One hundred and twenty international players, from 40 different countries. This is the balance sheet of the NBA census a few hours before the opening of the 2022/23 season. For the NBA, Joel Embiid is still Cameroonian, and Kyrie Irving Australian since he was born in Melbourne.
France, even with a declining quota, maintains nine players in the North American championship with newcomers Ousmane Dieng and Moussa Diabaté who join Evan Fournier, Nicolas Batum, Rudy Gobert, Killian Hayes, Frank Ntilikina, Olivier Sarr and Théo Maledon .
In recent years, Canada has become the first country to “export” talent, and this season, there will be 22 Canadians in the NBA! Stars like Andrew Wiggins, RJ Barrett, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander or Jamal Murray were joined by Bennedict Mathurin and Shaedon Sharpe in particular.
Eight “strangers” to the Raptors
Behind Canada, we find France with nine representatives, tied with Australia (including Kyrie Irving). Germany comes in 4th position with six representatives. Dirk Nowitzki is no longer there, but German basketball is doing wonderfully, as we saw during the last Eurobasket.
In the NBA landscape, there is a record 38 players who have passed through Basketball Without Borders (BWB) camps. Thirty-eight, like the number of African players.
As for the franchises, and it’s not surprising, the most “international” team is Toronto with eight players of foreign origin. The Mavericks, Pacers and Kings follow with seven international players each. The Thunder and Jazz have six each.
