Which Australians are playing in the NBA this season?

Albeit nicely down on final season’s contingent of 15 gamers, Australia is once more nicely represented in the new NBA season, with the now-injured Ben Simmons becoming a member of eight gamers who featured in opening-night rosters final season.

Alex Toohey was not one in every of them, having been waived by the Golden State Warriors this week, while Dante Exum was not retained by the Dallas Mavericks. 

38-year-old Joe Ingles is one other one to have dropped out, having moved to Melbourne United on a two-year NBL contract together with compatriot Luke Travers, and Lachlan Olbrich has moved to Alvark Tokyo after 37 video games with the Bulls final season.

Matisse Thybulle and Duop Reath are not technically listed as Australians on NBA rosters regardless of each representing the Boomers at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Thybulle and Reath are now categorized as American and South Sudanese respectively.

Irving and Simmons additionally characteristic in a record-breaking contingent of 19 internationals with All-Star honours.

One of Atlanta’s premier perimeter defenders continues to make strides in the NBA and his fifth season in the league may very well be particularly thrilling. 

Daniels has risen by way of the ranks to turn into one in every of the league’s lead defenders, being honoured in the NBA’s All-Defensive First Team in 2025 and second staff in 2026.

He was second in the rely for many steals of 2025/26 with 149, one behind Cason Wallace with one fewer look made, and was third in the league behind Wallace and Detroit’s Ausar Thompson for deflections after topping each tallies in 2024/25. 

His defensive output barely dropped in 2025/26 regardless of taking over extra of an offensive position in the absence of Trae Young, the place he upped each his rebound and his help rely considerably.

The focus of Daniels’ low season has been his taking pictures accuracy from each inside and past the arc, and an enchancment in that will make him an ideal triple menace for the Hawks.

Two Aussies in the similar beginning 5?

We cannot recollect it taking place since Ingles and Exum in 2014/15 (get in contact if we have missed one!), however there’s an actual very prospect this season of Jock Landale becoming a member of Boomers teammate Daniels as a Hawks starter sooner or later this season.

He has been forecasted to be second behind beginning centre Onyeka Okongwu in the Hawks depth chart for this season, leaving him only one step away from making historical past. 

Landale is playing for his rapid future on an expiring contract price US$14m, having been re-signed by the Hawks after averaging 9 factors and 4 rebounds throughout his 23 video games in Atlanta after a deadline-day transfer. A finals debut for the staff awaited just for an ankle damage to place paid to these plans.

His numbers at earlier staff Memphis (11 factors and 6.5 rebounds) had been even higher.

By February, the Melburnian middle may nicely discover himself beginning for a finals contender or trying to settle right into a sixth dwelling. It’ll be fascinating to see which means the coin falls.

Coming off the again of a 17-point common final season, Giddey is about to deal with his sixth NBA season simply days after turning 24, and regardless of having to go underneath the knife throughout the low season with ankle surgical procedure, he seems able to peak. 

Giddey posted career-best common figures for factors (17), assists (9.1) and rebounds (8.3) at the Bulls in 2025/26, helped in half by having been on the court docket for a mean of 32 minutes. 

The 6’8″ Aussie is one of the tallest lead ball handlers in the competition and will take charge of a youthful Bulls offense including number four draft pick Caleb Wilson, who has mega potential. 

The Bulls are under new management both on the court and in front of house, so it remains to be seen what kind of an impact he’ll be able to have in the early phase of the transition, but pre-season performances against the Timberwolves and Grizzlies were both promising.

Irving’s 15th season in the NBA sees him continue at the home of his previous three, where he has played 150 of his 875 NBA career games.

It should have been his 16th, but his body had other ideas as the severe ACL injury suffered in March 2025 kept him out of action for the entire of the 2025/26 campaign. 

He has sent mixed messages about what he thinks the immediate future may hold, telling the press that he’s “actually excited” about the first dozen games of the season in which he gets to test his new (well, not so new) left knee, whilst also speaking about NBA has changed – for the worse, in his opinion – across his 15-year career.

“When I got here in, we weren’t doing tipping and playing conferences and social media, and psychological well being was this overseas topic,” Irving explained.

“Nobody ever talked about it in 2011. The sport has modified. It’s turn into much less human, extra robotic. My subsequent few years, I type of have a look at it like, do I actually love that facet of it? I like the playing. I like the competitors.

