The NBA is an international game now. An international team just won the NBA championship, and it was a team comprised of many international players. An international player is about to win the league’s MVP award, and another international player will finish fourth or fifth on the ballot. The NBA is no longer just a U.S. game. Now there are players from Europe and Asia and Africa and South America, players spanning the globe. But who are the 20 greatest international players in NBA history?
The list below is 20 names long but could easily expand to twice that size. Players like Joel Embiid, Kristaps Porzingis, Pascal Siakam, Nikola Vucevic, and Luka Doncic look well on their way to joining a list of international greats, and we didn’t quite have room for Zydrunas Ilgauskus, Boris Diaw, Andrew Bogut, Manute Bol, or Rik Smits either. It’s truly an international league now, and lists like this will only continue to grow as the NBA continues to grow into a global sport. Soon enough we’ll have to make this a list of 40 or 50, maybe more.
Note also the omission of a few other names that are technically international but that are typically are associated with USA: Tim Duncan (Virgin Islands), Kyrie Irving (Australia), and Dominique Wilkins (France). Okay, enough preamble. Let’s take a look at the 20 greatest international NBA players of all-time…