NBA players on season opening rosters by birth countries + US NBA players per birth state

[JohnWillow]

After a request I will leave this right here.

[THE J0KER]

Very interesting to see this. There are many lists about how many players represent each country, but this is about the country (or US state) of birth which is a little bit different thing. For example, USA player Kyle Irving is born in Australia, while Lithuanian player Domantas Sabonis, the son of legendary Arvidas Sabonis, is actually born in the USA! Because of the height factor, basketball is a sport where "genetics" play a bigger role than in other sports, so many basketball players are kids of former basketball players which have at some point international career.

If we look at all 11 countries where is born 4+ active NBA players, two of them, Bosnia and Switzerland, are non-factor even in European basketball and can't qualify even EURO basket. Half of 4 SUI players playing for fatherland of their fathers (Vucevic for Montenegro and Kanter represented Turkey before things become wild), while Capela and Bazemore have no interest to represent Switzerland until they qualify at some decent competition level. So country where is born 4 active NBA players (including 3 notable starters) is nowhere in today's basketball. Bosnia's case is even more bizarre. The full name of the country is Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is important to say because in that part called "Herzegovina" living the tallest human population on the Earth. But most of the population in that area are ethnics Serbs and Croats which talented basketball players at young ages go to bigger basketball clubs in Serbia and Croatia, and best of them since junior level representing these countries instead of Bosnia (so, for example, Bojan Bogdanovic represented Croatia since earlier U16 competition level). Which is worse for the Bosnian national team hopes, even some talented players from the Muslim majority frustrated by NT weakness used to chose to play for other countries (Turkey especially), so the virtual selection of players born in Bosnia was always (since independence) much better compared to their real national team.

But Switzerland and Bosnia are not the only countries with a big gap between the quality of players born there and the level of domestic and national team basketball. But it is FIBA who should be blamed to not find a better qualification formula for big events. Slovenia with Doncic and Dragic won a European title, but without them can't even qualify for World Cup. National teams from Africa never survive group phase at world stage (Olympics and World Cup tournaments), but Cameroon team with Embiid and Siakam would easily do that, even compete for the medals, but the problem is they can't qualify without them even in a weak African competition.

[TORW]

In 10 or so years you're going to see 50 Canadians full time in the NBA at minimum.

[UcanUwill]

I believe Brazdeikis was born in Kaunas - so 3 Lithuanians are in the league. California tho, what a state.

[Dutchball97]

Still a shame there are currently no Dutch players in the league. We're huge and we've always been known for our technically sound play and revolutionary tactics in other team sports so I bet there are some guys walking around that could be really good with the right system in place. It's sadly very hard to get Dutch people invested in a sport that doesn't prominently feature any Dutch players.

[Chuck Diesel]

I’ve always wondered if they’ll ever ben an influx of guys from the Netherlands, Iceland and the Scandinavian countries.

[THE J0KER]

I’ve always wondered if they’ll ever ben an influx of guys from the Netherlands, Iceland and the Scandinavian countries.

The Netherlands at least has one former all-star player in 7'4 giant Rik Smits. According to their surnames, I'm pretty sure that Kiki Vandeweghe (also former all-star) and Keith Van Horn are of Dutch descent.

But the fact is that Netherlands and Scandinavia not produce so many NBA players like other European regions famous for their height (ex-Yugoslavia and Baltic area), I guess because of lack of high-level basketball tradition.