By Stefan Djordjevic / info@eurohoops.net
European teams have always been in favor of bringing over a couple of players from the United States in order to strengthen their rosters and that trend has been increasing throughout the past two decades, making Americans a crucial (and big) part of clubs’ plans.
According to RunRepeat’s data collected by Dimtirije Curcic, the share of Americans in Euroleague grew by 119% since the 2000-01 season while their minutes share in the league grew by 84% and points share by 76%. At the same time, the number of Europeans is declining, dropping by 27%.
This past season was the first one with more than 30% of players coming from the US. As a reference, the first EuroLeague season featured 14.6%. Additionally, the 2016-17 season was the first where the Americans took over the lead in minutes played over the homegrown players.
While the initial US signings were primarily guards, as the European ‘traditional centers’ started to die out and were replaced with more agile, versatile, better shooting bigs, there was a steady increase of American athletes filling out those roles.
It should also be noted that the NBA has seen a fair share of changes as well with Euros getting more attention and chances. Since the 2000-01 season, Americans share dropped from 90% to 77% in the NBA while Europeans rose from 4% to 13%.
The increase in EuroLeague is also a byproduct of the fact that there are no limitations on the rosters depending on the nationality of each player.
Contrary to other European leagues, both the EuroLeague and the EuroCup teams are free to sign and use whoever they want and in many cases, EuroLeague teams are signing non-local talent only for the EuroLeague. Those players are either on a rotation or simply can’t be used in domestic league games of the same team due to the usual limit of non-local players which, depending on the league, is either five or six players in most cases.
The changes of rules and the globalization of sports certainly affected the percentages around the world when it comes to foreign vs domestic players in teams but has it been just that and the numbers will balance out in the end, or is there a significant difference in talent and the young players’ development which will make the homegrown players a rarity in Europe’s top competitions? Time will tell…