7-foot-9 player joins ABA club

The "have size, will travel" basketball odyssey that's taken 7-foot-9, 370-pound Sun Ming Ming from China to California to Kansas to North Carolina made its latest stop Wednesday in the back room of a Chinese restaurant in this tony Washington, D.C., suburb.

That's where the Maryland Nighthawks of the American Basketball Association introduced their newest player, a man they're touting as the tallest in the history of professional basketball.

Sun donned a uniform with the number 79 _ Get it? _ and his new team's owner and coach and a teammate all gushed about his "basketball IQ" and "soft hands."

The 23-year-old _ who complained the XXXXXXL sweat shirt the team gave him was too small _ was asked what his goals are.

"I hope," Sun said, "I make the NBA some day."

To which Nighthawks owner and ABA chief operating officer Tom Doyle said: "I'm quite sure he will."

Really? After all, Sun hasn't played organized basketball in more than six months, since a brief stint with the Dodge City Legend of the United States Basketball League.

Turns out, the NBA doesn't overlook 7-footers.

"We will monitor his progress. His name has cropped up, but since he's never really played, I don't know how he can be on our radar," Marty Blake, the NBA's director of scouting, said in a telephone interview. "We would be interested in a player of some repute anywhere in the world, especially one who's 7-9. ... As (former Utah Jazz coach) Frank Layden always said, 'You can't teach height.'"

Sun moved from his native China _ where he played on a second-division team _ to California about 1 1/2 years ago in hopes of making it in pro hoops. His career was put on hold last year while he had two operations for a pituitary tumor that led to his extraordinary size but threatened his life.

Sun said those procedures were successful and he's getting into shape. Doyle noted that his big addition needed extra training after taking time away from the court to shoot a fight scene in Jackie Chan's upcoming "Rush Hour 3."

"That was very fun," Sun said.

Nighthawks coach William Rankin expects Sun to be able to play about 28-30 minutes a game; his debut comes Saturday. That will also be Rankin's debut with the Nighthawks _ he was hired about a week ago from a junior college team.

"When I interviewed for the job, I asked, 'Do we have a 7-footer?'" Rankin recounted. "And (Doyle) laughed and said, 'We have someone who's almost an 8-footer.'"

Sun has been in town about 1 1/2 weeks, working out daily with Nighthawks guard Randy Gill, who said of his new center: "Every day, somebody's going to get dunked on."

Doyle is big on Bill Veeck-style marketing, and he's hoping to organize an exhibition game with nearly-as-tall-as-Sun former NBA players Gheorghe Muresan and Manute Bol to raise money toward Sun's more than $100,000 in medical bills.

Did the Nighthawks want Sun more for his ability to play basketball or to draw crowds (the team averages about 600 spectators in its 1,000-capacity Montgomery College gym in Rockville)?

"There's no question that having Ming here sells tickets," Doyle said. "But there also is no question that having him here is a huge presence in our middle."