Quantum Leaper Stromile swift had passed all the jumping tests with the greatest of ease. Having exhausted their scientific measures, the Grizzlies, who hold the No. 2 pick in the June 28 draft, asked Swift simply to leap as high as he could. "He touched a good foot above the [backboard] square," a team official says with a chuckle. "He looks like he may be an All-Star." Swift is regarded by scouts as the best athlete coming out: a 6'10", 220-pound sophomore power forward from LSU who led the SEC in blocks (2.79 per game), was third in the conference in scoring (16.2 points) and ranked fourth nationally in field goal shooting (60.8%). Still, he has yet to hire an agent, retaining the option of coming back to Baton Rouge if he isn't sure to be a top five pick. (Underclassmen who haven't signed with an agent may withdraw from the draft by June 21 without sacrificing their eligibility.) On June 3, a few hours before Swift and his cousin Joe Jones were to fly to a workout for the Nets, LSU assistant Butch Pierre visited Swift's 8 a.m. extra-credit speech class and found him there, taking notes. "He postponed most of his NBA workouts until after that class was done," LSU coach John Brady says. "He went three hours a day, every morning, and missed just one class." That absence occurred on the second day of his workout in New Jersey. Swift didn't start playing organized basketball in his hometown of Shreveport, La., until the eighth grade, when he was 6'3". "He was shy and really self-conscious about his height," says Fair Park High assistant Ken Prude. "Nobody thought he could play. He heard people say, 'You're too tall to be so sorry' " Prude worked to make him feel less nervous in front of big crowds. "If he did something funny at practice I would laugh," Prude says. "I wanted him to know it's not a problem to be laughing at yourself." "The character trait in Stromile that is going to make him a very good player is his sense of humility" Brady says. Tattooed on Swift's left shoulder is an image of Jesus holding a basketball, framed by the words A GIFT FROM GOD. "That's what my mom has always told me about my talent," he says. Swift was so coveted coming out of high school that Brady offered to play one of LSU's home games 200 miles up the road in Shreveport if Swift would sign with the school. Even then, Brady worried that Swift's initial failure to meet the NCAA academic standards would drive him to the NBA. "He must have taken that ACT test a half-dozen times at least," Prude says. But Swift knew that he needed to attend college. "I really wanted to go to Michigan," he says, settling instead on LSU because he could live in Baton Rouge with Jones, an electrician, until he qualified midway through his freshman year. At LSU, Swift was assigned to guard the lowest-scoring front-court player, which allowed him to roam the paint like a free safety for many of his 130 blocks in just 50 games, a total second only to Shaquille O'Neal's in school history. In the low post Swift will probably need help guarding the burlier NBA power forwards, and Brady doubts that Swift is ready to guard the quicker small forwards on the perimeter. His graceful, explosive athleticism will have to carry him until he gains muscle and experience. Swift came away from his June 5 workout with Vancouver convinced that it was seriously considering him as its selection. It makes sense: The Grizzlies want to replace power forward Othella Harrington, who's unhappy in Vancouver, and new team president Dick Versace has a four-year rebuilding plan, which means he can afford to be patient "I looked at all the magazines and Stromile wasn't mentioned on any of the all-SEC lists or All-America teams before last season," Brady says. "Then you look at where he ended up—co-MVP of the SEC, second team All-America. As fast as he developed here, he can develop in the NBA. With the right team he can become one of the top 15 to 25 players in two years." The Draft's Big Sleeper Searching for an anti- Shaq weapon? Scouts, coaches and general managers from at least 20 NBA teams at the predraft camp in Chicago this month hoped they had found one as they looked up (and up) at Brad Millard, a 7'3", 360-pound behemoth from tiny St. Mary's in Moraga, Calif. Millard was nicknamed Big Continent by big-man coach Pete Newell—but that was before Millard suffered a series of foot injuries that limited him to 16 games over the past three seasons. "So then I started calling him Atlantis," says St. Mary's coach Dave Bollwinkel, "because for the last three years he's been the lost continent"  
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