INFOGRAPHICS: International players taken in the NBA Draft often work out
Yeah, you might think most are busts, but there's a reality with these prospects often overlooked
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6 min read
Once again, we're running our annual NBA Draft Trends series. Every Wednesday leading up to the NBA Draft will feature a piece on both the college and/or professional angle of the draft to highlight patterns (and dispel some myths). We started with an unprecedented turn of events in this year's lottery. Last week, it was a deeper look at the history of the No. 2 pick. Today we're shining a light on international players.
What's your stance on drafting international NBA prospects? And what do you think conventional thinking is when it comes to picking players from overseas?
Most believe the odds aren't good. That players from overseas are often over-hyped due to the mystery surrounding them and the inferior talent they play with and against. Sure, there are exceptions (Dirk Nowitzki, Yao Ming, Tony Parker) but for a long time the belief among the majority of skeptics and cynics was that picking an international player was a bigger gamble than going with homegrown talent. Thought was: You occasionally get lucky with a player, but for the most part, these guys are either draft-and-stash prospects who never pan out (if they come to the States at all), or they're out-and-out busts.
That's simply not the case. And for more than 20 years, NBA general managers haven't been operating under the assumption that international players are high-risk. If they were, we wouldn't have seen more than 10 percent of the league's picks go to foreign players in that time frame. The international aspect to the draft is here to stay. The game is too big globally, and so college players should expect -- ever year -- that anywhere from five to 15 draft spots will be taken up by players outside the country.
Since 1996 (20 years ago), at least one foreign-born player has been selected in the first round of the NBA Draft. The high-water mark was 2003, when eight international players were taken in the first 28 picks. That was the Darko Milicic year; it was also the year LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony were drafted, which put more of a stigma on international guys, given how Milicic paled against the straight-out-of-high-school James and the one-and-done, national championship-winning Anthony. But Boris Diaw (21st) and LeAndro Barbosa (28th) were also taken in that first round. Both have built solid careers. Barbosa just contributed meaningful minutes for Golden State in its series comeback against Oklahoma City.
Often times, the first international player taken isn't the best international player from that draft.
There have been 4.4 international players picked in the first round on average since 1996. Only three times have we seen a first round only feature one international player taken: 1997, 2010 and 2012. Why do I bring all of this up? This year won't repeat that. It's a weak lottery for foreign-born players (Dragan Bender is the only lock to go in the lottery, and the 7-footer will almost certainly go top-five) but outside of that, there are seven more international players with a realistic shot of being taken in the first round. If that happens, it will be the most populated first round for foreign players since 2003. We could have a very heavy foreign feel in 2016, which is no coincidence given how weak of a draft year this is considered.
So if the college crop isn't great, why not take a flier on a foreign guy? This year, here are the projected first-round picks:
- PF Dragan Bender (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
- Wing Timothe Luwawu (France)
- SG Furkan Korkmaz (Turkey)
- C Ivica Zubac (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
- C Ante Zizic (Croatia)
- PF Juan Hernangomez (Spain)
- PF Petr Cornelie (France)
- C Zhou Qi (China)
Most fans have no idea who these dudes are. They mystery surrounding them doesn't drum inspiration or hope. On the whole, the public still has a long way to go when it comes to being sold on foreign prospects. Perhaps Kristaps Porzingis' play with the Knicks (it's very funny in hindsight to see how this pick was lambasted last summer) can further eliminate the stigma.
Why are international players worth going after? Let's look at the first round, because the sample size is ample and, on the whole, it's much more fair to the discussion. Generally, second-round picks are considered bargains if they land in the league, stay there beyond five years and become commodities. International players and U.S.-born ones alike have their streaks of aberrations and flameouts.
The first round is where the guaranteed contracts are, and so let's look at what foreign-born prospects are contributing over the past two decades. (Though, let's remember that Manu Ginobli and Marc Gasol went in the second round. Exceptions can flourish.)
These numbers are pretty solid across a 20-year evaluation period. Lottery picks are performing better vs. all first round picks, as you'd expect, but the gap is not huge. In terms of collective average offensive rating, foreign picks are at a 103, which is close to average.
As an aside, I only evaluated international players who were not born in the United States (so Brandon Jennings doesn't count) and also were drafted after only playing overseas (so foreign-born players who wound up playing college basketball did not qualify).
In terms of which groups have fared best, it gets trickier. The skeptics have remained skeptical because there is, almost without fail, at least one international player in every draft that can't cut it in the NBA. It's a false equivalency, though. Go back and look at the past 20 years worth of NBA drafts. Look at the Americans who were picked, guys from big schools, and see how they didn't pan out. On the whole, international players aren't failing at a substantially wider rate than players who come from college basketball.
So if you want to toss out Nikoloz Tskitishvili, Fran Vazquez, Yaroslov Koralev, Jianlian Yi and Jan Vesely, I can give you Tony Battle, Michael Olowokandi, Dajuan Wagner, Luke Jackson, Adam Morrison, Tyrus Thomas, Joe Alexander, Jonny Flynn, Derrick Williams, Thomas Robinson and Jimmer Fredette. And plenty more. Those are just some of the lottery picks to come from college in the past two decades.
Compare these averages to any of the major schools I just looked at in our College Comparison series. You'll see they're not much different. Go ahead, check out Kansas' production, the numbers from Michigan State and the almighty Kentucky. What Duke's guys have done. Look at the NBA career averages for those players, then circle back here and see what foreign players are producing.
What is true: When it comes to All Star-level players, it's harder to expect that kind of production from an international pick. You can find plenty of role players, a good number of starters, but since 1996 there have been 87 foreign players selected. They've made a total of 39 All-Star Games. Not a great ratio. It's emphasized further when you realize that 85 percent of the ASG appearances have come from four players: Ming, Nowitzki, Parker and Gasol.
Of course, the future looks bright. Porzingis, Bismack Biyombo, Rudy Gobert, Clint Capela, Dennis Schröder, Serge Ibaka, Giannis Antetokounmpo: all players with All-Star capability and certainly guys who could be top-three players on a given team. It's taken more than two decades, but this is the group that will likely do what Drazen Petrovic, Tony Kukoc, Arvydas Sabonis, Peja Stojakovic, Vlade Divac and Detlef Schrempf couldn't do: convince everyone once and for all that foreign players are just as consistently productive (in terms of ratio) as college players.
Finding the superstars isn't as fruitful, but go back and read all those names again. We've had nearly two dozen tremendous NBAers come from outside North American borders in the past 30 years. There have been more than 400 international players to play in the Association in NBA history. That number should hit 500 in the next 10-12 years. In that group, we're likely to get some of the best players not just internationally, but in NBA history. The game has grown too far, too wide, become too popular across the planet to not see better and better players coming down the pike from across the oceans.
