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Straight Forward, vast majority of euro NBA players are centers/PF's. There is a limited pool of those in the US and they are importing them accordingly, however very few guards make it. It's a no big deal to raise a center/PF, it mostly depends on the quantity of those you have available and the ammount of them playing bball. If you are 210cm tall or more you're being taken care of ussualy. Sure good training plays a noticable role, but raising a good 7 footer is a whole different thing than guards, which are a much better indicator of a bball popularity overall - along with other stuff needed to develop those, but the ammount of guards playing bball is decisive as you need a whole lot more of them playing bball for one of them to make it compared to 210cm+ guys.
Bogdanović, Hezonja, Parker, Fournier, Batum, Belinelli, Dragič, Udrih, Vujačič, Rubio, Calderon, Schroeder, Antetokoumpo, Sefolosha
With Calathes, Gordon, Deng that were basicaly raised in the US, that's mere 17 players playing or expected to play some noticable role in the NBA on PG, SG, SF out of about 180 guards on NBA rosters
With Nurkić, Teletović, Ajinca, Diaw, Gobert, Lauvergne, Mahinmi, Noah, Seraphin, Turiaf, Pachulia, Nowitzki, Pleiss, Koufos, Bargnani, Galinari, Motiejunas, Valanciunas, Peković, Vučević, Gortat, Mozgov, Bjelica, Marc, Pau, Ibaka, Mirotić, Jerebko, Aldemir, Asik, Ilyasova, Kanter, Turkoglu, Len =34 PF or C's and probably most of those get to top100 C&PF's in NBA as far as their level goes
NBA has opened up, that's it, however considering the talent coming up in the recent years, while it might be tough to say that level is regressing it's quite obvious it's not much of an improvement either. Those 75-83' born (there somewhere) players made a tremendous leap in terms of quality compared to NBA, it was the Jordan/Magic/Bird effect to a large degree, however since 2001 when Kirilenko, Pau and Parker entere the league along with Nowitzki, Manu, the gap kind of stalled and stopped decreasing, occasionaly quite the opposite and even from todays players I don't think any of those is likely to become some superstar there, to me it seems more like the US has further improved in quality (due to increased popularity) and Europe is kind of at the same level (at best) as in 2000-2005
Let's wait and see how these players will pan out as well as how some promising 97' and 99' born will fare,
Bogdanović, Hezonja, Parker, Fournier, Batum, Belinelli, Dragič, Udrih, Vujačič, Rubio, Calderon, Schroeder, Antetokoumpo, Sefolosha
With Calathes, Gordon, Deng that were basicaly raised in the US, that's mere 17 players playing or expected to play some noticable role in the NBA on PG, SG, SF out of about 180 guards on NBA rosters
With Nurkić, Teletović, Ajinca, Diaw, Gobert, Lauvergne, Mahinmi, Noah, Seraphin, Turiaf, Pachulia, Nowitzki, Pleiss, Koufos, Bargnani, Galinari, Motiejunas, Valanciunas, Peković, Vučević, Gortat, Mozgov, Bjelica, Marc, Pau, Ibaka, Mirotić, Jerebko, Aldemir, Asik, Ilyasova, Kanter, Turkoglu, Len =34 PF or C's and probably most of those get to top100 C&PF's in NBA as far as their level goes
NBA has opened up, that's it, however considering the talent coming up in the recent years, while it might be tough to say that level is regressing it's quite obvious it's not much of an improvement either. Those 75-83' born (there somewhere) players made a tremendous leap in terms of quality compared to NBA, it was the Jordan/Magic/Bird effect to a large degree, however since 2001 when Kirilenko, Pau and Parker entere the league along with Nowitzki, Manu, the gap kind of stalled and stopped decreasing, occasionaly quite the opposite and even from todays players I don't think any of those is likely to become some superstar there, to me it seems more like the US has further improved in quality (due to increased popularity) and Europe is kind of at the same level (at best) as in 2000-2005
Let's wait and see how these players will pan out as well as how some promising 97' and 99' born will fare,
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