Voyage Across the Atlantic

A lot of recent developments have shown that an increasing number of players are beginning to take offers from teams in Europe, offers that are much more lucrative than those that their skills can garnish here in the NBA. While there is no major All-Star caliber name that is leaving the league for lush contracts in Europe, the large number of players leaving is alarmingly high and this appears to be a growing trend for more and more players that aren't happy with where they're playing, how much they're playing, and just simply put, where they are in the NBA. Among the players to leave include Josh Childress, Jorge Garbajosa, Nenad Kristic, Carlos Delfino, Bostjan Nachbar, Primoz Brezec, and Juan Carlos-Navarro.

Granted most of the players leaving are non-US players to begin with, it would make sense that they would be willing to go back home, such as in the case of Juan Carlos-Navarro, after finding that the NBA isn't as great of a fit for some as it is for others. However, in the case of Josh Childress, we have US talent that is now being lured overseas, with Carl Landry also pulling the Europe card, it shows that the international basketball market is swiftly catching up with that in the US. What does that mean for the US franchises? For one it means that in order to keep serviceable swingmen and role players like Josh Childress and company, the teams are going to have to pay a lot more, or they're going to have to bank on a lot of potential panning out. All in all, the NBA is going to start looking very different, a lot of new players filtering in and out, and maybe some familiar faces we are used to drifting to different markets playing games that we have to find somewhere on YouTube instead of on cable. What this really means now, is that the Europe card is real and it's serious, it's a new leveraging tool that many players are willing to use as the NBA gets younger.