Birth Country of NBA Players for 2012

Note: I meant to post this last week, but my internet went down for a few days.


Introduction


Basketball has spread to nearly everything corner of the globe, and international stars feature heavily in the league from Nowitzki to Ginobili to Rubio. Playing styles have also permeated into the game with the Euro step now used by many American stars. Whenever the topic of international players comes up, an inevitable question is which country has the most. Similarly to how I constructed the studies on the racial/ethnic compositions of NBA teams, I looked at which countries had the most minutes played by NBA players who were born in the respective country.

Methodology


Statistics were from the 2011-12 regular season, while the birth country of each player was found online, which is surprisingly easy thanks to birth city and country being part of the vital stats that are always listed. While some players only lived in their birth country for as little as a year, I still included them for that particular country because I needed one standard way to label everyone and it would be too much work researching where everyone lived as a child and for how long. Guys born on a military base were listed with the home country of their parents (e.g. Boozer in Germany.) While some "countries" are not officially such, I thought it would be more informative to show the spread of the game by including such regions as the US Virgin Islands and French Guinea, which is one of several overseas departments of France that would have made their total even more impressive.

Populations were gathered from the CIA World Factbook online for an estimated 2012 July population except for the overseas departments of French Guiana, Guadeloupe, and Martinque, which used worldstat.info for the latest population estimates. I realize it's not a reputable source like the CIA World Factbook is, but their populations are so low the results would be wonky anyway. As a last note, when dividing the countries into continents Turkey was treated as half European, half Asian, and the Caribbean Islands along with Central America were given to North America.


Results


The main output of the study was a large global map color-coded based on how many minutes players from that country had. Although the US dwarfs the competition capturing over 82% of the total player minutes during the regular season, 48 different countries and territories were represented. Besides the US totaling an absurd 394,626 minutes out of 479,061 possible, the largest sum was Spain with 8713, but France also has a legitimate claim if you include their overseas departments like the 1176 minutes from French Guinea. (Spain's total is still only 1.8% of the total minutes played in the NBA.) Eastern Europe used to have the world's highest concentration of basketball talent overseas, but even Russia had a pitiful sum (Kirilenko played for an international team because of the lockout) and now the western Europe triumvirate of France, Spain, and Italy dominate the NBA.

The below picture shows the minutes of each country in the world with a color from white meaning zero minutes to red to black, which is reserved for the greatest contributor Spain. For a better look at the picture I'd recommend clicking on it to increase the size. I cropped much of the Pacific Ocean to fit the map, so Hawaiians please forgive me. The Olympics are starting soon, and the biggest contenders for the medals are highlighted -- the US had to be given a different color so it didn't skew the results, Spain is the greatest challenger to the US, France sports lots of talent but underwhelms in competitions, Argentina is aging but still effective, Brazil can't be ignored, Turkey surprisingly has the fourth highest minutes in the world, and Italy could sneak by someone. Greece has been one of the biggest threats for years, but their players like to stay in Europe. I also cropped Antarctica off the map as they sadly had no representatives.

There are some surprises, but this is from only one season. I suspect looking at the past, say, five seasons would be more representative of the league because you'd get more healthy seasons from guys like Bogut, Ginobili and even Yao, the lockout's effect on international players would be covered by four other seasons, and even more countries would be included. As it stands, this a snapshot of the league as it is now with players from Tanzania, Venezuela, Senegal, and the Czech Republic.

Looking at this from a continent perspective, North America is of course the leader but even without the US the minutes would be a healthy 12,498. Europe to no one's surprise is the leader ignoring the US, but I expected a stronger showing from South America given Brazil and Argentina's influence. Australia is low on the list, but if Bogut is healthy and Irving plays more minutes along with others like Patty Mills they could actually challenge Asia, who if it weren't for Turkey would have a pitiful total.

Country	North America	South America	Europe	Asia	Africa	Australia
Minutes	407,124	9665	44,655	6397	9037	2183

Finally, is it fair to compare the minutes that, say, Brazil has compared to Serbia? Brazil has one of the biggest populations in the world, and countries like Serbia or Lithuania  don't even have the same number of people as many of Brazil's cities have. Accordingly, I used the 2012 population's from the CIA World Factbook to calculate the number of minutes per one million residents as an adjustment. The full results are in the appendix, and what's immediately obvious is that low population countries and territories like the US Virgin Islands are at a significant advantage. What's surprising, however, is that the US is ranked fifth despite having the third highest population in the world. Of course it's an American league, but that's still impressive.

