Dude, You Forgot to Mention That Luke Is Like Totally Fluent in Surfer . . .

. . . an article in the San Bernardino County Sun regarding the increasingly international flavor and multi-lingual nature of the Los Angeles Lakers.

Two players hail from ex-Yugoslav nations (Sasha Vujacic and Vladimir Radmanovic), you have a Martinican (Roni Turiaf), plus Kobe spent many of his younger years in Italy and is fluent in Italian and Spanish, and now DJ Mbenga has been signed for the rest of the year from Congo, and the big trade for the big guy from Barcelona (please, no Manuel jokes).

And in fairness to Luke Walton, besides being fluent in English and Surfer, I'm pretty sure I've seen him conduct interviews in Spanish for the local Spanish Language media, so the person that did this article on the many tongued Lakers should have found a way to throw in a mention of Luke, too.

Of course, the Lakers aren't alone in being a very tall UN, if the All Star game were to switch to a US v the World format then I think the lineup would look something like this:

Starting Guards: Jose Calderon, Steve Nash
Starting Forwards: Dirk Nowitzki , Tim Duncan
Starting Center: Yao Ming
Reserves: Tony Parker, Manu Ginobli, Andrei Kirilenko, Hedo Turkoglu, Pau Gasol, Luol Deng, Zydrunas Ilgauskas

That team could put on a decent show, but they'd probably get killed by Team USA (the FIBA qualifying team that competed in Las Vegas a few months ago would do fine, though I'd probably substitute Chris Paul for Jason Kidd and Brandon Roy for Mike Miller).