated in the BasketNews Academy. Then, a year later, in 2025, he officially joined BasketNews as a Daily Writer, marking the beginning of his professional career in sports journalism.
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