In this case, however, it is not idle talk. Mchantaf has worked hard to become the best professional basketball player in Lebanon. During the last six years, he has averaged 25 points. Last season, he made 68 percent of his shots from the field, including 39 percent from 3-point range.

But the most fascinating part of Mchantaf's basketball story is what he has endured to play a game that he describes with such passion.

Is Elie Mchantaf doing some advance scouting of the Spurs? (Eric Weinstein/NBA Photos)

Overcoming obstacles
"I can tell you too many stories," says Mchantaf, whose C.S. Sagesse will open the McDonald's Championship on Thursday when it plays Italy's Varese Roosters. The winner will meet the NBA champion San Antonio Spurs on Friday.

"Like one time, I had a game and we were playing and there were mountains near us," he said. "We could hear bombs in the mountains but they were far away so we continued playing. And then the bombs started coming closer and closer until one bomb hit a building near us. All the people started running and going underground. Many times, things like this happened."

So what did you do?

"We went underground for a about half an hour and the bombs stopped," Mchantaf says. "So we said, 'Let's continue playing.' I can tell you, I love this game."

Another time, Mchantaf was playing in a pickup game while the area was being continuously shelled. Mchantaf and his pals were intent on playing, but they had to make concessions.

"When they were bombing one side of the city, we went to the other," he says, matter of factly. "When they bomb the other side, we came back. But we would have to go underground for awhile."

Mchantaf stops to consider what he said and then smiles. "When I remember these days, we were young, crazy kids. Believe me."

A late bloomer
If not for the bombing, Mchantaf's story would not be that much different than a successful player who began playing basketball at a relatively late age. Players such as Hakeem Olajuwon, who was a soccer player, and Tim Duncan, who was a swimmer, began playing basketball as teens.

Mchantaf was 16 when he went with a friend to a junior national game. It was love at first site. Mchantaf, in fact, speaks about basketball in terms that are often reserved for a spouse.

"When I first saw the game," he says, "I said 'I love this game.' It was very beautiful."

Mchantaf was so enchanted that he told friends that he would make the junior team the next year. They didn't even bother to laugh. They ignored him.

But he went to work. He began collecting basketball tapes and studied them at night. He watched Olajuwon's "Dream Shake" move and imitated it in front of a mirror. "I would practice five, 10, 20, 50 times," he says, "And then I would go to the gym and practice it until I could do it well. And then I would go try it on my friends."

Mchantaf not only made the team, but also became its best player. He left the country for three years to play in Cyprus, then he returned home and accomplished the unimaginable: leading a second-division team to the professional championship over all the Division 1 teams in the Lebanon Cup. It was the Lebanese equivalent of Hoosiers.

While Mchantaf is proud of his achievements in Lebanon, he knows that his team is way over its head at the McDonald's Championship. Beating Varese, he said, would be difficult, but if Sagesse does, then the team gets to play "the big guys," he says, referring to the Spurs.

"I'm not afraid of anyone," he says when asked about a matchup with the Spurs. "But I'm not crazy."

A memorable experiece
Mchantaf has gotten a slight taste of NBA basketball. He is a close friend of former NBA player Rony Seikaly, a native of Lebanon. Seikaly invited him to a camp in Orlando a few years ago, and Mchantaf got to match up with Nick Anderson, who, like him, is a shooting guard.

Was it tough?

"Oh yeah," Mchantaf says. "That's a nice way [of saying it]."

Still, the experience is the thing. "Basketball is the No. 1 sport in Lebanon," he says. "When we won a championship, there were 400,000 or 500,000 people on the streets. It is something I will never forget."

Which is a good way to describe many of his basketball experiences. There are times when people say that a basketball game is going to be "a war." In Mchantaf's case, it has an entirely different meaning.