NBA fans finally received their first chance to see international prospects take the court at the Olympic basketball tournament in Rio.
It was a weekend full of surprises in the first two days of the Olympic basketball tournament, which included an Australian upset over France and Croatia’s shocking victory over Spain.
Along with those unexpected outcomes, the world is getting a chance to see some of the NBA’s international prospects take the stage and fans of teams throughout the league are watching closely to see how the next potential star of their franchise performs in Rio.
There are 11 players participating in the Olympics whose rights are owned by NBA teams, but have yet to take the court for their future franchises.
Eight of those 11 players are currently signed with NBA franchises. There are three players that were drafted by NBA teams who own their rights and can sign them in the future.
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There are plenty of other international players in Rio that have already made their NBA debuts, some of whom fell out of the league and may be looking for another shot back in the U.S.
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For the purposes of these rankings, we are only going to include the 11 prospects who have yet to appear on an NBA court.
Each of the 12 nations represented played one game over the weekend and beginning today, we will continue to update our power rankings after every two days of action, which means we will have five editions of these rankings by the end of group play.
After group play is over, eight teams will be left standing and the list of prospects still in action will shrink. We’ll continue the power rankings throughout the Olympics and at the end of the games, we will give out final rankings.
Let’s start with our first edition of our power rankings for the morning of Aug. 8, now that each prospect has played one game.
We’ll start with numbers 11-6 and go more in-depth with the top five players.
Next: Lower Tier