This is the second part of a six part series in which I thoroughly analyze six different age groups.  Although international players can be of all ages, they deserve their own category because of the differences of international basketball.  Therefore, just like I did with high school players, I will separate all international players drafted in the first round from 1995-2002 into three categories: point guards, swingmen (shooting guards and small forwards), and big men (power forwards and centers).

  The main statistic I will be using to judge these players is PER.  PER, or Player Efficiency Rating, was developed by ESPN’s John Hollinger.  According to Hollinger, “Player Efficiency Rating is a rating of a player’s per-minute productivity.”  The league average is set at 15.  More information can be found here: http://www.alleyoop.com/prates.shtm.

For each pick, I calculated an expected PER.  For a #1 pick to be a success, he had to have a career PER of at least 16.8.  For a #2 pick, 16.6.  I subtracted .2 from each subsequent required PER, all the way down to pick #30 which needed a PER of 11 to be a success. I then took a look at the difference between what a player’s PER actually was and what a player of that pick should be expected to attain.  Only first round draft picks will be looked at.

Unfortunately, there were not many point guards taken in the first round during the time period of the study.  Just like with high schoolers, teams hesitated to take foreign point guards early in the draft.  Raul Lopez had two mediocre seasons with Utah and did not play last year.  Parker struggled at first, but has developed nicely and is one of the best point guards in the game at just 24 years old.  Since 2002, five point guards have been taken in the first round.  The jury is still out on those five.

International swingmen are nearly impossible to predict.  In this sample of just 7 players, you’ve got one huge success (Kirilenko), one moderate success (Stojakovic), average players (Turkoglu, Welsch, Muursepp), a moderate bust (Nachbar), and a huge bust (Tskitishvili).  The player picked highest had the worst PER, and the second lowest pick had the best PER.  The best player is famous for blocking shots, but the second best is a three-point specialist.  In other words, the one thing we know about international shooting guards and small forwards is that we don’t know anything.  They are the hardest group to predict.

We can say that foreign big men fare better in the NBA than their smaller counterparts.  Four players have been huge successes: Ming, Gasol, Nowitzki, and Ilgauskas.  Other international big men such as Brezec, Krstic, Nene, and Radmanovic have turned into solid players.  Those taken in the lottery have been especially successful.  Of the five, three are superstars and the other two are very solid backups. 

Like high school players, foreign big men are relatively safe picks because of their size.  Teams are usually only willing to take non-American big men that are really big.  Of the 17 players above, 13 are listed as being at least 7 feet tall.  You can’t teach height, and in a league where size is at a premium, these guys are valuable.

To summarize, international big men seem like relatively safe picks.  The majority of them exceeded their expected PER, and most of the ones that didn’t weren’t terrible.  We can’t say much about point guards because of a small sample size and we can’t say much about swingmen because of their inconsistency.

Next I’ll be analyzing college freshmen.  Information from www.thedraftreview.com and www.basketball-reference.com was used in this study.

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