Dallas Mavericks minority owner Mark Cuban appeared on Shannon Sharpe’s ‘Club Shay Shay’ podcast and opened up on why international players are making a bigger impact on the NBA these days than American players. Cuban explained it as a combination of two factors: the lack of practice in AAU basketball and the European focus on developing basketball IQ and skill regardless of position.
“There’s two reasons. The rest of the world is bigger than us. We’ve got 330 million, but there are 8 billion people in the world. There are more options available, particularly in Africa and India. Their training methods are different. There’s no equivalent to AAU. Kids here, like my son, are playing game after game, but they hardly practice.”
“Over there, it’s two practices a day. You might play three times a week, so the focus is on developing skills. Here, we still pigeonhole people into positions, like if you’re a big, you play down in the block. That’s changing some but they still don’t work on all the skills or the basketball IQ.”
“Kids now are far more skilled at the high school and junior high level… They get that from social media but they don’t get the same basketball IQ. You don’t see that with AAU. Parents get into it too like, ‘Give my kid more minutes!’ There’s a lot of pressure on these kids too, they’re the meal ticket, and that’s tough.”
Cuban has seen his Dallas Mavericks thrive because of European basketball, as it helped shape both Dirk Nowitzki and Luka Doncic, easily the two greatest players in the history of the franchise.
Doncic won everything at the European level at the age of 17 before coming into the NBA and becoming a perennial MVP candidate after his rookie season. Nowitzki had a longer adjustment to the NBA but ended up having a 21-year career in the league where he won a league MVP, an NBA title, and a Finals MVP.
An International Takeover
The greatest players in the history of the NBA are American-born such as LeBron James, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and many more, but modern-era greats seem to be international stars.
The top of the NBA right now is littered with international stars including three-time MVP Nikola Jokic (Serbia), two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo (Greece), one-time MVP Joel Embiid (Cameroon), Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (Canada), and even Victor Wembanyama (France).
The 2024 Olympics proved how the level of basketball has increased around the world over the last 10 years, with European training better-preparing prospects to play FIBA as well as NBA-style basketball. The 2024 NBA Draft saw three French players selected in the top six, including the No. 1 and No. 2 overall picks, showing that even the top young prospects entering the NBA are European players.
There will always be American stars in the NBA because it’s an American league, but as basketball becomes more global, we’re going to see a lot more parity between American stars and international stars going forward.
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