Sidelines
HAWAII is drooling over Lithuanians. ‘Aloha’ means ‘welcome’
in many languagesA guy from Spain -- Spain! -- is the NBA rookie of the year.
The Dallas Mavericks are red hot ... and they're about to meet the Sacramento Kings.
Yao Ming is the man.
And the UH men's volleyball squad can say "championship" in enough languages to make your head spin.
Yes, the time for foreign sports stars has come.
But you knew that.
You, with your autographed copy of "The Rainbow Circle of Excellence" and your "Costas, it's Greek to Me!" sign and your Dane McArthur football jersey.
You are already on this trend. You've embraced them. You love them. You are enraptured by their accents, endeared by their quirks.
And even the tiniest occasional hint at the possibility of new restrictive rulings by the NCAA makes your heart stop and your blood run cold.
This is how much these foreign players -- and even the very idea of them -- have come to mean to you.
But that's you.
Hawaii fans are ahead on this trend.
Imagine how you might feel about these guys if the team you cheered for was -- oh, let's just pick one at random -- Tulsa?
(Those poor souls.)
But you don't have hearts broken at the hands of older, experienced foreign invaders. And you don't have fear of the unknown. You have faces and life stories and smiles and tears.
And two WAC tournament titles.
And Wahine standouts.
And volleyball wins.
And softball success from down under.
You want Hawaii's coaches to continue mining continents far away. You hear winning in those unfamiliar accents, you see championships in those names you have to learn how to spell.
And the NBA does, too.
It's the wave of the future, and you're realizing it first. At one time you too were probably like the rules committees and the suspicious bureaucrats and the WAC athletic director who said he didn't want Riley Wallace as his coach because, "I don't want a whole team of international players."
And you didn't, either.
But then Predrag Savovic applied for law school before he prepared for the NBA draft.
And Wallace said, "This is a special group," and "this is probably the closest team since the Fabulous Five days." And you saw that he was right.
And everyone liked Mindaugas Burneika, and Tony Akpan blocked that shot.
And Carl English and Phil Martin were just so darn good looking.
And Savo, tears in his eyes, leis around his neck, said, "I love these people and I love this place." And the people and the place loved him back.
He'd found home.
It was the happiest of happy endings, because it had only just begun.
That's when you realized the time for foreign sports stars had come.
Hawaii signed another one yesterday.
You're already looking up "welcome" in Lithuanian.
Kalani Simpson can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com