The NBA has had international players participate in the draft since 1983, and in the past 39 years, a total of 465 international players have joined the league (through the draft or other means), accounting for 15.7% of the 2,953 people who joined the league during the same period; Among them, 331 people who entered the league by draft were joined by draft, and the other 134 were undrafted; There have also been 12 champions: Hakeem Olajuwon, Patrick Ewing, Tim Duncan, Michael Olovokandi, Yao Ming, Andrew Bogut, Andrea Banyani, Kyrie Irving, Anthony Bennett, Andrew Wiggins, Ben Simmons, DeAndre Ayton (some players are dual-national, such as Irving, here the nationality of the NBA's official website prevails, Irving is considered Australian), and the proportion of international champions in these 39 years is as high as 30.8%.
Looking at the distribution of seasons in which players joined the league, starting from the 84-85 season, it was a small number of people, to the 00-01 season there was a breakthrough, to more than a dozen people, to the 16-17 season, breaking through to more than 20 people, and reaching the highest 32 in the 21-22 season.
Looking at the proportion of international players joining players in the year (orange trend bar), the situation will be different, because after the 17-18 season, the total number of new players in the league every year is relatively large (basically more than 100 new players joined), so the number of international players in recent years is large, but the proportion is not the highest, the highest is 32% in the 16-17 season.
To truly reflect the popularity of international players and avoid being deceived by data (for example, although the number of people joining is large, they are all undrafted, or low-ranked chicken ribs, which are not popular), and add the weight of the draft ranking (the weight of the champion is the highest, the list is second, and so on);
After adding the weight, the trend is very different: you can see that in the first 2 seasons, although the number of people is very small, only 1 or 2 people, but there are people who are elected champions (Olajuwon and Ewing), the weight accounts for up to 8%, and the next 11 years from the 86-87 season to the 96-97 season did not exceed this proportion, until Duncan was re-elected in the 97-98 season, the weight ratio made a new breakthrough, reaching 18%, while Yao Ming's 02-03 season reached a small peak of 29%; The highest proportion was 42% in the 16.17 season, almost equal to the American players, and among the 28 international players who joined that year, although there were no champions, there were Joel Embiid, Dragan Bender with the 4th pick, Buddy Hield with the 6th pick, Jamal Murray with the 7th pick, Jacob Poeltl with the 9th pick, Thorne Mark with the 10th pick, Domantas-Sabonis with the 11th pick, Dario Saric with the 12th pick, Georges Papayannis with the 13th overall pick, there are 9 international players in the lottery zone alone (top 14)!
Overall, international players are becoming more and more popular in the NBA, and let's wait and see if we can take advantage of the "zebra" momentum this year to reach a new high!