re:ProJo Article

[Jo Hironaka <j.hironaka@unesco.org>]

Hello everyone:

Sorry to paste such a long article (© The Providence Journal - 3.30.98),
but I thought others on our list would find it interesting. It describes
the latest crop of highschool and foreign players, including
purportedly ``the closest thing to Larry Bird in the world" (Dirk
Nowitzki) and a 6-9 Australian guard (Matthew Neilsen) that maybe
Warwick can tell us more about.

I wonder how this 19-year-old German kid, Dirk Nowitzki, would look in a
Celtics uniform....

Auf Wiedersehen,


JoeHironaka

p.s. In case you missed it, there is also a nice hagiography of our
favorite stiff, try-hard, white boy (smiley) Andrew DeClercq at the
Celts page of NBA.COM .


****

"International all-stars upstage U.S. Juniors, 104-99"
By KEVIN McNAMARA

SAN ANTONIO -- College basketball coaches spent countless hours
sweating, worrying and salivating for the chance to get Ronald Curry,
JaRon Rush and Jason Capel suited up at their schools.

Recruiting junkies spent hundreds of dollars on newsletters and
900-phone
numbers in search of the latest information on the talents of Erick
Barkley,
Ray Young and Quentin Richardson.

While those high school All-Americans are all fine talents, it's time
the
basketball world pays more attention to the likes of Dirk Nowitzki,
Matthew Neilsen and Luis Scola.

Those three players made up the core of an International all-star team
that
outplayed a U.S. Junior all-star team at the Nike Hoop Summit game here
yesterday, 104-99.

This was the fourth annual Hoop Summit. The International team's win
evened the series at 2-2. It also won in 1996, when the U.S. team
starred
Mike Bibby, Jermaine O'Neal and Ed Cota.

``We knew we could play with them. This team has a lot of good
players,''
said Nowitzki, a wonderfully talented 6-11 German.