The next great National Basketball Association player might be a 10-year-old power forward playing today somewhere in Phnom Penh, who will have to wait maybe two or three years before someone signs him. We'll see him soon, but not tonight, reports Dale Hofmann of the Milwaukee Journal.

What we'll see tonight is grown men with centuries of combined personnel experience staking their careers on other gangly strangers who may not speak their language and are frequently too young to vote. This is the pattern of the modern NBA draft, where the best prospects are very youthful or extremely foreign, and none of them seems to come here.

Milwaukee claimed Glenn Robinson with the first choice in 1994, and ever since then the Bucks have adopted the garage sale approach to the draft. They may negotiate for the occasional pre-owned bargain, but mostly they just get rid of stuff they don't want.

So the question tonight isn't whose name will be attached to their first choice, but what difference does it make? The Bucks have owned 13 first-round selections in the past 12 years, and only five of the athletes they've used them on ever played for the team.

One of them was Robinson, one was Vin Baker, and another was Todd Day, the second-biggest bust in the franchise's undistinguished draft history. Mike Dunleavy ignored a lot of good advice and squandered the eighth choice on Day in 1992, a decision exceeded only by the 1977 selection of Kent Benson for wrong-headedness.

Benson's acquisition was worse because he was the No. 1 pick overall, although the Bucks were able to use him to get Bob Lanier. Day couldn't shoot a lick, wouldn't play defense and was terminally grumpy. Eventually he was packaged with Alton Lister and shipped to Boston for Sherman Douglas, who failed to turn the franchise around.

Ernie Grunfeld was also part of the Benson draft. The Bucks had three first-round picks that year, and they used the other two on Marques Johnson and Grunfeld. Johnson was a star, and Grunfeld started eight games in two seasons in Milwaukee, saving his usefulness for later years.

The general manager's two drafts here are distinguished by the broad daylight theft of Michael Redd in the second round. He spent his other picks on two Jasons and an Andre. Name them, and you might win a bar bet.

It's always possible that Grunfeld will use the 13th choice on someone who will actually suit up for the Bucks, but that will require the cooperation of the coach.

George Karl has struggled bravely for the past few years to understand what's going on in his players' heads, and that's with all of them speaking English. If Grunfeld chooses to mine the spreading vein of foreign talent, Karl might have to translate and psychoanalyze simultaneously. Talk about an injury waiting to happen.

On the other hand, if Grunfeld tabs a teenager, we may spend the next few years looking for him on milk cartons. Karl can barely tolerate full-grown rookies. Imagine his patience with adolescents.

So the Bucks' best chance for success tonight probably rests with Grunfeld finding a sleeper somewhere near the bottom of the board with one of his three second-round selections. They've been pretty good at that in the past.

In addition to Redd, Milwaukee has snagged such stalwarts as Paul Pressey with the 20th pick, Bobby Dandridge with the 45th and Greg Smith with the 50th.

Or Grunfeld could locate a project at No. 13 who looks at home near the basket and has no religious objection to guarding someone. That would be a welcome splash of contrast on this roster, but if history is our guide, the Bucks will designate someone who will be somewhere else before sunrise.

Maybe Cambodia.

Despite all of the talk, the Bucks are likely to keep their first round pick in tonight?s NBA Draft. Michael Hunt, of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that the Bucks fielded many calls Tuesday from NBA teams interested in their No. 13 pick, with the intention of moving up or down in the draft. There were inquiries about trades, as well as the usual spate of unfounded rumors.

But by the end of the day, all of the talks yielded little. "Up to this point, nothing has happened," Bucks general manager Ernie Grunfeld said. "We keep listening, keep talking. It's still likely we're going to keep our own pick, but at the same time we'll continue to explore all of our options."

The Bucks have held discussions with New York, several league insiders confirmed, about Milwaukee native Latrell Sprewell. One scenario had Sprewell coming to the Bucks in exchange for Robinson and one other player, possibly Ervin Johnson, but those possibilities apparently never reached the serious stage.

The Bucks would like to make a roster adjustment because of their failure to reach the playoffs last year. But they still feel that their roster is good enough to contend for the Eastern Conference title. The organization sees last season?s injuries, Anthony Mason?s failure to fit in with the team and the cavalier attitudes of some key players as the main reasons for the team?s collapse.

For that reason, the Bucks continue to weigh the possibilities. "A lot of people are interested in our pick," Grunfeld said. "There's been a lot of conversations. We'll see if anything comes of it (tonight)."

According to Bob Wolfley, if you're Rudy Tomjanovich, if you're the Houston Rockets, don't you have to be scared to death about making Yao Ming the first pick in the draft?

This is more pressure than annually goes to the team with the first pick in the draft. There is a sense that the Rockets can't afford not to take him.

Yao, the consensus opinion seems to be, is too big to avoid

But you can pose in the press all you want. You can exude all the supreme assurance and confidence in your ability to divine the potential of another Ming Dynasty.

But the fact is Yao Ming is 7 feet 5 inches, but he's not a shot-blocker.

Think hard about that.

He's 7-5 and does all these other wonderful things for someone his size: dribble, take the perimeter jump shot, run the floor, pass, score.

But he's not a shot-blocker.

If the security sirens aren't sounding around chez Rockets because of that, then they need a new security firm.

If Yao is not a shot-blocker, then he's not going to be a dominating, game-altering defender or rebounder. What's the point of being 7-5 on this planet if you are not going to be a shot-blocker, defender and rebounder?

Guarantee you Shaquille O'Neal is not losing sleep worrying about how he's going to check Yao Ming. Yet, the Rockets are poised to draft him in hopes of getting past O'Neal and the Los Angeles Lakers in future playoff rounds.

If you had to predict where Yao will be five years from now in the National Basketball Association, it's easier to mount the argument he'll be closer to being Kent Benson or Pervis Ellison or Ralph Sampson than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or Hakeem Olajuwon.

If you're 7-5 and you're not a shot-blocker or a game-altering defender, then what are you?

A bust from a would-be Ming Dynasty is what you are.