When time permits, Boston Celtics center Neemias Queta (nuh-MEE-ush KAY-tah) loves to visit Casa Portugal Restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he can enjoy paella and other delicacies native to his home country of Portugal. It is there that the 7-footer can speak Portuguese comfortably and revel in his amazing journey to become the first and only NBA player from the country.
“It’s about being able to have resilience being from Portugal,” Queta recently told Andscape. “We’re not really known for basketball. We are not really getting the exposure. I feel like we’re kind of handicapped. And I feel like we just got to get better every time. So, anything for me is just the resilience.
“Going to test the waters [for the NBA draft] my freshman year and it not going well. Going back to college, getting hurt, coming back again. Being a two-way player in Sacramento. Didn’t work out. Figure out my way on in Boston. Being from Portugal as well, too. So, all of those things together, it’s not like the best odds were in my favor. But I feel like just by working hard, just having the right mentality, I made the best out of the situation.”
That mentality and work ethic has put Queta in a position where he is the starting center for the Celtics after the departures of veteran big men Al Horford, Kristaps Porzingis and Luke Kornet. Queta entered Wednesday averaging career highs of 9.7 points, 8.2 rebounds, 1.5 assists and 1.3 blocks per game. After nearly doubling his average in each of the aforementioned categories, he could make a dark horse case for the 2026 NBA Most Improved Player award.
Tonight, Queta and the Celtics visit the Denver Nuggets (ESPN, 10 p.m. ET).
“I’m amazed more by his maturity,” Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla told Andscape. “He cares about people. He has it together. He knows what is important to him. He knows who he is as a person and a player. He cares about winning and doing it with his teammates.”
Porzingis, now with the Golden State Warriors, said: “Neemi has been good and getting more opportunity. He deserves it.”
The Boston Celtics signed Neemias Queta to a three-year, $7.18 million deal in July, 2024.
David Dow/NBAE via Getty Images
Queta’s unique NBA journey actually has African roots. His parents, Mica and Djaneuba Queta, moved to Portugal after their native Guinea-Bissau in West Africa succumbed to a civil war taking place from June 1998 to May 1999. This conflict stemmed from a power struggle between President João Bernardo Vieira and Brigadier General Ansumane Mané. It resulted in the destruction of infrastructure, hundreds of deaths and the displacement of roughly 300,000 people.
Mica and Djaneuba initially moved to Cape Verde before going to Portugal, a safe haven for many displaced from Guinea-Bissau, in the late 1990s. Neemias Queta was born in Lisbon, Portugal, on July 13, 1999. He has never been to Guinea-Bissau and his parents haven’t been back since they left. He hopes to go with his mother “in the next couple of years” in what would also be his first trip to Africa.
“They were in kind of like a refugee type of situation. It was more trying to get to that safe place and Port Portugal welcomed them,” Queta said.
Queta grew up in a two-bedroom apartment in Vale da Amoreira, a town in the municipality of Moita. They lived about a 20-mile drive across the Tagus River from Lisbon, the capital of Portugal. He was primarily raised by his mother, who was a chef while his businessman father traveled Europe regularly for work. Queta said his work ethic and drive comes from his mother, whom he saw wake up at 4 a.m. to go to work.
“She still figured out a way to have a life with her kids in Europe. That’s all the motivation for me,” Queta said.
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The population of Portugal is over 90% Portuguese descent. Moita, however, has a significant amount of immigrants from Cape Verde, Angola, and Guinea-Bissau. Quita felt very comfortable in Moita, but his African ties and dark skin did bring him challenges in Portugal at-large.
“Being the son of immigrants in a new country, a predominantly white country, is different,” Queta said. “But at the same time, I was just trying to be the best version of myself I could be. I got these stigmas, these stereotypes. But that ain’t up to me to figure those out. I just got to be the best me I can be. From that point on I was just playing basketball, playing soccer with the lessons I learned from my family. They always instilled in me to just be kind and make a way to make a better life for yourself. …
“Being in Portugal as a Black person from African origin, you’re not really viewed the best over time all the time. The stereotypes are going to be [said], but I just tried to enjoy the good. At the same time, Portugal was really welcoming for us. It’s always nice to be there. Our neighborhood was a bunch of multiculturalism. You had Asians, you had South Americans, you’d have Africans, you had European people. It was more about being able to interact with each other and just making the best out of the situation.”
Neemias Queta on the Boston Celtics’ culture: “Boston is known for making players better. Winning culture. Great coaching staff.”
Glenn James/NBAE via Getty Images
Queta was introduced to basketball shortly after his sister was. An elementary school teacher invited her to try out for the school’s basketball team, and a curious 10-year-old Neemias eventually started going to her practices.
Barreirense, a men’s professional basketball team, just happened have a youth team training in the same gym. They noticed how unusually tall Neemias was for his age and convinced him to join their workouts.
It was then that Portugal’s first basketball star was born.
“We had a teacher that worked out in one of those local [basketball] clubs,” Queta said. “She invited her [his sister] because she was so much taller than everybody else. And one of those days I went with her just to see and they just had a club team working out over there. I ended up getting invited to work out with them. They were probably two, three years older than me, but I was already taller than all of them. It was a seamless transition.”
Like most boys from Portugal, Queta was initially in love with soccer and its Portuguese icon Cristiano Ronaldo. Portugal did have a pro basketball league, Liga Portuguesa de Basquetebol, but Queta said the country’s best basketball players typically left to play in other European countries. By the time Queta was 17, he had grown to 7-foot. He was in love with basketball and sought an opportunity outside of Portugal.
