Birthplace: São Paulo, Brazil
Height: 6'3"
NBA Seasons: 13
2003 NBA Draft: 1st round, No. 28 (San Antonio Spurs)
NBA Sixth Man of the Year: 2007
NBA Champion: 2015 (Golden State Warriors)
The Brazilian Blur. NBA champion and Sixth Man of the Year.
Leandro Barbosa joined the BIG3 with the Ball Hogs in 2021. To say he made an instant impact would be an understatement. He was second in the league in scoring to Joe Johnson, led the league in assists, and finished second in assist to turnover ratio. Coming off a season like that, it should be no surprise that Barbosa was named Captain of the Ball Hogs for the 2022 season. Sadly, Barbosa’s 2022 season was cut short by a devastating lower leg injury.
Barbosa has had a long and decorated career playing professional basketball, which has included competition in Brazilian leagues, international tournaments, and a long run in the NBA.
Barbosa was a longtime member of the Brazilian national team, playing in the 2012 and 2016 Summer Olympics. In the NBA, he posted a career scoring average of 10.6 points per game, with a three-point percentage of .387 and a free-throw percentage of .821. Perhaps his most impressive accomplishment came in 2006-07, when won the Sixth Man of the Year Award while playing with the Phoenix Suns and averaging a career best 18.1 points per game.
Barbosa was selected by the Spurs in the 2003 NBA Draft. He was immediately acquired by Phoenix in a draft-day trade. In addition to the Suns (where he had three stints throughout his career), Barbosa played for the Toronto Raptors, Indiana Pacers, Boston Celtics and Golden State Warriors.
Barbosa made a special impact with Golden State. He was a key player off the bench for the 2014-15 NBA champion Warriors and helped them to an NBA-record 73-9 regular season in 2015-16. He has since returned to work with the team as their Player Mentor Coach in 2020, which came after two seasons playing professionally in Brazil.
In the 2022 NBA offseason, Barbosa was named to the staff of the Sacramento Kings as an assistant to new Head Coach Mike Brown, who had served with Barbosa on the Warriors’ coaching staff. In Barbosa’s first year with the team, the Kings broke a 16-year playoff drought, and Brown was named the NBA Coach of the Year.