In just over 24 hours, the NBA Draft will begin as teams hope to find the last piece to their championship puzzle or a cornerstone on which to build their franchise.
While a pair of big men in Kentucky’s Karl-Anthony Towns and Duke’s Jahlil Okafor are regraded as the top two players, the draft will again have its fair share of foreign players go very high.
Kristaps Porzingis from Latvia, Emmanuel Mudiay from the Republic of Congo and Croatian Mario Hezonja look to be surefire lottery picks and all could very well end up in the top 10. It is worth noting that Mudiay played his high school basketball in the United States near Dallas before playing professionally in China.
But should all three go in the top 14 as expected, it would run the total of international players selected as lottery picks to 19 since 2003. While players who fit that bill like Mickael Pietrus, Thabo Sefolosha and Danilo Gallinari have gone on to have productive NBA careers, the long term potential associated with drafting foreign players has rarely paid huge dividends in recent years.
In fact, the last 16 international lottery picks have combined to make a grand total of zero All-Star games. The last foreign born lottery pick to play in a NBA All-Star game was Chinese center Yao Ming, who went first overall to the Houston Rockets in 2002.
Though it seems every team is searching for the next Yao, Pau Gasol or Dirk Nowitzki, reaching for foreign players has led to some of the league’s biggest draft busts like Darko Milicic, Yi Jianlian and Jan Vesely. The list however, doesn’t stop there as some players rarely or in other cases never, stepped foot on a NBA court.
Yaroslav Korolev, who went 12th overall to the Los Angeles Clippers in 2005 and Mouhamed Sene, who was selected 10th overall to the Seattle SuperSonics the next season combined to play in fewer career games than there are team games in a single NBA season. Korolev played in just 34 games for his career and Sene appeared in only 47.
Fran Vazquez, who went 11th to the Orlando Magic in 2005 and last year’s No. 12 overall selection by the Magic, Dario Saric, have yet to appear in a NBA game. Saric was traded to Philadelphia on draft night last year, but elected to spend the season in the Turkish Basketball League and recently said he won’t be joining the 76ers for the 2015-16 season.
Of the 16 international lottery selections since 2003, seven never averaged in double-figures scoring for a season while Jianlian did so just once during his 5-year career.
The NBA has certainly had more than its fair share of college and even high school players that went high in the draft and floundered in the league, but the majority of recent lottery picks from American schools have gone on to be at the very least, contributors for NBA teams.
It’s impossible to know whether Porzingis, Herzonga and Mudiay will turn out to be the next Nowitzki, Detlef Schrempf and Drazen Petrovic or perhaps better, but if recent history says anything, reaching for either of those three early in the draft will be a major risk.
For three teams on Thursday night — likely three that didn’t make the playoffs this past season — they’ll be hoping that risk is worth the reward.
