What do Nick Batum and Lionel Messi, Alex Rodriguez and Yao Ming, etc. etc. have in common? They've all traveled a long, long way from home to where the competition is fiercest and the paychecks are biggest in their respective sports. No longer are the teams we root for truly representative of the communities in which we live, as the rapid globalization of the planet leads to homogenization and a cosmopolitan appearance to most every enterprise.

It's funny how a simple car ride can spark such discussion, especially when it is being undertaken to go to a sporting event. I had the good fortune to go to my first Blazers game in Portland on Tuesday, and the car ride found me expanding outward from all the thoughts I'd started articulating in last week's edition of A Non-Traditional Sports Fan in America. Now I can't seem to get the intertwined topic out of my head, as the vines continue to wrap around the subject from all directions...

It was a great game. Portland was really on in the first quarter, hitting buckets and making Atlanta miss. They had a ten-point lead by the time the first ended and we went to get beers. The Hawks really started coming on in the second, pressing the pace and getting themselves better looks on the basket. The Blazers held a slim lead, 49-48, at halftime...

We went out and had a cigarette and got more beers, and by the time the second half started and Atlanta started coming toward the hoop on our side of the arena, I was already starting to get hoarse from all the yelling....

Atlanta just took over in the second half. Portland was lobbing up terrible jump shots that had no hope in hell of going in. The Hawks started moving the ball around better, and Jamal Crawford had the hot hand for the visitors. I had fun, though, despite the 97-91 defeat... a great first game at the Rose Garden, for sure!

But it was hardly the result of the tough loss, Portland's second in a row at home, which swirled through my head on the car ride home back to Eugene. Despite all the radio commentary trying to get me thinking about the game, something else was dawning upon me as more linkages between this and that story popped up in the brainstem and begged to be let out into the cerebral vortex. So follow the link and enjoy the journey into a wider discussion about the topics touched upon last week as this non-traditional sports fan in America lets it all out...

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