By MIKE LOPRESTI
Gannett News Service

NEW YORK - These days, covering the NBA draft means asking different questions. Used to be, you wondered how many Kentucky or North Carolina players would be chosen. And now?

Well ... just how do you spell Szymon Szewczyk?

One by one, the international players were called Thursday night. Names the length of boat docks, filled with consonants and potential, the newest faces in the wave that is washing across basketball.

The draft set a record for the selection of foreign-born players. Eight in the first round, 21 of the 58 overall. All this just across town from the United Nations.

They were from Brazil and Bosnia, China and Croatia, France and Greece. Some came with mileage, having already globe-trotted to play the game.

There was the center from Senegal, who has been on a team in Germany. The guard from Slovenia, who has been in Italy. The forward from Poland, who has been playing in Spain.

When he announced Ndudi Ebi's selection in the first round, league commissioner David Stern carefully stepped over the pronunciation as you would a patch of ice on the sidewalk. Ebi is what the 21st century NBA is all about. Born in England, raised in Nigeria, a high school graduate in Texas, and now a pro in Minnesota.

They yearn to be rich and famous, and show how well they play the game that was invented by a guy who coached at Kansas.

"America is, for me, like some dream," said Aleksandar Pavlovic, a forward from Serbia and Montenegro, who will now chase his fantasies as a Utah Jazz.

Which is it? Should the United States be glad that it has spread the game so globally, or alarmed that this flood suggests a flaw in the development of its own talent?

When Detroit's four-door sedans started breaking down too often, the freeways suddenly filled with Toyotas. Thursday's draft board had a lot of imports, too.

Theories abound. The international payers are said to be fundamentally sounder, better grounded. The American players, as a group, are said to be under the television-induced delusion that the only important parts of the game are high-fives and highlights.

Longtime NBA scouting director Marty Blake was saying how he went to a Southeastern Conference game last season and saw players who could not even make a proper entry pass.

It has been noted that young European prospects are not subjected to the insane hero worship poured upon any U.S. 14-year-old who can dunk. They must earn their way up the ladder.

Forward Darko Milicic may have been good enough to be the No. 2 pick in the entire draft, but he averaged barely 20 minutes a game last season for his team back in Serbia and Montenegro.

If that happened to an American phenom, he'd transfer.

For his part, Milicic said there was nothing magical about the process that produced him.

"Just play hard. Listen to coach. And be good."

The trend should not be overstated. The sensation of this draft still came from Ohio. Fourteen of the first 16 picks were native sons.

"I wouldn't say that's redemption," said Georgia's Jarvis Hayes, headed for the Wizards at No. 10. "But it definitely makes everyone feel better that played here in the United States."

Still, something is happening. There seems a clear weakness in the basketball assembly line in this country. Stardom is granted much too cheaply, and the pool is thinner of those who truly deserve it.

If LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony want to be in front of the new age of the NBA, they'll have to be very good. Because if they don't lead, a kid from Europe or Asia will.