BY: NICK GERHARDT

ANCHOR: JIM FLINK

You're watching multisource sports video news analysis from Newsy.

Whip out your pronunciation guides--the 2011 NBA draft just went global. Teams drafted a record number of international players in the first round.
 

Lithuanians Jonas Valanciunas and Donatas Motiejunas, Jan Vesely of the Czech Republic, Congo’s Bizmack Biyombo, and Montenegrins Nikola Vucevic and Nikola Mirotic, all found teams in the first 30 selections.
 

Is the international game picking up? Maybe, but according to Sports Illustrated's Seth Davis, many of the NCAA's best are simply waiting for next year.

“Four of the top seven picks came from outside of the United States and six first rounders in all. Thats a combination of - number one - of a very strong international crop but, more importantly, - number two - the decisions by some of the top collegians, guys like Harrison Barnes, Jared Sullinger and Perry Jones to return to school. A weak college crop and a strong international crop gave us a foreign flavor to the draft this evening.”

Walter Szcerbiak, an NBA role player in his day and a father to former player Wally Szcerbiak, tells CBS the international game has arrived. Thanks, at least in part, to a diet change.
 

“I think its changed as far as the growth of the players, I think the players have become athletically more mature. and I think adding milk into the diet actually in a lot of the European countries has increased the height and the size. And I think in that way, the international teams and international basketball more closely approximated it to the NBA talent level.”
 

It was later pointed out in the CBS segment that international players have carved out a place on NBA benches as role players--superstars like Dirk Nowitzki aside. How would a team built mostly of international players fare in the NBA?

The Toronto Star covers the Raptors, the NBA’s only Canadian affiliate. That fan-base, existing north of the border, has seen a bunch of non-American players.
 

“In a town where Italy’s Andrea Bargnani has been a maddening disappointment, where Lithuania’s Linas Kleiza has underwhelmed, where Spain’s Jose Calderon has been overwhelmed by the speed of today’s point guards...a portion of its NBA-loving community has watched those non-North American players fail to prosper and adopted a particular kind of xenophobia.”
 

Like every other selection in the draft, only time will tell where these six rank against their draft peers.  Half of the six selected, though, must wait for their international contracts to expire, or their NBA team must dish out millions to buy out their current international contracts.