Sim Bhullarਸਿਮ ਭੁੱਲਰ

Sim Bhullar is a Canadian basketball player from Brampton, Ontario, born in Toronto in 1992 to a Punjabi family, who became the first player of Indian descent to play in the NBA. The 7 foot 5 inch centre played for the Sacramento Kings in April 2015 after two standout seasons at New Mexico State.

Early life in Toronto and Brampton

Gursimran Singh Bhullar was born on 2 December 1992 in Toronto, Ontario, and grew up in nearby Brampton, one of the most Punjabi cities in Canada. His parents, Avtar and Varinder Bhullar, had migrated to Canada from Punjab in India. Neither parent had played basketball: his father had grown up playing kabaddi, and the couple enrolled their sons in local youth basketball programs. Height ran in the family, and basketball quickly became the path for all three children. His older sister Avneet later played college basketball at Duke University, and his younger brother Tanveer, who stands 7 feet 2 inches, also played at New Mexico State.

Bhullar began school basketball at Father Henry Carr Catholic Secondary School in Etobicoke, Toronto, then moved to the United States to develop against stronger competition. He spent time at The Kiski School in Saltsburg, Pennsylvania, where in 2009 to 2010 he averaged close to a triple double with 16 points, 14 rebounds and 8 blocks a game. In late November 2010 he transferred to Huntington Prep School in Huntington, West Virginia. There he improved his conditioning, dropping from about 367 pounds to 330 pounds, and helped Huntington Prep to a 22 and 3 record and a number 12 national ranking in 2010 to 2011. He was a McDonald's All-American nominee and an ESPN top 100 recruit.

Canada noticed early. Bhullar played for Canada at the 2010 FIBA Americas Under-18 Championship, where Canada won bronze, and at the 2011 FIBA Under-19 World Championship, where he averaged 12.3 points and 6.3 rebounds a game. He represented Canada throughout his career, never India, a distinction that matters when his story is told.

College career at New Mexico State

Bhullar first committed to Xavier University, but he gave up that place in August 2011 and chose New Mexico State instead, after learning he would not qualify to play right away at Xavier and would have faced the full tuition cost. The wait followed him to New Mexico: the NCAA denied an eligibility waiver, so he did not play until the 2012 to 2013 season. When he finally took the court, the delay looked worth it.

As a freshman he averaged 10.1 points, 6.7 rebounds and 2.4 blocks a game. He was named WAC Freshman of the Year, the first New Mexico State player to win that award in the WAC, and he set a single season school record with 85 blocked shots. In the conference tournament he recorded double doubles in the semifinal and the final, with 16 points and 15 rebounds in the championship game against UT Arlington, and was named WAC Tournament MVP, the first freshman to win it since Shawn Bradley in 1991. New Mexico State reached the NCAA Tournament.

His second season was stronger still: 10.4 points, 7.8 rebounds and 3.4 blocks a game, a second straight WAC Tournament MVP award, and a second NCAA Tournament appearance. Across 65 college games he averaged 10.2 points, 7.2 rebounds and 2.9 blocks. In April 2014 he declared for the NBA draft, giving up his last two years of college eligibility.

Who was the first player of Indian descent in the NBA?

Sim Bhullar was the first player of Indian descent in the NBA, on two counts: he was the first to sign with an NBA team, in August 2014, and the first to play in an NBA game, in April 2015. No player of Indian descent had done either before him, and a Kings history retrospective in 2020 noted that he still stood alone as the only one to have appeared in an NBA game at that point.

The route was not straight. He went undrafted in the 2014 NBA draft, joined the Sacramento Kings for the Summer League and was part of the squad that won the 2014 Summer League title in Las Vegas. On 14 August 2014 he signed with the Kings, becoming the first player of Indian descent to sign with an NBA team. The Kings waived him on 19 October 2014 after two preseason games, and he joined their affiliate, the Reno Bighorns of the NBA Development League. In Reno he made his debut on 6 December 2014, recorded a triple double of 26 points, 17 rebounds and 11 blocks on 22 February 2015, and finished the season averaging 10.3 points, 8.8 rebounds and 3.9 blocks in 39 games. He was named to the D-League All-Rookie Third Team and the All-Defensive Second Team.

On 2 April 2015 the Kings signed him to a 10-day contract. Five days later, on 7 April 2015, he checked in for the final 16.1 seconds of a 116 to 111 win over the Minnesota Timberwolves and received a standing ovation from a crowd of 16,770. The next night, against the Utah Jazz, he scored his first two NBA points, the first basket by a player of Indian descent in league history. He played three NBA games in total. Later in 2015 he left a Kings summer appearance early to join Canada for the Toronto Pan American Games, where Canada won the silver medal, his games coming in the city he grew up next to.

How tall is Sim Bhullar?

Sim Bhullar is 7 feet 5 inches tall, listed at 2.26 metres. That height made him, at his debut, tied as the sixth tallest player in NBA history, alongside Chuck Nevitt and Pavel Podkolzin. Size shaped his whole game: a shot blocking presence who changed shots simply by standing near the rim, a finisher who shot 72.7 percent from the field in his first D-League season, and a player whose conditioning and pace were tested constantly by a league moving toward smaller, faster lineups.

Later career in North America and Taiwan

After the Kings, Bhullar spent the 2015 to 2016 season close to home with Raptors 905, the Toronto Raptors affiliate based in Mississauga, averaging 9.6 points and 6.9 rebounds in 39 games. In August 2016 he moved to Taiwan and signed with the Dacin Tigers of the Super Basketball League. There his size became dominance: he averaged 19.7 points, 15.4 rebounds and 2.6 blocks in his first Dacin season, won the SBL championship in 2017 and was named the league Best Foreign Player of the year. He also had a short spell with the Guangxi Rhinos in China in 2017 before returning to Dacin.

Taiwan has been his basketball home ever since, through the Taipei Fubon Braves and the Yulon Luxgen Dinos, with whom he reached the SBL finals in 2020, then the Hsinchu Lioneers from 2021 and the Tainan TSG GhostHawks from 2022 to 2024. He returned to the Hsinchu club, now the Hsinchu Toplus Lioneers of the Taiwan Professional Basketball League, and is listed with the Lioneers, wearing number 35, in the league current listings checked in November 2026. Few North American players build a second career this long overseas; Bhullar became a star attraction in Taiwan in his own right, known there by the nickname Simba.

Legacy

Bhullar NBA minutes were brief, three games and a handful of minutes, but the barrier he crossed was not. Before April 2015, no player of Indian descent had ever stepped onto an NBA court, and for Punjabi and South Asian families in Brampton, Toronto and across the diaspora, his debut was proof that a boy from their streets could reach the league. He opened the door that others then walked toward: Satnam Singh, from Punjab, became the first Indian born player drafted into the NBA when Dallas selected him in 2015, and he went on to play in the G League, though he never played an NBA regular season game.

His college record also stands on its own: two WAC Tournament MVP awards, a conference freshman award, a school blocks record and two NCAA Tournament trips in two seasons. Combined with a championship career in Taiwan, it is the record of a player who found, on two continents, the level where his rare size could decide games, and who carried the hopes of two countries, the one he played for and the one his parents came from, every time he did it.