World news

PARIS [The Monday International Show] - After about 20 percent of the regular season in the NBA, several trends are developping which merit our attention concerning the international players.

The big surprise so far is the improvement of Milwaukee, the team with the most international roster of the whole league, including seven non-american players plus Jennings and Bell, who played in the euroleague before the NBA!

On the other hand, Toronto with six non-US players, has the second worst defence in the NBA and only seven wins in 18 games. You can't tell me they would not have played better defence with Messina as coach!

Dallas and Phoenix, with 3 non-US players each, are doing much better than expected so far. Of course, the question is, will these trends play out over the whole regular season?

As far as individual international players go, I closely studied the nba.com efficiency ratings and several salient points jumped out at me.

First of all, Tony Parker probably won't make the west All-star roster because he is only rated 17th in efficiency among the west guards. Kobe, Chris Paul, Deron Williams,Brandon Roy, and Monta Ellis have a big head start and Parker would need to average over 25 pts. a game for the next 20 games to have a chance!

The efficiency rating is similar to what europeans call evaluation, which is a good indicator of overall performance even though defensive impact is hard to translate into numbers.

Also, the international influence is still much stronger in the western conference with Dirk, Pau and Duncan in the top five, while Marc Gasol (a surprising tenth),Nash,Néné and Scola all make it into the top 20. Wow!

I invite you to check-out the whole list on nba.com; click on statistics then efficiency rating. In the eastern conference, the best non-US players are Horford(11),Noah(12),Bogut(13),Deng(17) and Bargnani(25).

Joakim Noah is the third-rated eastern center in efficiency behind Howard and Lee and up to a week ago was even number one. Notice that he is curiously listed with the forwards whereas he is a true center, and he was surprisingly left off the All-star ballot. Someone's got some explaining to do!!

In the end, when we compute all this information, we realize the incredible importance of Pau Gasol since his arrival in LA at all levels (teamwork,team spirit,individual performance).

Also, note the unreal consistency of Nowitzki at the highest individual statistical level over the years and the stunning improvement this season of Marc Gasol and Noah, two true european centers, a rare breed!

Another interesting trend is that Boston, Cleveland, Orlando, Portland and Denver are big time contenders with only one (or none for Boston) international player influencing team results.

Of course Denver has a couple players from outer space but they don't count! end

George EDDY