Interbasket

With the Boston Celtics blowing out the Lakers 131-92 last night, they went on to win their 17th championship for the franchise.  Not only that, the Celtics became just the second team in the last 15 seasons to win the NBA title without one international player on their roster.

And that’s not counting Sam Cassell as foreign.

Ok, sorry that was a cheap shot.

Outside of the 1998-99 San Antonio championship team that brought Australian legend Andrew Gaze a championship ring (despite being injured the majority of the season), the other twelve championship teams from 1992-2008 have had international players on their roster that have played significant roles in their respective playoff runs.

Whether they were the main guy (Hakeem Olajuwon), X-factor (Manu Ginobili), third-option, (Toni Kukoc), or bad guy (Rick Fox), foreign-born players have contributed to most all NBA championships since the early-1990s.

The 2008 Boston Celtics and the Miami Heat of 2006 were the only championship teams that won the title without a foreign national on their playoff roster.

On the other side of the coin, the two NBA championships previous to the this year’s Celtics and the 2006 Heat were won by the San Antonio Spurs, the complete opposite when it comes to drawing other country’s basjetball talents.

The Spurs won the trophy in 2003, 2005 and 2007 with NBA all-stars Manu Ginobili (Argentina) and Tony Parker (France).  These two were huge parts of those championships, working as second-options behind Tim Duncan.  And It didn’t end with Manu and Parker either with Fabricio Oberto (also of Argentina), Rasho Nesterovic (Slovenia), and Franciso Elson (Netherlands) all playing supporting roles for the Spurs in either the 2005 or 2007 playoffs.

Now had the Lakers won this year, they would have tied the San Antonio Spurs of last season with the most international players on their championship rosters with five - Pau Gasol (Spain), Sasha Vujacic (Slovenia), Vladimir Radmanovic (Serbia), Ronny Turiaf (France), and DJ Mbenga (Congo).

Check out the list below for the list of the last 15 NBA Champions and the international players that played a role in their title run.

On September 12, 2007, FIBA will induct the 2007 class of international players into the new FIBA Hall-of-Fame. The inductees were chosen from a large list of nominees that numbered nearly 200 of some of the most influential players, coaches, referees and contributors not already in the hall. The ceremony will take place in Alcobendas (Madrid, Spain).

Some of the greatest legends around the world being inducted into the twenty-person 2007 class include Sergei Belov (RUS), Dražen Dalipagic (SRB), Nikos Galis (GRE), Hortência Marcari, the great Brazilian women’s player (BRA), Ann Meyers (USA), Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics (USA), and the Latvian giant Uljana Semjonova (LAT).

For obvious reasons, there is deeper focus on international contributions and because of their criterion — “outstanding achievement at the international level” is inherently biased against NBA players since they were disallowed from competition until 1989. It’s odd to see any basketball hall-of-fame that doesn’t include nominees Michael Jordan or Magic Johnson, and weird that Larry Bird and Wilt Chamberlain weren’t even nominated.

I’d argue that the entire 1992 US Men’s Olympic Team should be enshrined. Based on their presence in the tournament of the Americas and in the 1992 Olympics Games in Barcelona, it displayed just how important the NBA was admired in international basketball. Additionally, the NBA played a huge part, like it or not, in influencing what basketball is today. Their

I do, however, understand that FIBA wants to recognise international involvement, which up to this point has been somewhat ignored by the Naismith Basketball Hall-of-Fame. I am definitely in support of inducting 30-50 in their first class just because FIBA’s hall is so far behind, twenty is almost ridiculously low especially considering that the twenty inductees includes eight non-players - coaches, officials and contributors.

In addition to Magic, Jordan, Bird and Chamberlain - some of the players that didn’t make the first cut include Brazilian great Oscar Schmidt, Australian Andrew Gaze, Dino Meneghin, Jerry West, Cheryl Miller, Juan Antonio San Epifanio of Spain, Lithuanian legend Modestas Palauskas, Dejan Bodiroga and Oscar Robertson.