East team typifies just how league has changed

PHILADELPHIA -- Everyone seems to be doing a double take whenever they look at the Eastern Conference standings, and things should be no different today when they glance at the East squad for the All-Star game.

Michael Jordan will be wearing blue and white instead of red and black, Jason Kidd will have the word "Nets" across his chest, and Dikembe Mutombo and Shareef Abdur-Rahim will be donning different uniforms than they did a year ago.

In the West, there will be a distinct foreign flavor to this year's team, with a German, a Yugoslav and a Canadian on the squad.

"For me, I'm in other locker room and get to see what the East says about the West -- and be a part of the smallball," said Kidd, the leading contender for the MVP award at the unofficial midpoint of the season.

The East has changed so much that the New Jersey Nets -- you remember, the Meadowlands mutants of years past -- could be on the verge of leaving everybody behind in what is widely considered a vastly inferior conference to the West.

The two-time defending champion Los Angeles Lakers are right back where they were a year ago, a four-game losing streak away from being the fifth seed and a four-game winning streak away from contending for first place in the conference.

"I think it's going to be different, but I think it's good for the league to spread the wealth," starter Chris Webber of the Kings said. "I know my friends in New Jersey love it that they have an All-Star out there, so I think it's good for all the die-hard fans who have been watching their teams lose for years."

The game was supposed to be held in Philadelphia in 1999, but a lockout forced its cancellation. The 76ers were given the next available spot, since the NBA had already committed to Oakland for the 2000 game and to Washington for the 2001 game.

Overseas team possible

PHILADELPHIA --The NBA is looking anew at international expansion and could have more than one franchise based overseas by the end of the decade, commissioner David Stern said Saturday.

"It wouldn't surprise me that at the end of the decade there would be a very strong NBA international presence on the ground," Stern said at his annual All-Star weekend news conference. "I've changed my thinking."

Stern said the league was examining a number of overseas scenarios, from operating a league in a different continent to placing at least two teams outside of the United States and Canada. He said arena construction plans in European cities have made the idea more viable.

Stern also ruled out domestic expansion in much the same language that he used in past years to deflect speculation on international expansion.

--From wire services