The two main reasons I rooted so hard for Boston in the 2008 NBA finals: (1) Kansas’ Paul Pierce and Scot Pollard on the Celtics roster; (2) Boston played mostly American guys, Los Angeles too many foreigners. (I know, you’re supposed to say “international” players. Nuts!)

Anybody notice I tend to be pathetically parochial?

I know the game America invented and refined has an increasingly international flavor. I’m delighted that trend made KU’s Sasha Kaun an instant Moscow millionaire who may some day rejoin us via the NBA. But Sasha didn’t filch food off any American plates as some selectors allowed the recent draft to do.

Of the first 60 people picked, 11 were “international.” Four of those were arguably marginal first-rounders who have a lot to prove before they’ll sell tickets in New York, Charlotte, Houston and Oklahoma City. Somebody did a lousy job of communicating about his health or lack of it, so KU’s Darrell Arthur went 27th and barely got a guaranteed contract. He should have gone higher than at least three of those foreigners.

Yet my biggest pain came when Kansas-oriented R.C. Buford took 6-2 George Hill of IUPUI (eye-you-pooh-ee) in Indianapolis ahead of KU’s Mario Chalmers, who’s looking nifty in Miami workouts. R.C.’s a real nice guy with the former Beth Boozer of Lawrence as his wife. But I hope he gets his tail burned by this choice.

Then there was that debacle that saw Boston guarantee troubling ex-Jayhawk J.R. Giddens a contract by taking him 30th ahead of Chalmers.

Nothing shows the steady inroads made by foreign basketball more than the Olympic Games and the growing attractiveness of apparent no-names in NBA drafts. These visa-bearers are forever with us now, and even though we prefer to see Americans perfecting the game James Naismith and Phog Allen launched so wonderfully, it’ll get worse. But some U.S. kid from Eye-You-Pooh-ee?

It’s up to coach Mike Krzyzewski and a seemingly invincible roster of NBA all-Americans, not one foreigner, to return the United States to gold-medal status in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Between 1936 and 2000, America owned the gold-medal concession except for that rooking it took in 1972 at Munich. The guys on that team, which officials rigged to help Russia, refused to accept the silver medals. Several even have it in their wills that even none of their ancestors can accept one. They were bitter and deserved to be.

In came the NBA Dream Team for 1992 after John Thompson overworked the Americans in 1988 and got a bronze medal. How the hell could Thompson screw up a team with Danny Manning, David Robinson and Mitch Richmond? Came 2004, and darned if coach Larry Brown and aide Roy Williams couldn’t guide a mismatched crew to anything better than third. The personnel was fantastic but never learned to play together, and Brown for all his brilliance fell flat for this challenge.

OK, so it’s 2008, America against the world again. If Krzyzewski can’t turn the likes of Carmelo Anthony, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Jason Kidd, Dwyane Wade and Tayshaun Prince into gold prospectors, the foreigners really will have made a point about their mastery of a game we owned for so long and so well.

And should take over again.