American people are very glad and jealous of this superiority complex towards of all the players around the world! So, since the years 1985-90, every foreign player who jumped up in the NBA had to deal with a lot of difficult situations and never give up in front of a lot of adaptation and integration problems. In this kind of difficult environment a lot of players gave up, only the strongest and most skilled ones have got respect and glory in the NBA (Drazen Petrovic, Vlade Divac and Tony Kukoc from Europe but also Hakeem Olajwuon and Dikembe Mutombo from Africa).

These players opened the door for the European invasion that took place about five or six years ago. This 'invasion' took place not only for the interesting talent and skills of the European players but also because the NBA management saw in this invasion a big opportunity to make money, exporting the NBA world to Europe; with all these European players in the league the European attention and participation in the NBA became higher than ever.

Now the situation has changed radically, the European players aren't something to hide but something to be proud of! Today European players are so big a reality in the league because of their handle bal talent that team scouts look with interest at young European players, taking under contract a lot of 18-year-old guys.

So, the results were good in Europe: more audience and more money!

THIS IS QUITE A FUNNY ADVERTISEMENT FOR THE DALLAS MAVERICKS THAT CAN HELP YOU UNDERSTAND MORE ABOUT THE WORLDWIDE NBA SITUATION: THE OTHER TEAMS SHOOT ONLY FROM THE COURT, DALLAS WITH A LOT OF FOREIGN PLAYERS SHOOT FROM OUT OF THE STATES! (BALL = SHOOT) (from "SLAM" - May 2002)

Moreover, this 'globalizing' tendency has been practiced also in the rest of the world, in particular in Turkey, in Argentina and in the most wanted market: China. This proceeding is now going on: the 2002 first pick on the draft was for the first time a not-American player, the Chinese Yao Ming who is a true commercial phenomenon; a lot of foreign players are decisive leaders in their teams and now children all over the world can dream of an NBA future.

This is the present situation, what is going to happen is difficult to imagine, the only certainty that we have is that what has happened is only a chapter in the history of NBA.

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