The captain of the French national team, he records rap albums in his spare time, and shortly after helping the San Antonio Spurs to their fourth title in eight years, is expected to marry Desperate Housewife Eva Longoria (right). In an era when the league has been revolutionised by an influx of foreigners nobody embodies the newlycosmopolitan nature of the competition quite like Tony Parker.

Parker's heroics were assisted by more established teammate Tim Duncan from the Virgin Islands. However, both men had to give best to Dirk Nowitzki, the Dallas Mavericks' German, in the poll to find the best player of the regular season. An illustrious trio to hammer home the reality of the new world order, when the play-offs began back in April, 57 other foreigners representing 28 different countries and territories started on the long road to the finals.

That there are now three times as many foreigners as white Americans on the rosters of NBA teams sums up the global power shift.

Apart from Parker and Duncan, the Spurs' squad that prevented the NBA marketing dream of LeBron James leading the otherwise less-than-stellar Cleveland Cavaliers to the championship also includes a pair of Argentines, a Slovenian, and a seven-foot behemoth from Rotterdam. Their success, and that of similarly polyglot line-ups like the Phoenix Suns (led by the incomparable South African-born, Canadian-bred Steve Nash) has had such an outsized impact that mediocre teams like the New York Knicks have been castigated for failing to properly scout and recruit international stars.

Some call the rising standards across the world the Jordan effect, the incredible knock-on from the millions of kids attracted to the game by the antics of the Chicago Bull icon during the '80s and '90s. That's only part of it. The increased interest in countries from Brazil to Bosnia also coincided with a crucial change in the fabric of the sport in America. Scouts began to discover that even the most gifted teenagers schooled in legendary playgrounds from Brooklyn to Compton seriously lacked basic skills.

With the ball in their hand running at the hoop, the kids could still do wondrous things. The problem was they'd been so obsessed with the highlight reel culture promoted by ESPN sports channels for much of their formative years that they'd forgotten to pick up the fundamentals. In perfecting the spectacle of dunking on opponents, so many brilliant youngsters neglected to discover the art of playing as part of a team.

Worse again, most of them had honed their individual game so much they were unable to adapt it to any coaching.

It's difficult to show for a pass when you've spent your entire teenage years showboating.

"When I arrived in the NBA I was really surprised at the level of the fundamentals and the lack of fundamentals that players had, " says Pat Burke, a teammate of Nash in Phoenix, the lone Irishman in the league, and somebody uniquely placed to observe the difference geography has made in the development of his peers. "In Europe, whether Spain or Greece, the players knew a lot more about the fundamentals of the game because they had to. Otherwise they wouldn't play. When I came here I met younger guys who had maybe left college early, and I just knew these guys wouldn't be able to play in Europe because they didn't know enough about the game."

The gap in standard immediately apparent to Burke upon returning to Florida from a European sojourn is the reason why many astute pundits are predicting that within the decade half the players in the NBA may be from outside America. The total number of foreigners is already up from 21 in 1992 to 83 this season. In the country that spawned the game when Dr James Naismith hung two peach baskets and started flinging a soccer ball around a Massachusetts gym more than a century ago, it's beginning to dawn on people that the world has caught up and is poised to overtake.

Even beyond issues of quality, the lack of hubris and the absence of hangers-on are two other reasons that NBA scouts cite when discussing their present fondness for European and South American players. By the time a talented American kid turns pro, he will have been feted by elements of the national media since about the age of 12, travel with a large retinue, and always want the ball. His German or French counterpart will usually arrive with a little more awareness of his position on the ladder.

"When I was growing up, the first thing players used to do was throw the ball inside, trying to draw fouls or make easy baskets, " said Larry Brown, coach of the American team of NBA stars that embarrassingly failed to even make the Olympic final in Athens. "Great players like Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson understood this from the beginning of their career, but it's going to take some time for these players to understand it as well. These kids have never, so far, been coached, benched or asked to play roles within the team."

Ironically, the poor television ratings garnered by these NBA finals are in some part down to the Spurs being full of superstars happy to do the right thing rather than the highlight thing. They win without the wow. A lesson there perhaps.