There are not so many things the French get excited about. A very rich cheese. A fine silk scarf. Excellent grammar.

So to say this country has fallen in love with NBA basketball might be a bit of an overstatement. Call it more of a crush.

"It's growing," the league's international vice president, Andrew Messick, says hopefully, and indeed, with San Antonio Spurs point guard Tony Parker playing in the NBA Finals this week, more people are paying attention to basketball here than they have in some time.

Parker's image regularly graces newsstands, and his jersey can be purchased in suburban athletic stores. Advertisers have latched on to him -- half-American, half-Dutch, Parker grew up in France and is in many ways the perfect lure on the end of the league's international marketing hook. Yet in a country with a thousand invisible cultural divisions and nearly as many eccentricities, it is hard to tell exactly who is taking the bait.