Players born outside the US are becoming more dominant in the league. But the pipeline from a close neighbor is still not flowing freely
It may be time for the National Basketball Association to consider changing its name to the International Basketball Association.
For six consecutive seasons, foreign-born basketball stars have dominated the NBA’s Most Valuable Player Award. Serbia’s Nikola Jokic has taken the award three times, Greece’s Giannis Antetokounmpo twice and Joel Embiid, who is a naturalized US citizen but grew up in Cameroon, has claimed it once. And going further back to 2013, more than half of the No 1 overall draft picks were born outside the US.