It is the year 2009, but not that long ago, it was 1992. At least it doesn’t seem that long ago in basketball years.

While it is difficult to select a watershed moment when the NBA took on a truly international flavor, for San Antonio Spurs general manager R.C. Buford it was the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.

“It really began with that Dream Team,” he said. “When we first took U.S. pros into an Olympic environment over there in Barcelona, that was really the foundation for international exposure.

“People knew our players before then, and particularly Michael Jordan, but from that point on is when we saw a real influx of attention and popularity.”

The international transfer of basketball influence worked both ways. The NBA helped to popularize its brand all over the world. But the world slowly began to contribute basketball talent into a league that had looked at foreign players mostly as curiosities.

As the league gears up for the 58th NBA All-Star Game in Phoenix on Sunday, it’s important to note that four players from other lands — center Yao Ming of China (Rockets), forward Pau Gasol of Spain (Lakers), guard Tony Parker of France (Spurs) and forward Dirk Nowitzki of Germany (Mavericks) — occupy spots on the Western Conference roster.

And these days, the rosters of just about every NBA team has a player or two from outside the United States. And some have more than that: Aside from Gasol, the Lakers also have Sasha Vujacic (Slovenia), Didier Ilunga-Mbenga (Congo) and Sun Yue (China), and they recently traded away another, Vladimir Radmanovic (Serbia); aside from Parker, the Spurs have Manu Ginobili and Fabricio Oberto (Argentina) as well as Ian Mahinmi (France); and the Cleveland Cavaliers have Zydrunas Ilgauskas (Lithuania), Aleksandar Pavlovic (Serbia) and Anderson Varejao (Brazil).

According to the NBA, there were 75 international players on its opening day rosters from 32 countries. Twenty years ago, it was 20 players from 14 countries. In 1971, there was just one such player — Thomas Meschery of the Seattle SuperSonics (Russia).

Aside from causing the teams’ training tables to offer a more diverse menu, international players have succeeded in attaining the NBA’s goal of making basketball a truly global game.

Slideshow   NBA All-Star starters and reserves A look at the lineups for the East and West teams. more photos

“Because the other guys who came here have achieved great success, like Dirk or (Utah’s Andrei) Kirilenko, they showed that European players can play, too,” said Andris Biedrins of the Golden State Warriors, who comes from Latvia. “More and more guys want to come here. The NBA is scouting more and more European players because they see the talent over there.”

But of course, that wasn’t always the case.

Mitch Kupchak, the Lakers’ general manager, said about 15 to 18 years ago, having a player from another country on an NBA roster was a “novelty.”

“When teams would draft a player like that, they would say, ‘Is this going to work out?’” Kupchak recalled. “Then we drafted (Vlade) Divac (in 1989). He was really the first guy to achieve success quickly.” (There was also the late Drazen Petrovic of Croatia, drafted in 1986, who played for the Portland Trail Blazers and New Jersey Nets before his life was cut short in a car accident at the age of 28.)

“Here it is, years later,” Kupchak added. “It’s no longer a novelty. It’s a way of doing business.”

And it’s a thriving business. With international players making more and more of an impact, NBA teams have made corresponding increases in their scouting budgets.

“A lot of that has to do with the growth of the league,” Kupchak said. “We do have more resources now. I’d say 30 years ago the draft was as much word of mouth as anything, and you saw who you could see. As a general manager, you were a staff of one. A lot of that was budget driven.

“But here today, franchises are big business. We have two international scouts, one in Hong Kong and one in Italy. That’s an additional budgeted item.”

Each year, Kupchak and assistant GM Ronnie Lester take trips to Europe and Asia to scout players.

“The next two unknown markets are Central and South America, and then Africa,” Kupchak said.