Post by Deleted on Mar 27, 2018 11:01:37 GMT -5
After recently joking around with Walter about my Slovenian home girl, Melania Trump, and the "Southern Slavs," I did a little Wikipedia research.
If you look at foreigners playing in the NBA, there are now 75 NBA players from the former Yugoslavia in the league-- more than TWICE the number of NBA players from any other foreign country.
This includes players from all of the former Yugoslav provinces-- Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Macedonia (in order of number of NBA players.)
It's an anomaly of sorts, because many Southern Slavic republics are not very populous. (Only about 2 million Slovenes when I visited in 1990.) But American basketball is VERY popular in the Balkans nowadays. And there are a lot of tall people in the former Yugoslavia. The ancient Greeks called them "Hyperboreans"-- barbarian giants.
One of these rising stars is the Denver Nuggets second year player Nikola Jokic, from a village in Serbia. He's emerging as an All Star caliber player this year in the NBA.
If you look at foreigners playing in the NBA, there are now 75 NBA players from the former Yugoslavia in the league-- more than TWICE the number of NBA players from any other foreign country.
This includes players from all of the former Yugoslav provinces-- Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Macedonia (in order of number of NBA players.)
It's an anomaly of sorts, because many Southern Slavic republics are not very populous. (Only about 2 million Slovenes when I visited in 1990.) But American basketball is VERY popular in the Balkans nowadays. And there are a lot of tall people in the former Yugoslavia. The ancient Greeks called them "Hyperboreans"-- barbarian giants.
One of these rising stars is the Denver Nuggets second year player Nikola Jokic, from a village in Serbia. He's emerging as an All Star caliber player this year in the NBA.
