Two American basketball players cannot return to their homes overseas due to Iran’s ban on American citizens entering the country, a retaliatory measure to President Donald Trump’s executive order barring entry to citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days.
Two American basketball players cannot return to Iranian team after travel bans
The players were on a team trip in Dubai and now cannot return.
Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images
The players, Joseph Jones and J.P. Prince, are teammates on Azad University Tehran, part of the Iran Super League. The team was on a break in Dubai, and now Jones and Prince cannot return to Iran — where they work, live, and have all their possessions — because they are American citizens.
Team officials have been in discussion with the government about a solution, but they reportedly aren’t optimistic that they’ll be able to bring Jones and Prince back into the country, per The Vertical.
Jones and Prince aren’t the only Americans playing for the Iran Super League. One example is former Three-Point Contest winner Daequan Cook, who spent six seasons in the NBA.
Jones played at Texas A&M from 2004 to 2008, while Prince spent five years from 2005 to 2010 playing college basketball at Arizona and later Tennessee. Both are in their first seasons in the Iran Super League, and they each stand to lose six figures in salary if they cannot rejoin their team to finish the season.
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