1.   Even current Mavericks assistant coach Donnie Nelson, a constant scout of European basketball, gets reports that Tarpley has been nothing but impressive lately.

2.   General Manager Ernie Grunfeld met twice with Nelson over a five-day span before Nelson left for Greece and the European basketball championships.

3.   His biggest hurdle now is learning the difference between European basketball and the NBA game.

4.   It would be as if Michael Jordan had played for a European basketball team or Mark McGwire had hit all those home runs for a Japanese baseball team.

5.   Nelson, the three-time National Basketball Association coach of the year, was in Greece attending the European basketball championships.

6.   Ms. Shead said her sister was working with her agent on a deal with a European basketball team.

7.   The food and wine might be great, but the best European basketball players tend to come from Yugoslavia or one of the former Soviet republics.

8.   They are here now because Cosic legitimized European basketball talent in the eyes of the nit-picking Americans a quarter-century ago.

9.   This season, sportswriters heralded the success of the Mavericks and Kings as models of the rise of European basketball.

10.   For years, European basketball teams upgraded rosters by filling allotted foreigner slots with big men.