I've added your better link. And agreed on the Pistons. With Nazr Muhammed arguably winning the matchup at center, it's hard to see where Detroit's hopes are supposed to be coming from. When you consider that Tony Parker's bound to have one of his occassional flashes of awsomeness one of these days it gets even bleaker.

But just imagine the nightmare scenario from the patriotic point of view if Muhammed hadn't taken the starting job from Nesterovic. A team with three foreign-born starters plus quasi-foreign Tim Duncan would just be too much to handle. Everyone admires Bruce Bowens' defense, but I don't think he should count as the exemplar of American basketball.

I do realize your post is meant in jest, but I wonder.  If the US Basketball team's lackluster performance in the 2004 Olympics wasn't enough of a wake-up call to Black America, this Finals should be the first ring of the snooze button.

The reason foreigners are slowly but inexorably climbing to domination of the NBA stems out of the poisonous hip-hop culture of most of the younger generation of African-American players.  It's a mindset that makes it all about individual play and glory, and wasting time that could be spent at diligent practice hanging with your posse of homies.  Most of all, trainers and managers these days will tell you that however talented the new crew from the 'hood is, their hyper-individuality and arrogance means they cannot be coached.  Not as well as the Africans or the Eastern Europeans, at any rate.

When African-Americans lose their stranglehold on the NBA, what then?  Talkin' NBA basketball is MY's favorite way for him, a nebbishy Jewish white boy from a posh Manhattan neighborhood, to demonstrate his solidarity with the black lumpenproletariat that makes up the backbone of the electorate of his party.  When b-ball goes to the Ginobilis of the globe, what will he do then?  Discuss old re-runs of "The Wire"?

the all-American Detroit Pistons

L-I-A-R!

Obviously, the answer is for the Pistons to get their own budding international superstar into the picture.  (And I'm not talking about Carlos Arroyo - since Puerto Rico is part of the United States, even if the asinine Olympics thinks otherwise.)

Has anyone noticed that after the current finals are over, the past 26 NBA titles will have been won by just 7 different teams, with 6 of those teams winning 25 of them?  They are:

Spurs 2 (or maybe 3)
Pistons 3 (or maybe 4)
Lakers 8
Bulls 6
Rockets 2
Celtics 3
76ers 1

Hell, if you look at the Lakers and Bulls, just 2 teams have won more than half of the past 26 NBA Championships.

Ostap makes an excellent, excellent point.

The influx of foreign bball players is the product of globalization of basketball.  But that globalization primarily benefits American consumers (i.e., fans), since we get to experience a higher caliber of basketball than without foreign players.  (In addition, I don't think it is bad for American basketball players, who presumably have fewer opportunities at the NBA level as a result of spots taken by foreigners, but greater opportunities to play basketball overseas.)

Contrast this to soccer, where Americans don't get to see many of their best players, because Tim Howard is with ManU, DaMarcus Beasley with PSV Eindhoven, Kasey Keller with M'gladbach, etc.

Really, the most likely answer to the Ginobili MVP threat is on his own team - Duncan, of course. Granted, he's a Virgin Islander - but a U.S. Virgin Islander, an American citizen and U.S. Olympic basketball player, and spent all four years at Wake Forest (there's an offshoring joke in there somewhere, but I'm too mentally drained to find it...).

With the way Ginobili has ripped up single coverage and also considering how the Spurs shot the three in Game Two, don't be shocked if Duncan gets a lot more single-teams from here on out. Besides, it shouldn't surprise anybody if he averaged twenty-seven and twelve the rest of the way, regardless of the defense. Duncan is the undisputed team leader, a multiple-ring-bearer, and a future Hall-of-Famer in his prime, lest ye forget. In any case, though I'm awed by Ginobili's recent play, two good games (six good quarters, really) does not a champion nor an MVP make. There may be another five games yet.

I'm sticking to Spurs in seven; the Pistons are a super-fierce home-court team, and the guards can score in bunches. The fix they need is to score more points, and I think they'll find enough good streaks to win two of three at home (though just barely). They'll stun the Spurs with an inspired Game Six win (don't underestimate a champion) before falling in seven to superior scoring talent and perimeter D. MVP will be Duncan. 

"Our only hope is that the all-American Detroit Pistons can regain focus, lest low-wage Latin American immigrants continue to swamp the country and take away all our good jobs..."

In the alternate universe in which Steve Sailer blogs on the NBA, all the posts would look like this.

Darko was the 2nd pick in the 2003 NBA Draft, behind Lebron and ahead of Carmelo, Bosh, and Wade respectively.

Carmelo does have a championship ring from his NCAA playing days (2003 Syracuse). 

This series is going 4 or 5. The reason is not the Spurs uber-excellent-international squad of basketball death. The main reason is that the Pistons are kind of sucky.