With the NBA draft approaching, Matt Norlander created this wonderful map of every foreign-born NBA pick since 1998. It’s full of interesting patterns, names you may have forgotten, and many Slavs. Take a click for zoom-ability, color coding by year and names of individuals. A few things worth noting:
A map of every foreign NBA draft pick’s birthplace
NBA players come from all over the globe.
- Foreign-born players who attended United States colleges are not included, so you won't see, for instance, Luol Deng or Ronny Turiaf, nor any Canadian pros like Andrew Nicholson and Tristan Thompson
- Pavel Podkolzin came from waaaaay the hell out in Russia.
- The fact that little islands off the coasts of Spain have produced more NBA players than, say, all of South Asia, speaks to the frontiers still remaining for the popularity of the game and the league’s influence.
- On that note, if you zoom out far enough, you'll see that Sergio Rodriguez hails from the ocean. He is a merpoint guard.
Very cool.
