(Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images)
The NBA is a global tournament now.
Foreign players taking their talents to the US is no longer as rare as it used to be.
Moreover, that narrative of foreign players being slow, bad defenders, or unathletic is all in the past now, and rightfully so.
Of course, plenty of that has had to do with the stars that paved the way for more of those to come.
Dirk Nowitzki was undoubtedly one of the main ones responsible for that.
That’s why it only felt right that he sent fellow European hooper Goran Dragic a farewell message ahead of his retirement game.
The German legend congratulated Dragic on his career and thanked him for keeping the European players’ status high in the league.
He also wished him well in his post-basketball career (via NBA).
Dirk’s retirement message to The Dragon! @swish41 x @Goran_Dragic
Don’t miss Dragic’s farewell game featuring Nowitzki, Luka Doncic, Nikola Jokic and more at 2pm/et on the NBA App. pic.twitter.com/21IrqPxGCP
— NBA (@NBA) August 24, 2024
Dragic obviously wasn’t as impactful or influential as Nowitzki, but he was a very valuable player wherever he went and helped take down that stereotype of unplayable foreign players.
Some of the most prominent players in today’s game are all foreign, and we even had two French players going No. 1 and No. 2 in this year’s edition of the NBA Draft.
Luka Doncic, Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Victor Wembanyama are just a small sample of European players dominating the court in the US.
Hopefully, this will only continue to open even more doors for the best players from all across the globe to take their talents to the most competitive basketball tournament on the planet.
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