Well, yeah ... inspired.
Still not the same thing tho.
I mean ... our immersion dont broke when we meet an Elf, a Dwarf, or a Goblin (yes i know Tolkien called them Orcs) since they are from Middle-earth ... do we?
They even have origins that are obviously inspired by draconians. They really weren't trying to hide it at the time.
And how are those, elves, goblins and dwarves used? The Forgotten Realms is a setting where such races as tabaxi, Aarakocra, wemic etc tend to be rather rare, either mostly confined to specific locales or well, just plain rare to begin with. Fire-breathing dragon-men are-I hope we can agree-just a little bit 'more special' than bipedal cats, yet they are used in a manner opposite of sparingly. Even the official stats, last time I checked made them one of the rarest of the player races, which makes a lot of sense considering they have only been on the plane for a little more than 100 years. So yeah, I'd say they do stick out like a sore thumb.
And again, there's also the context of how they were inserted into the setting via just mashing them into there via the widely disliked Spellplague. So y'know, people are going to look at the design cribbed from the draconians, the 'we designed this race to be paladins'-level worldbuilding and that will color their opinions.
