Canada's Lead in NBA's Global Ringz Race Could Grow in 2015 Finals

NBA championship pursuits are not local affairs.

Canada has made sure of it.

Sure, the race for rings unfurls on American soil. But obtaining finger hardware, as well as the Larry O'Brien Trophy, is the ultimate basketball accolade. The NBA Finals itself epitomizes the roundball profession. Its mystique and prestige casts a wide net—one that envelops the entire globe and has led to an influx of international talent over the years.

Overseas products are no longer a rarity. Preseason games are staged in different countries. China, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Canada and Brazil played host to preseason contests in 2014-15, with more games in the UK and Mexico played in the regular season as well. The NBA even implemented a USA vs. the World format for its Rising Stars Challenge over All-Star Weekend.

And the World won.

In that same vein, not one player on Team USA's FIBA World Cup roster this past summer was the proud owner of a title. Other countries such as Brazil (Tiago Splitter) and Spain (Pau Gasol) had more championship experience on the docket.

This year alone, each of the league's initial 16 playoff teams included at least one high-impact overseas stud. From the Golden State Warriors (Andrew Bogut) and Memphis Grizzlies (Marc Gasol), to the Chicago Bulls (Pau Gasol) and Cleveland Cavaliers (Tristan Thompson), to the Atlanta Hawks (Dennis Schroder) and San Antonio Spurs (more than half the roster), an international imprint is being left on the 2015 postseason.

That won't change heading into the NBA Finals. Overseas talents are well-represented on both Cleveland's and Golden State's rosters. Thompson specifically has the chance to increase Canada's commanding lead in the international arms race.

Naturally, this is ample cause to find out which countries are collecting the most championships.

From here on, "international players" will refer to those who meet at least two of the following criteria: born outside the United States, attended high school overseas, didn't attend a U.S. college and played/plays for a different national team.

These requirements are put in place to prevent an overreliance on birth locales. They come at the expense of players like Mychal Thompson, who is often recognized as a Bahamian national, but are necessary nonetheless.

Players must have appeared in at least one postseason game to qualify for consideration. We start with Basketball-Reference.com's index of internationally born players who have done so, sort according to our criteria and go from there.

Let us now start taking stock of a rings race gone global.

Historical Perspective

Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press

Thirty-three international players have won an NBA championship to this point. They total 53 titles altogether and represent 19 different countries.

Nine of those sectors have one ring to their credit, while the top 10 title-toters tout at least two:

Canada, as you can see, is leading the charge. If Thompson is able to snag a ring with the Cavaliers this season, it'll have a four-championship lead over France, its nearest opponent.

Since we're talking about 33 different players from 19 different countries, you'd think we would also be talking about a great deal of NBA franchises.

We're not.

Only seven squads have had a participating international player during a championship run:

Each of these teams has a reputation for dipping its feet in overseas talent pools (Houston Rockets, Dallas Mavericks, Spurs) or is a storied organization with titles galore, increasing the likelihood that an international player was part of a championship ride.

Or both.

The point: Holy freaking Spurs.

Twelve of the 33 eligible players have nabbed a championship in San Antonio. That's more than 33 percent of this entire field:

"I thought that was really ignorant," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich told ESPN The Magazine's Seth Wickersham in 2013 of the perception that overseas prospects were somehow inferior. "I couldn't believe that it was a pool that wasn't being used."

Not surprisingly, the Spurs had eight different international players log time in their most recent seven-game set with the Los Angeles Clippers. Even less surprisingly, they've employed the only two international players to win more than three titles (Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker) and three of the 13 to earn more than one (Beno Udrih):

There's more parity when looking at this situation specifically.

The 13 players to win more than one title hail from nine different countries. In fact, only two countries have more than one player who has collected multiple championships:

Canada keeps on popping up at the top of these country-encompassing scales. But while our neighbors to the north are doing a great job of churning out NBA champions, the vast sample size at play is a win for the entire world.

The 2015 Playoff Field

Joe Murphy/Getty Images

Look no further than this year's postseason bracket to justify the overwhelming impact overseas personnel are having on not just the NBA's player pool, but the power structure.

Exactly 208 players have participated in at least one postseason tilt thus far. International professionals account for 23.1 percent (48) of the participating body, a number that would be even higher if not for the injuries of Donatas Motiejunas (Rockets) and Thabo Sefolosha (Hawks):

This is neither an accident nor a surprise. The NBA's brand is forever expanding its reach, and more players are being funneled in from abroad as a result.

What's happening now, in these playoffs, is merely the continuance of a decades-long trend. As Steve Aschburner wrote for NBA.com ahead of the 2014-15 regular season: 

"

But the NBA's reach, in [a] number of countries, is pretty vast and its growth still strong. Consider: At the end of the 1998-99 season, the league had 40 international players from 26 different countries. By the end of last season, it was 90 players from 38 countries and territories, and dozens more still overseas whose rights are held by NBA teams. This season marks the first time more than 100 players — in a league of 450 — are on opening day rosters.

"

Twenty-eight different countries were represented at the start of the postseason, not including the U.S. And just like the historical view of championship winners, Canada is spearheading the field:

Every single one of the 16 original postseason outfits has had at least one international appear in a game. Fifteen have had at least two.

Ten have had at least three:

Both the Cavaliers and Warriors house foreign hoopsters of their own—none of whom have won a championship before. Eight offshore soldiers remain in general, so the overseas ring count will increase in some capacity by postseason's end:

Player	Country
Leandro Barbosa	Brazil
Andrew Bogut	Australia
Matthew Dellavedova	Australia
Festus Ezeli	Nigeria
Ognjen Kuzmic (Hasn't played)	Yugoslavia
Timofey Mozgov	Russia
Tristan Thompson	Canada
Anderson Varejao (Injured)	Brazil

It gets better.

Of the 48 total international players to partake in the playoffs, 12 of them have championships. By comparison, 19 homegrown talents have done the same. And despite being outnumbered nearly 4-to-1 in the entire postseason player sample, the overseas field owns almost as many championships (20) as its American counterparts (28):

Eight titles is a negligible difference considering the disparity in player volume. The colossal caveat, of course, is that San Antonio alumni represent nine of those 12 players and 16 of those 20 titles. 

But the Spurs also account for eight of the 28 championships on the other side. Both parties are benefiting from their longstanding dominance and propensity for investing in international ballers.

San Antonio also isn't contributing especially much to Canada's international stronghold. Cory Joseph is the only Canadian to be in its employ during a championship season, and he only accounts for one of the True North's 10 total rings. 

Thus, the Spurs are no longer an anomaly. They're on a different level with this progression, sure. But, more than anything, they're a new standard for the rest of the league—one that has succeeded in turning the NBA's championship pursuit into a global phenomenon.

Dan Favale covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter: @danfavale.