Yasutaka Okayama is a Japanese former basketball player and coach. Standing 7 feet 8 inches tall, he became the first Japanese player selected in an NBA draft when the Golden State Warriors chose him in 1981, although he never signed with the team. He represented Japan between 1979 and 1986 and later worked as a basketball coach in Japan.
Background
Yasutaka Okayama was born on November 29, 1954, in Mashiki, a town in Kumamoto Prefecture. Kumamoto Prefecture occupies part of Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's four main islands, and Kumamoto city is the prefectural capital.
As a junior high and high school student, he practiced judo, a martial art developed in Japan in the late nineteenth century by Kano Jigoro, and he earned a second-degree black belt. Those years of martial arts training preceded his later move into basketball.
Education
Okayama attended Kyushu Gakuin High School in Kumamoto, the capital city of his home prefecture, before entering Osaka University of Commerce. The university is a private institution in Osaka whose name reflects its emphasis on commercial studies. He first took up basketball there at the age of eighteen; according to Japanese-language biographical sources, he gave up judo after being drawn to the personality of the university's basketball coach.
In 1975 the University of Portland, a private Catholic university in Portland, Oregon, recruited him, and he spent two years there. A medical examination revealed gigantism, a hormonal disorder that causes excessive growth, and he never played for the university's varsity basketball team.
After retiring as a player, he studied for a year at Western Michigan University, a public university in Kalamazoo, Michigan, before returning to coaching.
Career
Okayama joined the basketball club of Sumitomo Metal Industries, a major Japanese steel producer that later became part of Nippon Steel, in 1979. The club, known as the Sumitomo Metal Sparks, competed in the Japan Basketball League, a domestic league built around company teams. The Sparks were based in Narashino, Chiba, and had been founded in 1958. In his first season he won the league's rebounding title and its rookie award.
In June 1981 the Golden State Warriors selected him in the eighth round of the NBA draft, 171st overall. The Warriors were then based in Oakland, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Okayama never signed with the team and did not negotiate with it, partly because he wanted to keep playing for the Japan national team. Between 1979 and 1986 he represented Japan internationally, including at the 1982 Asian Games in New Delhi, India, where the Japanese men's team won bronze.
He retired as a player in 1990. After his year of study in the United States, he returned to coaching, serving as an assistant coach with the Sumitomo Metal Sparks from 1993 to 1995 and as an assistant coach at Osaka University of Commerce from 1996 to 1999. By 2005 he was working for Sumitomo Metal Industries and remained active as a basketball coach. Japanese-language reference works report that from April 2010 he combined work for a steel-plate company with television appearances promoting basketball. In 1989 he also published an instructional book for young players.
Personality
Physical Characteristics:
Okayama stood 7 feet 8 inches (2.34 m) tall, and his listed playing weight was 330 pounds (150 kg). His height made him the tallest player ever drafted by the NBA.
