Zaza Pachulia ზაზა ფაჩულია

Zaza Pachulia — Biography

Zaza Pachulia is a 2.11 m center who won two NBA championships with the Golden State Warriors, in 2017 and 2018, becoming the first player from Georgia to win an NBA title. He ended a 16-season NBA career in 2019 and returned to the Warriors as a basketball operations consultant. Born Zaur, he later legally changed his first name to Zaza. Of Megrelian descent, he also holds Turkish citizenship.

His career began in Turkey: as a teenager he was recruited by Ülkerspor and played for Georgia's junior national team. He was drafted in the second round of the 2003 NBA draft by the Orlando Magic and then moved to the Milwaukee Bucks. At the Atlanta Hawks from 2005 to 2011 he was a starter, spent a short spell at Galatasaray during the 2011 lockout, then returned to Atlanta. He later played for the Bucks (2013-15) and the Dallas Mavericks (2015-16), and in 2016 finished just 14,227 votes behind Kawhi Leonard in All-Star balloting. From 2016 he won titles with the Warriors, and in 2018 he moved on to the Detroit Pistons.

A closeout on Leonard's foot in the 2017 Western Conference finals made him a controversial figure; Pachulia denied any intent, and the incident was later linked to a rule informally called the "Zaza rule". He captained Georgia's national team and played at EuroBasket 2011, 2015 and 2017. He received Georgia's Order of Honor in 2017, ran free summer basketball camps for children, and in 2016 founded a basketball academy in Tbilisi.