In the future, trends happen faster

A week ago, I wrote about the Euro Menace of foreign teams poaching the NBA for players thanks to the exchange rate. At the time, the biggest name that went was Carlos Delfino, which is to say, not a very big name at all. But since then, ever-increasing quality has shown up in the Euro signings, starting with Bostjan Nachbar (decent rotation player for last year's Nets), moving to Josh Childress (borderline sixth man of the year candidate for last year's Hawks), and now, possibly, Lakers sixth man and Finals flopper enfant terrible Sasha Vujacic.

Now, it's quite possible that Vujacic is just using the Euro Threat to get a bigger deal out of the Lakers, since no other NBA team is going to make him a big offer, seeing how the Lakers can just match it. It's also possible that if he does go, it's not really that big of a deal; while he's emerging as a good three-point threat, he's still a guy that's not likely to get to double-digit scoring averages any time soon, especially given how many low-post threats the Lakers have.

But, well, this is getting serious. The Lakers are a worse team without Vujacic, and the Association is a little worse without Childress, Nachbar and Delfino. I'm also not sure there is any answer available to stop the bleeding. It's not like the Association is immune to the laws of currency valuations.

Who's next? Well, Yahoo spent a lot of pixels on Jason Kidd (a perfect candidate, really, given that he'd dominate there and get increasingly exposed here). Every foreign-born player is an obvious target. Any player with a 4-year degree is also someone that's likely to be intrigued by the idea of a year or two abroad. Any player that isn't super-competitive is also in the wheelhouse,.

But at the end of the day, athletes are here to get paid, and Euro teams have the ability to pay more. We haven't heard the last of this, not by a long shot.