Well, would you just look at Les Boulez \u2014 actually, pardonne moi, Les Wizards \u2014 now. Helmed by not one but two French lottery picks, including the second selection in Wednesday\u2019s first round of the 2024 NBA Draft in center Alex Sarr and the seventh pick in 2023, Bilal Coulibaly<\/a>.<\/p>\n That duo is hardly alone. The first pick in Wednesday\u2019s draft was a Frenchman for the second straight year, with the Atlanta Hawks<\/a> selecting forward Zaccharie Risacher. He\u2019ll be teammates with French-speaking Swiss center Clint Capela<\/a>. Allez les Faucons! <\/p>\n Wait, there\u2019s more! The Charlotte Hornets<\/a> selected athletic French forward Tidjane Saluan sixth. Vive les Frelons! New York<\/a> nabbed another French forward, Pacome Dadiet, at 25. Comment dit-on ce mot \u201cKnickerbocker\u201d en Francais? <\/p>\n On a night when the only other big draft story was the kickoff of the 2025 \u201cSag For Flagg<\/a>\u201d campaign (welcome, Nets<\/a> and Wizards), the French invasion is the biggest news. Three of the top six picks were from France, including the first two; of the 14 players to go in the first seven picks in the last two drafts, five have been from France. Overall, a dozen French players have been chosen in the past three drafts, and we\u2019re not even done with this one yet. At least two more could easily be selected in Thursday\u2019s second round.<\/p>\n GO DEEPER<\/p>\n Analysis, fits for all 58 NBA Draft picks from John Hollinger and Sam Vecenie<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n That seems notable when there were only two rotation players* in the entire NBA<\/a> from that country \u2014 35-year-old Nic Batum and reigning Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert<\/a> \u2014 before last June. Among them is rising superstar Victor Wembanyama<\/a>, and there\u2019s more on the way: France\u2019s 2025 draft class includes a likely high lottery pick in guard Nolan Traore and two other potential first-rounders in forward Noa Essengue and guard Noah Penda.<\/p>\n (* \u2014 Killian Hayes doesn\u2019t count) <\/p>\n This, of course, is part of the growing internationalization of the NBA. The last six MVP trophies have gone to players from overseas; the top four players in the voting in 2023-24 were from Serbia, Canada, Slovenia and Greece, respectively.<\/p>\n Want more? Germany is the reigning World Cup champion, and after today has three players on the Orlando Magic<\/a> alone. Canada is sending an entire 12-man squad of NBA rotation players to the Olympics<\/a>. The Celtics<\/a> just won a title with key players from Latvia and the Dominican Republic, one year after Denver<\/a> prevailed with its two best players hailing from Serbia and Canada.<\/p>\n Heck, even teams like Les Boulez aren\u2019t strictly Francophile: They drafted a Swiss guy this year (24th pick Kyshawn George<\/a>), and a Serbian-Italian last year (42nd pick Tristan Vukcevic<\/a>).<\/p>\n France is having a moment, though, and it will continue into this summer as the French host the Olympics and chase the gold medal that narrowly evaded them in Tokyo in 2021. (France beat the U.S. in group play, if you\u2019ve forgotten, but narrowly lost to the Americans in the gold medal game.)<\/p>\n But it\u2019s also part of a bigger moment, as international basketball continues to expand its tentacles into what was once an almost exclusively American game. Besides the four French players and one Swiss noted above, Wednesday\u2019s first round also saw a Canadian selected 9th, a Serbian 12th, a German 18th and a Cameroonian 21st.<\/p>\n That\u2019s nine foreign players just in the first round \u2014 a stark contrast from even a year earlier, when the 37 picks after Wembanyama featured 33 Americans, two Canadians and just two others.<\/p>\n And we\u2019re likely to get more: Australian forward Johnny Furphy, Nigerian center Adem Bona, Spanish guard Juan Nunez, Swedish forward Bobi Klintman, Belgian guard Ajay Mitchell, Serbian forward Nikola Djurisic, Swedish guard Pelle Larsson and French forward Melvin Ajinca all seem likely to be selected in Thursday\u2019s second round.<\/p>\n That would take us to 17, and that still might not be all \u2014 additional players such as German center Ariel Hukporti, French forward Armel Traore, Malian center N\u2019Faly Dante and Dutch big man Quinten Post certainly could be drafted, even if it isn\u2019t hugely likely.