Remember those painful-to-watch NBA games of the 1990s when Charles Barkley or Shaq had the ball on one block, backing his defender down, as his four teammates stood on the opposite side of the half court, watching with the same disinterest as we were? That's not soccer, and that's not Western Conference basketball.

Canadian-born Steve Nash of the Suns is not so much a point guard as he is a center midfielder. He darts in, darts out, looking for a weakness. And if you double-team him, he finds the open man. For that matter, California native Jason Kidd plays much the same way. Maybe that's why Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who still regrets letting Nash get away to the Suns, was so anxious to bring Kidd (himself a former Mav) back to Dallas.

2) SportsCenter: Three-point shots do not make "Top Ten Plays" lists nearly as often as dunks do. Your current NBA stars weaned outside ESPN's viewing areas in the 1990s grew up emulating Oscar Schmidt (Brazil) and Drazen Petrovic (Croatia), not Vince Carter.

3) The Ellis Island Factor: Foreign-born players have perspective. If you were to ask them, they probably cannot believe Americans pay as much as we do to watch them play in person. When you come from the Congo or Serbia, you may not gripe as much if your Four Seasons hotel room linens do not have a 400 thread count.

Quick, think of an NBA malcontent. Now think about his home country. Foreign-born players are, almost without exception, the antithesis of that. Their only crimes at nightclubs are usually crimes of fashion. We might need a new term to define international players: "Contents."

LeBron James, for all of his talent and controversial magazine covers, is not the future of the NBA. Nor is it King James' fault; certainly he is no malcontent.

But James is almost perfectly situated in Cleveland, from a symbolic standpoint. He represents the Rust Belt obsoleteness of American industry attempting to compete abroad, where products are manufactured with cheaper labor. He is the gas-guzzling four-door sedan in a world where consumers are facing the inevitable specter of $4 per gallon gasoline.

LeBron James may be capable of scoring 24 points in one quarter, as he did last week against Chicago. But his Cavaliers, based on record alone, would have finished in 10th place in the Western Conference.

Look at two of the most uninspiring and least winning teams in the NBA this season: New York (23-59) and Miami (15-67). Is it only a coincidence that neither of them had a foreign-born player on their roster this season?

Wilkommen, bonjour, and hola to the NBA playoffs, then. Welcome to Alien Nation.

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