Countries With the Most NBA Players

It's weird that Canada has been so bad in international competition given the number of NBA players they've produced. Of course, Steve Nash not suiting up for them in his day probably didn't help.

They probably have an inordinate number as a result of the Toronto Raptors.

The Raptors usually don't have an excessive amount of Canadians compared to others. Right now they have 3. An argument could be made that having a team helps promote interest in basketball but the Toronto Metro has 6 Million people and the Basketball Interest is kind of skyrocketing right now as Hockey falls out of fashion.

Before Nash, there were only really a couple of players of Note and Nash did not even go to a top College. Now it is very common to see Canadians at schools like Duke, Kentucky, or North Carolina. The majority of NBA Canadians were born in the late 90s.

It is not strange if you know basketball history of Yugoslavia and its former republics. We have long basletball tradition, since WWII and very quality basketball schools. Hight have its roll also. Yes we are among highest people in the world. For example, I am 180 cm tall and I can not be considered as very tall man in Serbia. Also Slovenia is current European champion and Serbia is vice-champion at the World Cup and Basketball Olympic Tournament.

Which makes me wonder why Netherlands isn't represented. Those people are tall as well!

Because basketball is not so popular in Netherlands.

Also teams like Bosna Sarajevo, Cibona Zagreb, Jugoplastika Split and Partizan Belgrade were European champions with players from Yugoslavia only.

I also think that the Soviets did a lot to fuel interest in basketball in all the countries in their sphere of influence, including Yugoslavia, back before '92 when Communist countries could still beat the USA in Olympic basketball, due to the restriction on NBA players being allowed to participate.

Yugoslavia was not in the Soviet sphere of influence since the The Tito–Stalin Split in 1948.

Jeremy Hunt is that you?

They were less close, but still obviously within the Soviet sphere much more than they were in the American sphere, with closer cultural, diplomatic, and economic ties to Russia than to the US and NATO, at the very least compared to other nearby countries like Italy and Greece, a dynamic that persisted in Serbia even if not in some Yugoslav successor states, and lasts to this day.

Simply put, ex-Yugoslavia is historically the heart of European basketball, even more than the former Soviet Union. Slovenia is at the top, right now, while Serbia and Croatia used to lead the way in past decades. The first truly impactful European players in NBA history came from there.

Dutch men are the tallest in the world (185,6 cm / 6 feet 1).

and we are shit. I don't think it's height. Serbia has ruled European basketball for some time.

It's kinda like baseball where the every european championship has been won by either the Dutch or Italians

Yugoslavia doesn't stand out much in height compared to the rest of Europe except south. Interest/tradition/training quality is much more important than height (like speed skating in the Netherlands, Lithuania is also a similar "anomaly" in basketball). At some point half of the Euroleague coaches were ex-YU.

I love how Kyrie must count for Australia in this quiz

Got everything except Senegal.

7 chinese players in history, they will be on the list soon enough :)

Missed Bosnia and Lithuania. Should have remembered what I heard of Lithuanian basketball, but Bosnia is a surprise

It is because Serbs and Croats can be born in Bosnia but Will never play for BiH because they are not ethnically Bosniaks. Only muslims play for Bosnia. Christians born in Bosnia have dual citizenship of Croatia or Serbia.

For example Bojan Bogdanović is born in Bosnia but if you ask him je Will tell you he is Croatian.

Montenegro is small though

That's not the criterion chosen for this quiz. It's also the simplest as many players have more than one citizenship, or change it, or never played for the national team.

No Netherlands?

They're too nerdy, in a good way

There have been 6:

-Hank Beenders (1945-1950) Celtics

-Swen Nater (1973-1985) Bucks/Clippers/Lakers

-Geert Hammink (1993-2004) Magic/Racers/Warriors

-Rik Smits "The dunking dutchman" (1988-2000) (1998 All-Star) Indiana Pacers

-Francisco Elson (1999-2013) Nuggets/Spurs/SuperSonics/Bucks/76ers/Jazz

-Dan Gadzuric (2002-2015) Bucks/Warriors/Nets

Lot more college players though.

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Nice picture and great quiz! :)

It's not so simple, in either direction. Yugoslavia was 3 times world champion, but US didn't send the best players and Dream Team went to the Olympics too late for a direct comparison. There are only 5 players in the field in any case. But Yugoslavia was on the rise, also with knowledge and experience from the US, and the best generation started developing just before the breakup. Plus they'd have a lot more NBA experience these days.

US team was beating Yugoslavia at the Olympics in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as in the 1996 final match (that was after the breakup of Yugoslavia, so the team consisted only of Serbian and Montenegrin players. 14 minutes before the end of the game, the result was 51-50. That's when Divac got fouled out, and with Euroleague MVP Savic already injured, Yugoslavia had no more players at the center position, so the game ended 95-69). Anyway, you really can't compare today's basketball and the sport from 50 years ago. On the other hand, in the last 20 years Serbia alone won twice in the five matches against All-Star players filled US teams (once in an elimination game), and once had a last second shot to tie the game. This year, former Yugoslavia had two first team All-NBA players in Jokic and Doncic, along with another All Star in Vucevic. All in all, I am pretty sure US Team wouldn't have an easy job in those games, to say the least. Unfortunately, we'll never know.

USA #1! Nobody else comes close baby!