<\/p>\n Dig deeper, however, and this is about more than quantity. You\u2019ll see another trend line emerging, both in the emergence of these French players and of the others from overseas: We\u2019re not just talking about the big guys anymore.<\/p>\n Yes, Wembanyama is an incredible freak, standing 7-foot-4 with the skills of a guard, but the more notable development is all the players coming through the pipeline now who aren\u2019t enormously tall. After all, it\u2019s one thing to find kids who stand a foot above all their classmates and put a basketball in their hands; quite another to have a development system that can produce skilled guards and forwards.<\/p>\n In recent years, even as internationals flooded into the league\u2019s big man slots, all but the Canadians were essentially locked out of the league\u2019s perimeter positions, with just a few rare exceptions. Luka Don\u010di\u0107<\/a>, obviously, is one, but a rare outlier until the last few draft cycles when we\u2019ve seen more talented ballhandling forwards (Franz Wagner<\/a>, the just-traded Deni Avdija<\/a>) push into the mix.<\/p>\n So, look at that crop of Frenchmen again. Yes, Sarr is a classic center from central casting, but he\u2019s the only one in the group. Risacher, Salaun and Dadiet all are combo forwards. Traore, their best 2025 prospect, is a point guard, and so is Penda. My list of potential overseas second-rounders above reads similarly: three guards and four sweet-shooting forwards. The other overseas picks from the first round included a Serbian point guard selected in the lottery and two small forwards. And next year\u2019s likely crop, in addition to the Frenchmen, includes highly touted forwards from Spain, Croatia and Russia, and guards from Italy and Lithuania.<\/p>\n And that, my friends, is the story within the story. The French invasion isn\u2019t notable only for having the top two players in the draft, or for a half-decade run where as many as 20 Frenchmen could end up selected. It\u2019s also notable for its distribution of sizes and skill sets, and mirrors something that\u2019s happening with international rosters all over. Remember, the top pick wasn\u2019t an overseas center this time; it was Risacher, a skinny 6-8 combo forward.<\/p>\n So it\u2019s not just about the bigs anymore. Overseas prospects are now showing the je ne sais quoi to rival the North Americans on the perimeter too. Risacher\u2019s selection at No. 1 is just the exclamation point on the trend line.<\/p>\n (Photo illustration of\u00a0Zaccharie Risacher and Alexandre Sarr: Eamonn Dalton \/ The Athletic; photos: Laurent Coust \/ SOPA Images \/ LightRocket via Getty Images; Lev Radin \/ Anadolu via Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tony Kornheiser was ahead of his time. Three decades ago, when I was an insouciant recent college graduate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[208,7,75,247,473,329,193,149,187,188,164,194,126,135,150,177,189,121,152,6,12,470,191,179,76,207,472,471,477,474,1080,476,427,468],"class_list":{"0":"post-1240","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba-draft","8":"tag-atlanta-hawks","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-boston-celtics","11":"tag-brooklyn-nets","12":"tag-charlotte-hornets","13":"tag-chicago-bulls","14":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","15":"tag-dallas-mavericks","16":"tag-denver-nuggets","17":"tag-detroit-pistons","18":"tag-golden-state-warriors","19":"tag-houston-rockets","20":"tag-indiana-pacers","21":"tag-los-angeles-clippers","22":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","23":"tag-memphis-grizzlies","24":"tag-miami-heat","25":"tag-milwaukee-bucks","26":"tag-minnesota-timberwolves","27":"tag-nba","28":"tag-nba-draft","29":"tag-new-orleans-pelicans","30":"tag-new-york-knicks","31":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","32":"tag-orlando-magic","33":"tag-philadelphia-76ers","34":"tag-phoenix-suns","35":"tag-portland-trail-blazers","36":"tag-sacramento-kings","37":"tag-san-antonio-spurs","38":"tag-top-sports-news","39":"tag-toronto-raptors","40":"tag-utah-jazz","41":"tag-washington-wizards"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"go-deeper\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/GettyImages-2159424715-scaled-e1719446882721-1024x511.jpg\")
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