Keye van der Vuurst de Vries (born 29 December 2001) is a Dutch

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...

player for

Filou Oostende Basketball Club Oostende, for sponsorship reasons Filou Oostende, is a Belgian professional basketball team. The club is based in Ostend and was founded in 1970. The club competes domestically in the BNXT League and internationally in the Basket ...

of the

BNXT League The BNXT League, for sponsorship reasons the betFirst BNXT League, is a professional basketball league in Belgium and the Netherlands. The league is the first tier in both the Dutch and Belgian system, replacing the DBL and PBL. The inaugural s ...

. He is the youngest player to ever play in the

Netherlands national basketball team The Netherlands men's national basketball team ( nl, Het Nederlands nationaal basketbalteam) represents the Netherlands in international basketball matches. The national team is governed by Basketball Nederland. The Dutch have reached the Eu ...

, as he made his debut at age 16.

Early life and career

Throughout his childhood, Van der Vuurst de Vries played with the amateur team Lokomotief, in his hometown

Rijswijk Rijswijk (), formerly known as Ryswick ( ) in English, is a city and municipality in the western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. Its population was in , and it has an area of , of which is water. The municipality also includes th ...

. In 2017, he signed with Belgian club

BC Oostende Basketball Club Oostende, for sponsorship reasons Filou Oostende, is a Belgian professional basketball team. The club is based in Ostend and was founded in 1970. The club competes domestically in the BNXT League and internationally in the Basket ...

, where he played for the youth teams as well for Duva Fruit.

Professional career

Van der Vuurst de Vries made his debut with

in the 2018–19

Pro Basketball League The Pro Basketball League (PBL), was the highest tier level professional basketball league in Belgium for clubs. In 2021, the league was succeeded by the Belgian-Dutch BNXT League. Through 2014, for sponsorship reasons, the league was previous ...

season. For the following 2019–20 season, he was given a permanent spot on Oostende's roster. He won three consecutive

championships with Oostende. On 27 May 2022, he won his fourth consecutive Belgian championship and was named the

Finals MVP The Bill Russell NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award (formerly known as the NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award) is an annual National Basketball Association (NBA) award given since the 1969 NBA Finals. The award is decided by a panel of e ...

after averaging 9 points and 7.8 assists in the series against Kangoeroes. On April 26, 2022, he declared for the

2022 NBA draft The 2022 NBA draft (branded as the 2022 NBA Draft presented by State Farm for sponsorship reasons), the 76th edition of the National Basketball Association's annual draft, was held on June 23, 2022, at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. T ...

National team career

Junior teams

In 2018, Van der Vuurst de Vries won the

2018 FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship Division B The 2018 FIBA U18 European Championship Division B was the 14th edition of the Division B of FIBA U18 European Championship. The competition took place in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia, from 27 July to 5 August 2018. Participating teams * * ...

while playing with the Dutch under-18 team. He scored a game-high 35 points in the final, in which

Slovenia Slovenia ( ; sl, Slovenija ), officially the Republic of Slovenia (Slovene: , abbr.: ''RS''), is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the southeast, and ...

was defeated easily by 86–57.

Senior team

On 16 November 2018, van der Vuurst was selected by head coach

Toon van Helfteren Anton J. J. "Toon" van Helfteren (born 20 February 1951) is a Dutch former basketball player and current coach of Feyenoord Basketball. Van Helfteren played in the Dutch Basketball League from 1971 till 1990. He was the coach of ZZ Leiden from 2 ...

to be a part of the Netherlands senior team. On 29 November 2018, Van der Vuurst de Vries made his debut for the Netherlands at age 16, making him the youngest player ever to play for the Dutch team. He surpassed the record set in 1961 by Ger Kok. In his debut game, the Netherlands played

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, , is a country in Central Europe. Poland is divided into Voivodeships of Poland, sixteen voivodeships and is the fifth most populous member state of the European Union (EU), with over 38 mill ...

, and lost 78–105.

Personal

Keye is the younger brother of

Boyd Boyd may refer to: Places Canada * Boyd Conservation Area, a conservation area located northwest of Toronto, Ontario * Boyd Lake (disambiguation) United States * Boyd County (disambiguation) * Boyd, Indiana * Boyd, Iowa * Boyd, Kansas * Bo ...

, who plays professional basketball for

Okapi Aalst Okapi Aalst is a Belgian professional basketball club from Aalst, Belgium. The club competes in the top tier BNXT League and plays its home games in the Okapi Forum, which has a seating capacity of 2,800 people. Okapi is a long-time participant ...

Honours

Club

;Oostende *3×

/ BNXT Belgian Champions: 2018–19, 2019–20,

2020–21 The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen ...

, 2021–22 *

Belgian Cup The Belgian Cup (french: link=no, Coupe de Belgique; nl, Beker van België []; german: link=no, Belgischer Fußballpokal) is the main Single-elimination tournament, knockout association football, football competition in Belgium, run by the Belgia ...

: 2020–21 Belgian Basketball Cup, 2020–21 *

Belgian Basketball Supercup The Belgian Basketball Supercup, also called the Generali Supercup for sponsorship reasons, is a men’s professional basketball game in Belgium, which is played by the champion of the Basketball League Belgium Division I (Belgian champion) and the ...

: 2018 *2×

BNXT Supercup The BNXT Supercup is the super cup competition of the BNXT League, the top basketball in the Netherlands and Belgium. The super cup match is played by the Dutch champions and the Belgian champions of the previous season. The first Supercup was h ...

2021 File:2021 collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021; Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar following the coup d'état; A civil demonstration against the October 2021 coup in Sudan; Crowd shortly after t ...

2022 File:2022 collage V1.png, Clockwise, from top left: Road junction at Yamato-Saidaiji Station several hours after the assassination of Shinzo Abe; Anti-government protest in Sri Lanka in front of the Presidential Secretariat; The global monkeyp ...

Individual

* BNXT Belgian Finals MVP: 2022

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vuurst de Vries, Keye van der 2001 births Living people BC Oostende players Dutch men's basketball players People from Rijswijk Point guards Sportspeople from South Holland