John Walters

It may only be a coincidence that the NBA playoffs tip off on Saturday with three games featuring Western Conference teams and the fourth, LeBron James.

Or maybe it is not.

You get it. I get it. And David Stern, reluctantly, gets it. The Western Conference may not have the league's best team (Boston) nor its most hyped player (LeBron) nor even its biggest television market, but it does have by far the most entertaining hoops.

The reason: aliens.

By "aliens" I do not mean Area 51 relics--though southern Nevada is smack dab in the midst of the Western Conference--but rather Dikembe, Dirk, Manu, Mehmet, Pau, Peja…and Steve. No one has come right out and said it, but if Larry and Magic "saved" the NBA nearly three decades ago, then passports revitalized the league in this decade.

When the playoffs begin on Saturday, the Western Conference's eight teams will have 13 starters who were born and raised outside the United States. That's nearly 33% of their starting lineups. And that does not include Kobe Bryant of the Lakers, the likely (and deserving) MVP, who was raised primarily in Italy. Nor does it include in it Houston Rocket center Yao Ming of China, who is out with injury.

Head east of the Mississippi, and you'll find that just three starters in the Eastern Conference playoffs (Cleveland's Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Toronto's Rasha Nesterovic and Orlando's Hedo Turkoglu) are foreign-born. The last of that trio, Turkoglu, is everyone's hands-down lock to win the league's Most Improved Player award.

Let Ben Bernanke worry about an international trade imbalance. In the NBA -- or more accurately, IBA-- teams whose general managers turn a popular phrase on its ear ("think locally, act globally") are thriving. The top seven teams in the Western Conference all won at least 51 games this season and all started at least one foreign-born player. There's not a single roster amongst the West's playoff octet that does not conjure thoughts of Agent 007's travel itinerary. Consider:

Los Angeles: Congo, France, Serbia & Montenegro, Slovenia, Spain.

New Orleans: Serbia

San Antonio: Argentina (2), France (2), U.S. Virgin Islands

Utah: Russia, Turkey, Ukraine

Houston (a franchise whose web site can be gleaned in English, Spanish and Chinese): Argentina, China, Congo                       

Phoenix: Brazil, Canada, Croatia, France

Dallas: Germany, Puerto Rico

Denver: Brazil, France, Lithuania, Mexico

Western Conference playoff rosters comprise sixteen nations (plus one semi-autonomous territory and another U.S. territory) and five continents. Who needs the Olympics (Wait, whom do I write for again)?

Basketball. Rock-and-roll. The automobile. All were born stateside and all evolved overseas. This isn't rocket science. In fact, it's economics, anthropology, sociology, world history…everything but rocket science, even if you're a fan of the Rockets. Houston, by the way, starts two foreign-born players: Argentine Luis Scola, who may just win Rookie of the Year, and Dikembe Mutombo of the Congo.

Here are a few reasons why Europeans, South Americans and the occasional Asian and African are behind the evolution of the sport:

1) Soccer: Anyone who grows up in a country where soccer is king understands the aspect of spacing. When on offense, players must space themselves apart in order to create passing opportunities and make the defense vulnerable. Soccer goals are rarely the product of one-on-one LeBronian virtuosity, but rather of three to four precision passes.

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