The 2023 NBA off-season brought another summer of EuroLeague's best crossing the Atlantic to join the best and biggest league in the world. Last season's MVP, Sasha Vezenkov, joined the Sacramento Kings and the 2021 EuroLeague MVP Vasilije Micic signed with the Oklahoma City Thunder.
This is nothing new. Almost every summer the EuroLeague's best players get poached by the NBA. With some exceptions - Sergio Llull, Dejan Bodiroga, Dimitris Diamandtidis, and others - the best players in the world eventually want to play in the best league in the world. But for as often as players decide to make the jump, a fair number head back quickly.
So who are the best former EuroLeague players in the NBA?
We selected a top-5 based on current NBA rosters and did our best to rank them accordingly. There may be disagreements, but remember that these players are being ranked mainly by their NBA performance with exceptions made for rookies. For the rookies, we will be making educated guesses on how their skills will translate and have already gone in-depth on both Micic and Vezenkov this off-season.
Plenty of good NBA players did not make the cut here, and that doesn't mean we don't think they're good, we just think the five we chose are better. Goga Bitadze, Joe Ingles, Daniel Theis, Filip Petrusev, and others are all good players but at a lower level than the core we selected.
Some overseas transports did not play in EuroLeague either. Maxi Kleber never did, for example, even though he had a few professional seasons in Europe under his belt before coming over. Never playing in EuroLeague is also a common trend for youngsters such as the Miami Heat's Nikola Jovic. Most players in this age range are also not talented enough to qualify for this top-5.
Lastly, an honorable mention for P.J. Tucker. The geriatric bowing ball-shaped defensive stopper and NBA champion spent five seasons overseas after getting cut by the Toronto Raptors as a rookie. He played in EuroLeague for German club Brose Bamberg in his final season. If you ever wanted to see a highlight reel of Tucker iso's, here you go.
Now, here are the 5 best former EuroLeague players in the NBA.
5 best former EuroLeague players currently in the NBA
5. Vasilije Micic, Anadolu Efes Istanbul to the Oklahoma City Thunder
A 6-foot-5 pick-and-roll master and basketball wizard, Vasilije Micic is finally coming over to the NBA at 29 years old. Sam Hinkie drafted Micic late in the second round of the 2014 NBA Draft. The Serbian guard was not a super well-known prospect at the time and was not a well-known stash player for a while. We took a deep dive into Micic's career, and his need for freedom to succeed in the NBA, earlier this summer.
For most of his early 20s, Micic was a role-player guard. He had decent size, knocked down open shots, and could run pick-and-roll. He was a serviceable rotation player, and nothing more. That all changed when he joined Anadolu Efes Istanbul in the summer of 2018. Micic exploded and became one of the best players in EuroLeague. He earned MVP honors for the 2020-21 season and helped lead Efes to back-to-back titles in 2021 and 2022.
After Efes failed to make the EuroLeague playoffs last season, both Micic and head coach Ergin Ataman decided to leave the club. Micic signed with the Oklahoma City Thunder who acquired his draft rights from the Sixers in the Al Horford salary dump trade. He is a rookie, but one of the most experienced the league has ever seen.
4. Sasha Vezenkov, Olympiacos to the Sacramento Kings
Forty years ago, Georgi Glouchkov became the first NBA player ever from the Eastern European bloc. The Bulgarian forward played for the Phoenix Suns in the 1985-86 season. Now, Glouchkov is President of the Bulgarian Basketball Federation and the next Bulgarian forward is trying to leave their mark in the NBA: Sasha Vezenkov.
Vezenkov, aged 28, is signing with the Sacramento Kings after winning the 2022-23 EuroLeague MVP award with Greek club Olympiacos last season. He led the Reds to the championship game where they came up short against Real Madrid. In the season before, They lost in the semifinals to a Vasilije Micic buzzer-beater.
Vezenkov will fit perfectly with the Kings. We analyzed his game in-depth earlier this summer; he's one of the best off-ball scorers in the game. He's a knock-down spot-up shooter with a lightning-quick release, a great cutter and screener, and uses his touch perfectly in the 8-17 feet range to remain impactful across the court. He'll be awesome next to Domantas Sabonis and De'Aaron Fox, and could maybe help the Kings make it to the second round and beyond next season.
3. Bojan Bogdanovic, Fenerbahce to the Brooklyn Nets, now with the Detroit Pistons
Croatian forward Bojan Bogdanovic is entering his tenth season in the NBA. In the summer of 2014, he left Fenerbahce and EuroLeague behind and signed with the Brooklyn Nets. That put an end to a 10-year career in European professional basketball.
Standing 6-foot-7, he's been a lights-out shooter throughout his career and that's enabled him to not only remain in the NBA but often start for his teams. He's a career 40 percent shooter from beyond the arc on nearly 3,500 attempts. He averaged over 20 points per game in 2019-20 with the Utah Jazz and in 59 games with the Detroit Pistons last season he averaged a career-high 21.58 points per game.
Bogdanovic is currently the highest-paid player for the rebuilding Pistons and offers their young core some much-needed floor spacing. While Detroit is likely very happy to keep him alongside Cade Cunningham, Jaden Ivey, Jalen Duren, and others they are also probably open to moving him for the right deal.
Only $2 million of his $20 million salary is guaranteed for the 2024-25 season, meaning plenty of teams could look to acquire his shooting at the trade deadline and then cut him before next season.
2. Bogdan Bogdanovic, from Fenerbahce to the Sacramento Kings. Now with the Atlanta Hawks
Their names are practically inseparable and they were equally difficult to rank in this list. Bogdan and Bojan Bogdanovic generally have a lot in common. They're both lights-out shooters, played for Fenerbahce before coming to the NBA, and often get confused for one another. Okay, those are mainly basketball traits but still, they are similar on-court players.
Bogdan gets the nod here because he did win a EuroLeague championship before coming over, and he also has more skills as a creator. Whether it be for himself in isolation or for others in pick-and-roll, Bogdan is much more comfortable on the ball than Bojan is. Bojan still has more to his game than shooting, he's good at attacking closeouts and making the right reads off of that and can even play in the post a little bit but Bogdan's skillset is more desirable in today's NBA.
The Atlanta Hawks are looking to either shed salary or acquire another star to pair with Trae Young and Dejounte Murray, and Bogdan can officially be traded. His skill set and contract could move in either of these trades for the Hawks, so it'd be somewhat surprising if he was still in Atlanta by the end of this season. Several teams shouldpursue the Serbian guard, and we outlined some of those a short while back.
1. Luka Doncic, from Real Madrid to the Dallas Mavericks
This one was a no-brainer. The Slovenian wunderkind is not only the greatest international prospect of all time, but one of the greatest draft prospects of all time generally and could go down as the best international player to ever play the game at the end of his career.
In Doncic's last professional season in Europe at age 18, he led Real Madrid to the EuroLeague championship and Liga ACB championship. He also won the EuroLeague Rising Star award for the second season in a row, EuroLeague MVP, EuroLeague Final Four MVP, and Liga ACB MVP. He was one of a kind then and there's a good chance we never see another 18-year-old take international basketball by storm like that ever again.
He was drafted by the Atlanta Hawks and traded to the Dallas Mavericks for Trae Young and a future first-round pick in the summer of 2018 and after his rookie season, he has made All-NBA first team for every season of his career.
Alongside former teammate Jalen Brunson, he led the Dallas Mavericks to the 2022 Western Conference Finals but missed the playoffs last season after Brunson's departure to New York. With a full season of Kyrie Irving and some solid off-season moves, Doncic has his sights set on taking the Mavericks back to where they once were.
