15 NBA Players Who Were Born In Countries That Don't Even Exist Anymore
The NBA is truely an internation league at the moment, especially when you compare the amount of players in the league from other countries right now and 20 years ago.
The league has a whopping 108 international players on rosters this season from a record 42 countries, breaking the previous record set back in 2016, which was set at 41 countries.
It's been a long process to get to this point however, so long in fact, that some players in the league today are from countries that don't even exist anymore -- either due to merging with other countries, or their home country being broken up into several, smaller countries. So today, we're going to list 15 players -- thanks to LukeMellow on Reddit -- who technically don't have a home country to play for anymore.
Czechoslovakia
Tomáš Satoranský
Soviet Union
Zaza Pachulia
Timofey Mozgov
West Germany
Dirk Nowitzki
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
Boban Marjanović
Miloš Teodosić
Goran Dragić
Nikola Mirotić
Bojan Bogdanović
Mirza Teletović
Nemanja Bjelica
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
Nikola Jokić
Bogdan Bogdanović
Zaire
Bismack Biyombo
Emmanuel Mudiay
Barring Zaire, which was located in Africa, where the Democratic Republic of the Congo exists today, almost every other country on this list is from Eastern Europe, with Yugoslavia proving to be the then-country with the most NBA exports. If we're to learn anything from this, it shows us just how unstable Eastern Europe was before the new millennium, and we can respect the likes of Nikola Jokic and Nikola Mirotic a little more considering what they had to go through to reach the NBA.
