Ever since Michael Jordan first started denigrating Toni Kukoc,

Europeans in the NBA have routinely been stereotyped as

fair-skinned suburbanites who shy away from contact in the paint

or conflict in the locker room. Seventeen-year-old Darko Milicic

is about to stomp on that stereotype--if not leap over it

altogether. ¬∂ Milicic (pronounced MIL-i-sich) is the prodigious

7foot center from Yugoslavia who is expected to be the No. 2 pick

behind LeBron James in this year's NBA draft, and he's far from

soft.

When Milicic was 14, he moved 100 miles from his home in Novi

Sad, Montenegro, to the remote Serbian industrial town of Vrsac

to join the junior team of the club Hemofarm. At an age when most

Americans are still in junior high, he was living alone in an

apartment and practicing basketball in the mornings and evenings

with a full day of school in between. In return he received room,

board and $100 a month, much of which he sent home to his

parents.

"I was the youngest player on the team," Milicic said through an

interpreter last week. "I think that move was much more difficult

than the move I will be making next year to the NBA."

Last season Milicic was called up from the junior team to play

with Hemofarm in the same league that produced Kukoc, Vlade Divac

and Dino Radja. Milicic was 16, and in his first game he guarded

a 40-year-old. "He was trying to use every trick, trying to draw

the contact and talking trash to me," says Milicic. Does young

Milicic talk trash? "No," he says, "I like to stay focused on the

game."

These days Milicic is focused on the NBA draft. Commissioner

David Stern's ruling last month that a player could be drafted if

he's 18 in the same calendar year as the draft--not by the May 12

application deadline, as he had previously declared--ensured that

Milicic, who will turn 18 on June 20, will be a hot item six days

later, when NBA teams make their selections. If he is the second

pick, he could sign a guaranteed three-year contact worth more

than $11 million.

Why is the NBA so high on Milicic? He's averaging only 9.6 points

and 4.9 rebounds in 17.9 minutes per game, and his coaches

constantly badger him in the manner of Bobby Knight, as is common

in Serbian basketball. But Milicic is more than an athlete; he's

an all-around shooter, passer and rebounder who makes his

teammates better. "He has the makings of the most dominant center

in Europe since Arvydas Sabonis," says an NBA scout who isn't

sure that James should be picked ahead of Milicic.

A lefty with wide shoulders, Milicic has a well-developed

245-pound body, and he's only going to get stronger. He has been

lifting weights the past two years and says that he does 150

push-ups and 200 sit-ups every night. Milicic has an explosive

first step and a knack for converting loose balls around the

basket with hands that seem as big and soft as baseball mitts.

"He's not going to have any trouble competing physically,"

predicts one G.M. His weakness? He has spent so much time

learning to shoot the three-pointer and to beat his man off the

dribble that he doesn't know how to play with his back to the

basket.

Until last month, when his club rewarded him with a new

two-bedroom apartment, Milicic had been sleeping on a pullout

couch in a small studio with a space heater at his feet. While

LeBron James received a $50,000 Hummer for his 18th birthday,

Milicic doesn't even have a driver's license. The two throwback

jerseys valued at $845 that earned James a two-game suspension

were worth more than a weekly paycheck for Milicic, who is making

$20,000 this season for playing against grown men with two-day

stubble and cigarette breath. "I have worked really hard and made

something of myself," Milicic says. "In Yugoslavia there is a

little too much structure in the game, and it takes away from the

creativity of the player. I am looking forward to the freedom. I

am ready to go to the NBA."

COLOR PHOTO: ALEKSANDAR DJOROVIC/GRAZIA NERI [COVER INSET] BEYOND LEBRON The Next Sports Prodigies DARKO MILICIC Basketball

COLOR PHOTO: ALEKSANDER DJOROVIC/GRAZIA NERI (TOP)

COLOR PHOTO: GRAZIA NERI UPSIDE Some say the rarity of good big men makes Milicic a betterpick than James.