Four of them are Southerners, two of them hometown legends in their time.

Meet Theo Ratliff of Alabama and Cal Bowdler of Warsaw. That's in Virginia. And Dion Glover and Julius Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Marietta.

Jacque Vaughn is from Pasadena, an All-American at Kansas who reads Whitman and Frost and Angelou and Sylvia Plath. On long night flights, he will take out a pen and write his own.

Hanno Mottola comes from Finland by way of the University of Utah and Toni Kukoc is from the rocky Adriatic coastal city of Split in Croatia.

They are as diverse as society and as companionable as you could imagine for a team with 11 new faces in two seasons. No sly looks in the locker room, none of the destructive whispers from dissident factions. "There are no issues on this team," Jason Terry said.

These are bright men, sociable for the most part, extremely well-paid and aware that they are privileged.

"This team is like America," general manager Pete Babcock said. "It's a melting pot, a little from this part of the world, a little from that. Believe me, it wasn't intentional. We were looking for good people who could play the game. This is how it turned out.

"We've always tried to bring in good people," Babcock said. "We went against our own philosophy once [Isaiah Rider] and we won't do that again."