NBA Thinks the World of Latest Influx

If you want the Cliff’s Notes version of the changing face of the NBA, just take a look at the San Antonio Spurs.

You’ll find representatives of the cause and effect of the foreign wave that’s sweeping through the league -- in short, the Dream Team and the surge in new talent it created throughout the league.

Spur center David Robinson was a member of the 1992 U.S. Olympic basketball team that went to the Summer Games in Barcelona, Spain, and inspired youth in other countries to want to be like Mike and the rest of the greatest squad assembled for competition.

“It started with the Dream Team,” said Spur point guard Tony Parker, a 10-year-old in Paris that summer. “I think, before that, the NBA was not that big in Europe. And after the Dream Team, everybody was talking about that.”

Now there are 65 players from 34 foreign countries in the NBA. It would be safe to give some credit to the Dream Team for every foreign player that enters the league from 2000 to 2010.

You can even trace Parker’s jersey number back to that team. He couldn’t take the No. 23 popularized by Michael Jordan, because in France he was only allowed to wear numbers between 4 and 15. So he chose No. 9, Jordan’s number with USA Basketball.

Eleven years later, Parker and Manu Ginobili (from Argentina by way of the Italian League) are usually right in the mix of the Spurs’ big plays.

Not only are they foreigners, they’re young foreigners. Parker just turned 21, and Ginobili will be 26 next month. In other words, the future is going to look a lot like ... them.

The top three teams in the league, record-wise, all rely on overseas players. For the Dallas Mavericks, who matched the Spurs’ 60-22 record, it’s Dirk Nowitzki. For the Sacramento Kings, it’s Peja Stojakovic and Vlade Divac.

And for the NBA, it’s a new world order.

“That’s changed the face a lot,” Robinson said. “A lot of those guys have come in because their fundamentals are so good. Those guys handle the ball. You look at Manu Ginobili. He’s not your typical foreign player, but he shoots the ball well, he passes it well, makes good decisions. Guys like Stojakovic -- an unbelievable shooter, he plays real smart. Those guys have brought a different dimension to the game.”

“It makes the league a lot better,” Parker said, “because now you’ve got different styles. You see how Manu plays, with his strange legs. Yao Ming from China ... it makes basketball more exciting, because now you’ve got different styles.”

The lure of the NBA is what brought them all to the United States.

“The NBA is huge over there,” Parker said of Europe. “It’s big. I was playing in Paris before I came here and nobody knew me. Now I play in San Antonio and everybody knows me in Paris. It’s kind of weird.”

“The competition is better, the talent is better,” Ginobili said. “It’s a whole different thing. The athleticism is a huge difference. The arenas ... there are so many differences.”

Foreign players used to take at least a season to make the adjustment to the NBA. Toni Kukoc with the Chicago Bulls, Stojakovic with the Kings and even Nowitzki with the Mavericks got off to slow starts as rookies. Two seasons ago, Spaniard Pau Gasol won the rookie-of-the-year award. And this year Ginobili stepped right in and made an impact with his aggressive style that resembles an all-star free safety with a nose for the ball.

“I think part of it has to do with, basketball is a whole lot better in Europe now than it was when Kukoc was coming up,” Spur Coach Gregg Popovich said. “The coaches over there are great. The systems there are better, the leagues are better, there are many more good players. The competition is such that when guys come over here now, they’re a lot more ready for this than they used to be.”

Most of them deftly handle interviews in English as well as their native language. They cope with a new country and new customs. The toughest adjustment might be the shift from being one of the best players on the continent to not cracking their team’s starting lineup.

“Your ego is a little hurt at the beginning,” Ginobili said. “But you’ve got to understand your role on the team, and what you can do to make your team better. You accept it. Nobody pretends to come from Europe and be a star here.”

Ginobili caught Popovich’s eye at the Tournament of the Americas in Puerto Rico four years ago. The Spurs took him with the 57th pick in the second round of the 1999 NBA draft. They took Parker with the 28th pick in the 2001 draft. Don’t expect the top foreigners to last that long this year. Six foreign players went in the first round last year, Yao at No. 1. Expect another six or seven foreign players to go in the first round this year, including Darko Milicic, a 7-footer from Serbia and Montenegro slotted for Detroit at the second pick.

The African continent has not contributed to the foreign flavor as much as Europe has. Only four players born in Africa were on rosters this season: New Jersey’s Dikembe Mutombo (Congo), Cleveland’s DeSagana Diop (Senegal), the Clippers’ Michael Olowokandi (Nigeria) and Portland’s Ruben Boumtje-Boumtje (Cameroon).The success of Nigerian Hakeem Olajuwon, who won two championships with the Houston Rockets, has not translated into a large influx of players from Africa. Now Olajuwon is retired and Mutombo is 36.

“I just hope that there would be more players from Africa coming to this league,” Mutombo said. “There have been a few of them, but they haven’t established themselves yet. Hopefully in the future we will find young talent and African players will come and take the torch away from us. Some of us don’t have much left to play, Hakeem is gone.... I don’t know what will happen to the future of African basketball players in this league.”

In September a group of NBA coaches and players will hold clinics in South Africa as part of the league’s international awareness effort that also includes games in China, Japan and Paris.

Meanwhile, the Dream Team is on the way out. The retirement of John Stockton and Robinson will leave only Karl Malone and Scottie Pippen from the stars of the original Dream Team.

You’ll see their legacy all over the league, though. Even if the names of their successors are difficult to pronounce.

J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com.