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A truly global game The rest of the world nearly has caught up to the U.S.
Remember how Michael, Magic and Larry became worldwide icons at the 1992 Olympics? Conventional wisdom holds that basketball went global in the aftermath of those Barcelona Games. In fact, the Dream Team represented no balance of hoops trade, only the one-way reach and touch of the NBA. It has taken another 10 years, but the world is finally touching back. The NBA cognoscenti know that basketball's future lies overseas. That's why 19 GMs and player-personnel types, representing 14 teams, will be in Turkey when the European Championships tip off this weekend. That's why 11 foreign players were chosen in last June's draft -- the total number of foreigners on NBA rosters stands at 48 and counting -- and why 23 NBA teams will feature at least one non-American when camps open this fall. Ten years ago it would have been unimaginable, but with the Dallas Mavericks' signing of Wang Zhizhi of China, the NBA now includes a player from every continent. NBA clubs have long been intrigued by foreign-born centers. Now, the two teams that play the league's most crowd-pleasing styles, the Mavericks and the Sacramento Kings, each features a foreigner who figures to be an All-Star for years, Dirk Nowitzki of Germany and Peja Stojakovic of Yugoslavia, respectively. Both can play comfortably out on the floor. Meanwhile, two European point guards, Raul Lopez of Real Madrid and Tony Parker of Paris Racing, actually were selected in the first round of the June draft. From where he sat on the TNT set, commentator Kenny Smith furrowed his brow at all the furriners being chosen ahead of home-grown "known quantities," as he called them. In fact, Lopez and Parker are known quantities. The NBA can't afford to let them be unknown. Why is this happening? For years, foreign coaches humbly studied the American way, soaking up every last detail and applying it systematically. Now, as smugness sets in Stateside and more and more kids the world over play the game, parity has snuck up on the U.S., as evidenced by Lithuania's near-upset of the American Olympians in Sydney last summer. "For so long the NBA game has been one-on-one street ball, or maybe pick-and-roll," says Yugoslav coach Marin Sedlacek, who'll watch with pride as one of his players, Vladimir Radmanovic, a 6-foot-10 1/2 3-man who can shoot and pass, kites off to join the Seattle SuperSonics this season. "Now, with zones, a player like Vladimir is even more valuable because he can move the ball and get everyone involved." There are many more all-arounders where Radmanovic comes from, and the NBA's appetite for them will only grow as U.S. high schools and colleges turn out more and more players with stark deficiencies. "The rap on international players used to be 'No defense, no heart,'" says Kim Bohuny, an NBA executive wired into the worldwide scene. "Now our teams want international guys. They're seen as fundamentally sound. And they can shoot, where more and more American players can't." Adds Andrew Messick, the NBA's senior vice president for matters international: "One of the reasons the NBA and FIBA decided to throw the Olympics open to professionals was that, over time, it would raise the level of the game worldwide. So when Lithuania nearly beat the U.S. in Sydney, the story shouldn't have been, Isn't the U.S. terrible?, it should have been, This is working. In Barcelona the other teams were just honored to be on the floor. In Sydney they really thought they had a chance, and that's an enormously exciting development." In 1986 the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service refused to issue a special work permit to Petur Gudmundsson, a 7-2 center from Iceland who wanted to play for the Kansas City Sizzlers of the old CBA. The INS ruled that it couldn't justify giving a foreigner a job that might otherwise go to an American because Gudmundsson lacked "distinguished merit and ability." Be advised that someday -- someday soon -- a foreign government will invoke the very same reason to deny an American the papers to play in its national league. That's when we'll know that parity is completely upon us. Sports Illustrated senior writer Alexander Wolff is author of Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Adventure, which will be published in January 2002 by Warner Books. Send comments to thehooplife@aol.com.
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