“But do I like (all the things else) that goes into it? … I don’t see myself playing in the NBA at 42, 43.“

The Mavs are expected to be close to propping up the bottom of the Western Conference with the likes of the Pelicans, Clippers and Kings, and given his 18-month layoff, Irving can be forgiven for just taking the start of the season ‘one game at a time’. 

Furphy is now eight months into rehabilitation from a torn ACL suffered in February and is expected to be a midseason return, at which point he’ll have turned 22. 

His recovery has “been extraordinarily optimistic” and “hit all the benchmarks” as of late September, according to Pacers assistant general manager Ted Wu at the time. 

Despite facing a second straight interrupted season and a significant setback in his development, Furphy has both youth and contract time on his side: he’s on the books until the end of 2027/28, and the Pacers hold their second round draft pick in high regard, so there should be plenty of opportunity to get some meaningful minutes ahead of what could be just a one-year absence from the finals.

Zikarsky begins the second half of his two-season two-way deal, having made just five appearances for the NBA side last term.

The only meaningful of those five appearances was a 20-minute stint against the New Orleans Pelicans in the Wolves’ final game of the regular season, when they rested starters such as Anthony Edwards and Julius Randle ahead of their opening finals series against the Nuggets. 

He posted eight points and nine rebounds on that occasion, backing up some impressive G-League numbers that included an average of 16 points, ten rebounds and three blocks per game and a field goal percentage of a shade over 53%.

Zikarsky was the first to admit that he struggled with drop coverage at the elite level, saying he was “blown by (and) too low a number of occasions” during his 36 minutes as an NBA player, and that has been a key focus of his off-season. 

If he can make significant leaps in his coverage, the minutes could follow: he doesn’t appear to have much competition other than fellow sophomore Joan Beringer to deputise for Rudy Gobert.

Simmons was set to make an illustrious and high-profile comeback as a backup to rookie guard Darius Acuff Jr before his plans and ambitions for 2026/27 were devastatingly torn up by a season-ending Achilles injury in practice. 

The good news from a financial perspective is that Simmons technically made the Kings’ opening night roster, activating a US$1m bonus to go on top of his one-year, US$3.5m contract. 

The fact he had sustained the injury in team practice offered him some protections in terms of his salary, but all reports suggest the Kings were never hesitant to keep the 30-year-old on the books with the potential for a new contract to be offered next season. 

Nonetheless, we won’t be seeing him take to the court this time around.

The next cab off the rank in a lengthening line of Aussies to play for the Jazz is Sydney-born shooting guard Josh Green, who joins the Jazz as a 3&D wing after a complicated series of trades that saw move briefly to the Minnesota Timberwolves before again being moved on. 

Green makes the move after a frustrating second season in Charlotte where, having started 67 of his 68 games played in 2024/25, he returned from shoulder injury only to be used as part of a rotating group of deputies to starting rookie guard Kon Knueppel.

2026/27 is not expected to at all be any better for the 25-year-old, who is projected to be behind the likes of Ace Bailey, Brice Sensabaugh and Josh Okogie in a crowded group of small forwards. 

The fact that he played only 29 minutes across the Jazz’s four official pre-season games does not bode well in terms of getting anything more than a sporadic role in the first half of the season, though anything will be possible now that he has made the opening-night roster. 

That could be especially true for the second half of the season, with Green on an expiring contract – meaning that any franchise looking for a reliable three-point shooter in early 2027 should have him at least back of mind. 

There’ll be no shortage of competition for places on the Cavaliers roster and one source of depth comes from second-season player Tyrese Proctor, who will be expecting much more than the ten minutes per game he averaged in his rookie season. 

He evolved into more of a point guard than a shooting guard throughout 2025/26, opening the door for him to potentially transition into a backup for 37-year-old James Harden as Harden’s minutes decline. 

With Dennis Schroder and Lonzo Ball no longer in the picture, Proctor has declared his ambitions to be “a frontrunner of the guard group” and assert himself as the natural successor to Harden.

He knows there’ll be a lot of competition within the squad – “a number of canines” as he described it – and Proctor spent the summer bulking up to add to his athletic profile.  

One of Proctor’s greatest strengths last season was a three-point shooting percentage of 35%, well in line with the league average, and a combined 37-point haul in late season games against Atlanta and Washington gave a potential insight into what could be coming. 

Aaron Murphy has been with Flashscore since 2018 and, as the founding editor of the Australian newsdesk, has reported on-site at several major events in Melbourne including the Australian Open, State of Origin, A-League, NBL and international cricket. You can read his pieces right here and call him on X or LinkedIn.