Speaking of impressive, there are 22,177 minutes per one million residents in the US Virgin islands thanks to Duncan and Raja Bell. That's an immense lead over French Guiana at 4282 minutes. Slovenia outranked the US and was first among countries with at least a million residents (Udrih and Dragic are their representatives.) For larger countries, Serbia led with 342 followed closely by Switzerland at 339 for those over 5 million. For even larger countries Spain has a healthy 185 minutes per million residents. At the bottom of the list are mainly huge countries like China and Russia or ones with an insignificant amount of minutes like the Ukraine (17 minutes from Fesenko.) Mexico is the lowest ranked country with over 1000 minutes, but Brazil is interestingly also near the bottom. They have a ton of talented NBA players from Splitter to Nene to Barbosa, but the largest population and decrease in minutes due to events like Nene's injuries kept them down. Adjusting for population lets you compare the output of Sweden and France, which are similar on a per resident basis. You wouldn't think Sweden is a major force in the league, but they have a smaller population than most realize and Jonas Jerebko was skilled enough to earn major playing time. It's also the only way Venezuela will ever be ranked above Argentina in basketball.

Conclusion

The games are held in the US and one Canadian city, but it's an international game now. Ignoring the birth place of the players is ignoring the incredible journeys of guys like Ibaka and Nash. Countries like France and Spain produce players at an impressive rate, but Switzerland and Turkey are also two surprising basketball factories. Until Duncan retires, the US Virgin Islands will likely hold the title of highest NBA minutes per resident unless Svalbard suddenly produces an all-star. Small central and eastern European countries like Slovenia and Serbia punch above their weight class with a healthy output, which has been true since the Soviet Union. Despite the spread of the game, the US still dominates its own league with over 82% of the total minutes played and ranked fifth on a per resident basis, remarkable for such a large country. However, the NBA is now firmly defined as an international game, and forgetting the contributions of the non-Americans is forgetting a vital aspect that makes the game special.

Appendix

Rank	Country	Population	Minutes	Minutes/one million residents
1	US Virgin Islands	109,574	2430	22176.79
2	French Guiana	274,652	1176	4281.78
3	Guadeloupe	503,274	921	1830.02
4	Slovenia	1,996,617	2832	1418.40
5	United States of America	313,847,465	394626	1257.38
6	Montenegro	657,394	527	801.65
7	Martinique	498,151	279	560.07
8	People's Republic of the Congo	4,366,266	1792	410.42
9	Georgia	4,570,934	1640	358.79
10	Serbia	7,276,604	2491	342.33
11	Switzerland	7,655,628	2600	339.62
12	Latvia	2,191,580	739	337.20
13	Lithuania	3,525,761	1057	299.79
14	Puerto Rico	3,998,905	1032	258.07
15	Panama	3,510,045	713	203.13
16	South Sudan	10,625,176	2129	200.37
17	Spain	47,042,984	8713	185.21
18	Israel	7,590,758	1341	176.66
19	Sweden	9,103,788	1468	161.25
20	Haiti	9,801,664	1446	147.53
21	France	62,814,233	8348	132.90
22	Czech Republic	10,177,300	1078	105.92
23	Canada	34,300,083	3413	99.50
24	Australia	22,015,576	2183	99.16
25	Italy	61,261,254	4850	79.17
26	Dominican Republic	10,088,598	798	79.10
27	Greece	10,767,827	792	73.55
28	Belgium	10,438,353	759	72.71
29	Turkey	79,749,461	5066	63.52
30	Venezuela	28,047,938	1706	60.82
31	Argentina	42,192,494	2385	56.53
32	Poland	38,415,284	2114	55.03
33	Cameroon	20,129,878	1009	50.12
34	South Africa	48,810,427	1961	40.18
35	Jamaica	2,889,187	108	37.38
36	Germany	81,305,856	2079	25.57
37	Senegal	12,969,606	328	25.29
38	United Kingdom	63,047,162	1416	22.46
39	Brazil	205,716,890	4398	21.38
40	Democratic Rep. of the Congo	73,599,190	1557	21.16
41	Mexico	114,975,406	1358	11.81
42	Russia	138,082,178	687	4.98
43	Tanzania	43,601,796	139	3.19
44	Iran	78,868,711	206	2.61
45	Netherlands	16,730,632	29	1.73
46	Nigeria	170,123,740	122	0.72
47	Ukraine	44,854,065	17	0.38
48	China	1,343,239,923	203	0.15