{"id":250987,"date":"2025-10-30T13:29:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T13:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/250987\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T13:29:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T13:29:07","slug":"the-story-behind-the-nbas-record-international-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/250987\/","title":{"rendered":"The story behind the NBA\u2019s record international season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The continent\u2019s influence runs far beyond France, though. Nikola Joki\u0107 (Serbia), Giannis Antetokounmpo (Greece), and Luka Don\u010di\u0107 (Slovenia) remain among the league\u2019s brightest stars. Between them, they\u2019ve claimed five of the last seven MVP awards, underlining how much of the league\u2019s top-tier talent now comes from overseas.<\/p>\n<p>Behind France, reigning World and European champions Germany (seven players, led by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.olympics.com\/en\/athletes\/franz-wagner\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Franz Wagner<\/a>) and Serbia (six) continue to strengthen their presence, while Greece stays represented by the Antetokounmpo brothers (Giannis, Thanasis, and Alex) in Milwaukee.<\/p>\n<p>One should also not overlook the impact of NBA stars from smaller European nations such as Lauri Markkanen (Finland), Toumani Camara (Belgium), Kristaps Porzi\u0146\u0123is (Latvia) and Domantas Sabonis (Lithuania). Their success continues to open pathways for future generations of basketball prospects emerging from across the continent. Who knows where the next European icon will come from?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The continent\u2019s influence runs far beyond France, though. Nikola Joki\u0107 (Serbia), Giannis Antetokounmpo (Greece), and Luka Don\u010di\u0107 (Slovenia)&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250988,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-250987","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}