NBA - Main

What I think is interesting about this trend is that the last 3 MVPs have been foreign big men with skills or athleticism that very few big men possess. The ridiculous percentage of US 7 footers who make the NBA - and the associated lack of talent that you get from such a tiny sample size - has been a point of discussion for a long time (Pablo Torre has the exact percentage somewhere). I wonder if what we're seeing with the international growth of the game is a significant deepening of the talent pool of very tall men. I also wonder if it has anything to do with how players are developed in the US. AAU is probably a crime against basketball, but that hasn't stopped plenty of great American players from developing of course. Has it done harm specifically to centers maybe? The traditional American "unicorn" player is a guy like AD, who famously has his skills because he was a guard until he hit a late growth spurt. If he was 6' 6" by 8th grade would he still have those skills? What if he had developed in the European club basketball system? I have no clue what the answers are, but it's a lot of fun to watch the international players coming in.