Luka Dončić isn’t leading the charge of international players to the top of the NBA’s superstar ladder.
But he’s rising, rung-by-rung, right alongside a bunch of his friends in what has become a crowded climb by foreign players. They are, simply, every bit the new faces of NBA greatness as any Americans.
And this trend may well become a way of life in the league’s future – if it’s not already.
Since 2005, 11 players have won the league’s MVP award. Seven of them are Americans. Four – Canada’s Steve Nash, Germany’s Dirk Nowitzki, Greece’s Giannis Antetokounmpo and Serbia’s Nikola Jokic – are imports.
Only one of them, Nash, went to an American University.
Before this stretch, only one non-American had won the MVP trophy, Nigerian-born Hakeem Olajuwon in 1994 (Tim Duncan is from the U.S. Virgin Islands).
Admittedly, MVP awards are not the sole measuring stick for superstardom. But Serbia’s Jokic and Greece’s Antetokounmpo, who have combined for the last three MVPs, take a back seat to nobody in terms of where they are on the NBA’s talent scale.
And the smart money believes that Joel Embiid (Cameroon) and Dončić (Slovenia) will join them, perhaps sooner than later for Embiid. And the way Luka has played in the past six weeks, plus the success the Mavericks are enjoying, will put him back on this season’s MVP radar soon enough.
“You look at the game, the teachers have gone abroad to teach the game and they probably don’t get enough credit,” Mavericks coach Jason Kidd says. “And the teachers and coaches from different countries have done an incredible job of teaching the fundamentals of the game.
“You can see that throughout the NBA. Our MVPs have been from Europe. You look at the dominance of our European players, it’s very strong and it will continue to keep coming because they’re doing a great job of teaching the game.”
This weekend’s All-Star Game in Cleveland is a wonderful example of where the NBA is. There are 26 all stars (two injury replacements to the 24 original stars).
Four of the 10 starters voted in by the fans are international players: Antetokounmpo, Embiid, Jokic and Canada’s Andrew Wiggins. Two of the reserves – Dončić and France’s Rudy Gobert – also are from outside America.
That leaves 20 of the stars from the U.S., so clearly the depth of star-level players still tilts heavily in America’s favor.
But look at the names from around the globe who did not make the All-Star rosters: Domantas Sabonis, Pascal Siakim, Nikola Vucevic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander all have posted prodigious numbers this season. You could make a case for all of them.
And rookie international players like Oklahoma City’s Josh Giddey and Orlando’s Franz Wagner are already serving notice that their future will come quickly.
This isn’t to say the American superstars are dwindling in number. This league still is driven by Kevin Durant, LeBron James and Steph Curry.
But the international influx is undeniable.
“I think we’re way past talking about the game just being in the U.S.,” Miami coach Erik Spoelstra says. “This has been a global game for a long period of time. It just shows you that great basketball players can come from any region on this planet.
“The game is growing. The interest is growing. The NBA has done a fantastic job of growing the game and developing it, even in some places where you wouldn’t necessarily think it would be developed.”
Spoelstra offered a story from when he was in college at the University of Portland.
“It’s well-documented that I grew up a Portland Trail Blazers’ fan,” he said. “Blazer fans, we still hang on to that missed timing. We had (Drazen) Petrovic and Arvydas Sabonis. But they couldn’t come over at the same time. If they did, I still think that the outcome of (the Blazers’ two NBA finals losses in the early ‘90s) possibly would have been different.”
That was when the international invasion was but a trickle.
The year Kidd came into the league in 1993-94, there were two international players who made the All-Star Game. And both of them, Hakeem Olajuwon and Patrick Ewing, had attended American universities before being top draft picks.
Go back 10 years earlier and there were 24 American-born players in the 1984 All-Star Game.
Now, it’s a flat-out flood. In the 2021 draft, three of the top eight picks and five of the top 13 were international players.
“The European coaches, we’ve learned from them. They’ve learned from us,” said Detroit coach and former Maverick assistant Dwane Casey. “And they’ve embraced the NBA game. For awhile there was a little animosity between the coaches, but they’ve embraced it (rather than) fighting the NBA style, saying that in the NBA, there’s no fundamentals. That use to be the word.
“Now all the young kids are NBA-ready because they’ve been learning the pick-and-roll game and spreading the basketball around and the 3-point shooting. And we’ve stolen a lot of their ideas, also.”
The Mavericks, of course, led the charge years ago of embracing worldwide scouting and cultivating relationships overseas. Dirk Nowitzki was unearthed by former Mavericks’ GM Donnie Nelson. Casey said he remembered when the courtship of Nowitzki was just beginning.
“I remember Detlef Schrempf was telling us about Dirk,” Casey said. “I said, ‘Det, tell me about this skinny kid coming from Germany.’ (Schrempf said) ‘Aw, he can’t play. He’s no good. He’s just a big, long white kid.’
“And lo and behold years later, here he is going to the hall of fame. But he was something new coming to the league. And nobody really knew about him. Now we know as much about European players as anybody.
“If I was an owner, I would spend a lot of resources scrounging the world because there’s a lot of good players all around the world right now.”
Don’t worry. They already are.
And competition has gotten so good in some locales that young Americans are utilizing other leagues to their advantage.
“In the U.S. we have players going to Australia to skip college to participate in leagues in Australia,” Kidd said. “It just shows the world is catching up to the U.S. when you look at the global game. There’s a lot of talent.”
Who knows? Maybe some day the All-Star Game will be a U.S. versus the World event.
Twitter: @ESefko
Share and comment