France didn't steal anything in this case (talking about basketball, of course, I don't want turn this discussion into political).
Mirotic or Ibaka can play for Spain as much as Olajuwon was playing for the U.S.A.
American players playing for eastern european contries is a different story.
Those american players as Rochestie and Rice got an easy passport just to play in European leagues as "European player" and not as "non-European player" in order to get more leverage during contract negotiations, or to make it simple and clear... in order to get more money.
In European leagues you have to build up your team respecting some restrictions (for example, here in Italy you must have not more than 3 "non-EU players", not more than 4 "EU players" and 5 "Italian players" for a 12 players roster or even 5 "non-EU players" and 5 "Italian players" for a 10 players roster), so basically having the chance to sign a guy like Rice as Europaen makes the difference. I don't like it, of course. As these players obtain these easy passports, at least I hope they play during the summer for the national teams. Even Croatia, which always had a great basketball tradition, used to play with Draper or Lafayette until a couple of years ago.