Adjusting to the daily grind, physical play and endless stream of hotel suites can be tough for any rookie in professional basketball. But when the Dallas Mavericks' Dirk Nowitzki first moved to the NBA four years ago, he faced more of a culture shock than most. Nowitzki, a seven-footer from Germany, couldn't play much defense (which earned him the nickname "Irk") and was briefly tagged, as many European imports are, a "soft" player who shies away from contact. He often found himself riding the bench, so he had lots of time to work on his English.
Now he couldn't feel more at home. An All-Star for the second straight year and the league's sixth leading scorer, Nowitzki, 24, like Houston Rockets center Yao Ming and Sacramento Kings forward Peja Stojakovic, belongs to a swelling corps of international players who are winning hearts, minds and dollars, both in the U.S. and abroad. While helping make basketball arguably the world's fastest-growing sport, he and the other sharpshooting globetrotters have managed to captivate hard-to-please hoops fans in the U.S. "Nowitzki's just a freak. He's too big for the small forwards to guard and too quick for the centers," says Aaron Offeyer, 23, a Dallas native and Maverick fan who was sporting his hero's jersey at a road game against the New York Knicks.
Memphis Grizzlies sensation Pau Gasol, a gangly 7-ft. native of Spain who can handle and shoot the ball like a 6-ft. guard, last year became the first European player to win Rookie of the Year. This year Yao is a favorite to become the first Asian to get the honor. Meanwhile, Russian-born 6-ft. 9-in. forward Andrei Kirilenko is helping his elders John Stockton and Karl Malone keep the Utah Jazz in the play-off hunt. "There are going to be a lot of us," says Gasol. "We're proving we can play here."
They are also proving that the game can play overseas. The NBA is putting the finishing touches on plans to hold several of next year's preseason games in Europe, Latin America and Asia, including China. By the end of the decade, predicts NBA commissioner David Stern, "there will be multiple NBA teams in Europe," either as regular expansion franchises or in a separate league. Developers are starting to build modern European arenas to help promote expansion of the game. Some observers have suggested staging a Ryder Cup of pro basketball, with U.S. stars battling a team of their international colleagues, perhaps in place of the traditional East-West All Star matchup, as the National Hockey League now does.
What began as a trickle in the 1980s, with the arrival of occasional foreign stars like Hakeem Olajuwon (Nigeria) and the late Drazen Petrovic (Croatia), has turned into a flood. This season a record 65 players from 34 countries and territories outside the U.S. are suiting up, accounting for 16% of the league's rosters, compared with only 6% a decade ago. A third of the 18 players chosen for the All-Star Weekend's Rookie-Sophomore game came from overseas, among them standouts like San Antonio Spurs guard Tony Parker (France), Denver Nuggets forward Nene Hilario (Brazil) and Orlando Magic guard Gordan Giricek (Croatia).