weak draft dont know much about him but not to many european players have been good.
Dirk Nowitzki, Pau Gasol, Jose Calderon, Drazen Petrovic, Detlef Shrempf, Toni Kukoc, Tony Parker, Biedrins, Kirilenko, Dino Radja, Ilgauskus, plus lesser (but decent or still developing) players like Turiaf, Batum, Diaw... It's a long list, with plenty of good players on it.
I bet Rubio goes second after Griffin.
Add Sabonis to that list.
And a TP for speaking the truth.
Yup Ginobli should also be on that list. There are likely even more we're forgetting about. Where you're born doesn't mean squat about how much you can ball.
Ginobili is South American, but the South American players tend to play pro in Europe before the NBA, so they are kinda European.
Has anyone done a statistical comparison of the relationship between career success and draft position for US and non-US players? For example, compare the careers of US #1s and Euro #1, and all other draft positions.
Another interesting study would be the distance of actual draft position for career success order to see if Euro's or US players are more likely to be overvalued or undervalued. For example, if player A was drafted 10th, but ended up the 20th most successful player drafted (including undrafted draft entries from that year), than the distance would be -10. We could average these numbers (and the absolute values of these numbers) for all players in past drafts.
It is tough to classify players at times. Should Olowakandi be considered Euro, though he didn't really play ball abroad and went to college in the US, where he started playing ball? Should Ewing and Mutombo be considered non-US players when their training was also in the US? Should Dalembert be considered Hatian, Canadian, or what? Perhaps the borderline cases should be excluded from the analysis.