As everyone should be, I'm followingEurobasket 2011on ESPN 360 (or whatever the hell they call it now), to watch one current Blazer, two current future Blazers, three (no, four) ex-Blazers and one ex-future Blazer. But in doing so, I noticed something a bit odd...

The African-American Eastern European All-Stars. These are:

Henry Domercant"of" Bosnia and Herzegovina

Earl Rowland"of" Bulgaria (he was actually born in Europe - Germany, though)

Dontaye Draper"of" Croatia

Bo McCalebb"of" FYR of Macedonia

Marquez Haynes"of" Georgia (the Republic, not the US State - he's actually from Texas)

Omar Cook"of" Montenegro (one of the four ex-Blazers mentioned above)

Thomas Kelati"of" Poland

Stiven Bertt"of" the Ukraine

Now don't get me wrong: I've got absolutely no beef with this, in fact I think it's kind of awesome. (And it's not like the US didn't steal Duncan and Olajuwon, and Spain hasn't stolen Ibaka and GB Luol Deng.) If I had to explain it, I'd guess it has to do with the "Bosman" rules they have in Europe limiting the number of Americans you can have on Euro teams - to circumvent it, US players get Euro passports. I just have this fantasy of each of them settling down into picturesque villages in their adopted countries and learning to speak the languages. I have to wonder exactly how many words of their respective languages they know now, though.