The Junkies get Will Dawkins to dish on the recent French flair in the NBA's draft lottery

This year’s NBA Draft saw the Top 2 picks, three of the Top 6, four first-rounders, and five out of 58 total picks come from France, which makes five lottery picks (and both No. 1 picks), six first-rounders, and nine total players from the nation of the Eiffel Tower selected over the last two NBA Drafts.

The Wizards have two of those, in this year’s No. 2 pick Alex Sarr and last year’s No. 7 Alex Coulibaly, and to quote France’s most famous non-resident, Beldar Conehead, that is mass quantities.

When GM Will Dawkins joined The Junkies on Friday to discuss this year’s picks, Cakes jokingly asked him ‘when is Ted Leonsis going to open the Wizards’ academy in France,’ and, well, Dawkins says there’s a reason we’ve seen 13 players taken over the last three NBA Drafts from a country that was once Tony Parker and Boris Diaw’s domain.

“This is a fertile recruiting ground, I’m not even joking – just like Major League Baseball teams put academies in Latin America in certain hotspots, is that something that you guys have had discussions about?” Cakes asked.

And here was Dawkins’ lengthy answer:

“I think the league has had some discussions on people of that nature being able to help keep the talent in France, but international basketball goes in waves. There were times in the early 2000s where Argentina had that wave, and then it probably went to Spain after that, and now it’s France’s turn, and I think what France is doing is just developing players at a rapid rate at a good young age. It used to be just like one or two academies that they went to, but now all of the professional teams in Pro A are investing in the talent and Pro B and their lower leagues. So the coaching is better, the resources are better, and I think they see more examples of themselves in the NBA; it's not just Tony Parker and Boris Diaw anymore, you see a big conglomerate of French players and they're competitive. They've always been athletic and now they're learning more and more and the NBA is no longer a dream, it’s a goal and aspiration for them. And once that mindset shifts, I think we've seen what we've seen, and to be honest, it's not gonna slow down. They have more coming.”