NBA Players Born Outside of The United States (Part 4)
Serge Ibaka – Oklahoma City Thunder
Serge Ibaka is another international player whose performance in this season are not as good as in the previous seasons. He is still a very good player though. When Ibaka first joins the league he did not have much of a jump shot, but during his six-year of training, he has added a nice outside shot. This makes Ibaka much tougher in defend, but with Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant on his team the Thunder don’t require him to score twenty points a game. He averages a little to thirteen points a game and seven rounds per game this year. Serge has always been a talented shot blocker, and has continued to be one this season with averaging two blocks a game.
Kristaps Porzingis – New York Knicks
At the start of the 2015-16 NBA season, not many of us would have thought Kristaps Porzingis would become a top ten international player in the NBA. Porzingis has exceeded our expectations and had given Knicks fans something to be excited about for the future, and can be considered as one of the best rookies the NBA has nurtured this season. He averages fourteen points a game, which is the most surprising given that many had doubts about whether Porzingis would be able to reliably score during the NBA. He has also had an average of seven rebounds and two blocks per game.
Porzingis is entertaining to watch. One moment he’s knocking down a three pointer, the next he is blocking shots at the other side of the floor, and later on he is grabbing an offensive rebound and slamming it back in putting fans at Madison Square Garden to their feet.
Dirk Nowitzki – Dallas Mavericks
He may be a seasoned veteran, but the incredible man from Germany has always got the game. Dirk Nowitzki was one of the first group of footers that could hit an outside jump shot with ease. Picture a man seven feet tall facing the basket from twenty feet away, and the shot goes up and swishes in. It is almost impossible to defend Dirk, and at his age he is still putting up many points. He is averaging close to twenty points per game. That is actually an improvement from previous season when he averaged less than seventeen points per game. He gains almost seven rebounds a game, and at thirty eight, he can still get a block from time to time.