Queta played club basketball with Benfica SL B in Portugal during the 2017-18 season. His big break came playing on Portugal’s U-18 and U-20 national teams. Utah State watched Queta play in the 2018 U-20 European Championships. The only full basketball scholarship offer he had in the United States was in 2018 at Utah State, where he could play with Portuguese guard Diogo Brito. While there was also an opportunity to play in Spain for Valencia, Queta ultimately chose to come to the much colder and landlocked Logan, Utah.
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“I didn’t have a big coat to start with when I got to Utah. I was going to class at 7:30 in the morning in the middle of the canyon. It was just a jacket. I missed those days. It was so much simpler back then, but I’m just glad everything worked out.”
Shortly after arriving to Utah, Queta said he first gained belief that he could play in the NBA after playing “pretty well” in pickup games against then-Utah Jazz players Donovan Mitchell, Royce O’Neale and Georges Niang before his freshman season. Queta was named the Mountain West Freshman and Defensive Player of the Year during the 2018-19 season after shattering the school’s single-season blocks record with 84. The Aggies also made the NCAA tournament in 2019 for the first time since 2011.
Queta put his name into the NBA draft after his freshman and sophomore seasons, but he took his name out both times. The 2021 Mountain West Conference Player of the Year put his name into the NBA draft for good in 2021 after averaging 14.9 points, 10.1 rebounds, 3.3 blocks and 2 assists per game in his junior season while shooting 56% from the field. NBA scouts were intrigued by his height, 7-4 wingspan and 9-3 standing reach. Still viewed as a project, the Sacramento Kings selected Queta with the 39th overall pick in the second round of the 2021 NBA draft.
Queta spent most of his first two professional seasons playing for the G League Stockton Kings. The 2023 All-NBA G-League first team and All-Defensive Team honoree averaged 16.8 points, 8.8 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1.9 blocks during the 2022-23 season with Stockton. He also played sparingly in 20 games for the Sacramento Kings from 2021-23.
The Kings, however, cut Queta before the start of training camp in 2023 to make room for veteran center JaVale McGee. While it would have been easy for Queta to sign with a team in Europe, he was determined to make it in the NBA.
“It was more about figuring out what was coming up after,” Queta said. “You enjoy your years over there. It was good years there. Built great relationships. But at the end of the day, it’s a business. They make decisions you can’t control. After that, it was just shifting the focus into figuring out what my next steps are going to be. And just taking the lessons that I learned over there into the next spot.
“I’m trying to make a better version of myself and just trying to make those losses into lessons. So, I’ve just been trying to get better from that point on. And it’s been working out pretty well for me.”
Boston Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla (left) said he’s impressed by Neemias Queta’s maturity.
Chris Marion/NBAE via Getty Images
Just days later, the Celtics signed Queta to a two-way contract. He appeared in 28 games for the Celtics during the 2023-24 season, averaging career highs of 5.5 points and 4.4 rebounds in 11.9 minutes per game while shooting 64.4% from the field. He also played in 11 regular-season games and five playoff games for the G League Maine Celtics.
Queta played in three playoff games for the 2024 NBA champion Celtics, including becoming the first player from Portugal to play in the NBA Finals when he logged minutes in Game 4.
“Boston is known for making players better,” Queta said. “Winning culture. Great coaching staff. At the end of the day, I felt like I could impact the rotation. Being able to play with JT [Jayson Tatum] and JB [Jaylen Brown], they are such good superstars that make everybody better around them. So, I felt like it was a big no-brainer for me.”
Mazzulla said Queta met all his initial expectations because of his professionalism and effort. Mazzulla added that he first gained true faith in Queta when he had 10 points and seven rebounds in the first start of his NBA career for Boston against the Atlanta Hawks on Nov. 4, 2024.
“The expectations were for him to be doing what he is doing for us now,” Mazzulla said. “One of the gifts that we have is our ability to see these guys all the time. People on the outside see a game. To me, it’s about the way you work out, the way you practice, the way you watch film, the way you walkthrough [at shootaround], the way you handle the last five minutes of a game if it’s a 20-point game, the way you handle it if you get to start once or twice.”
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“The contract, that’s all I wanted from the moment I got to the league on a two-way — slowly building, getting better, just trying to get in this league,” Queta said.
Queta averaged 5.0 points and 3.8 rebounds in a career-high 62 games for Boston during the 2024-25 season while learning from Horford, Porzingis and Kornet. With Horford and Kornet leaving via free agency and Porzingis traded to the Atlanta Hawks last offseason, Queta became the starting center for the Celtics.
While limited offensively, Queta has not disappointed in his new role, starting in 53 of 57 contests for Boston. The Celtics have championship dreams with MVP candidate Brown leading the way, the addition of veteran center Nikola Vucevic, and the potential return of Tatum from an Achilles injury.
Queta believes today’s Celtics have the team to win a record 19th NBA championship.
“We made a couple changes,” Queta said. “We lost a couple of key pieces, but I feel like we integrated the new guys pretty well and they’re huge for our culture. They’ve got something to prove, too. I feel like we all got something. We changed the team and all these guys started counting us out. We just want to go out there and just prove everybody wrong.”
Portugal is known for being an international soccer power, but through basketball, Queta is bringing his home country a different global spotlight.
“It’s a lot of love. Being the face of the NBA for Portugal is pretty good for me,” Queta said. “It’s a blessing that I don’t take lightly. I just want to be out here and just do the best I can so I can put the best version of our culture on the map.”
Marc J. Spears is the senior NBA writer for Andscape. He used to be able to dunk on you, but he hasn’t been able to in years and his knees still hurt.