When Mengke Bateer, the Toronto Raptors centre, was growing up in a remote prairie town in Inner Mongolia, his school was paid a visit by the mayor.

His Worship nodded approvingly at the assemblage of well-mannered students and, wanting to pass along his compliments to the teacher, offered a kind word to the tall guy at the end of the line. But the tall guy wasn't the teacher.

It was Mengke, age 8, who'd been looking alarmingly adult-like since he showed up to Grade 1 standing 6 feet tall.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about the Raptors' latest adventure in pituitary projects is that Mengke has only grown 11 inches in the intervening two decades. You wonder: Did cigarettes stunt his growth?

Certainly not his muscular growth: The 6-foot-11, 27-year-old weighs 305 pounds by his own account, 318 according to Toronto coach Kevin O'Neill. So after spending last season riding the bench for the NBA champion San Antonio Spurs, and after arriving a week late to training camp yesterday after getting the Raptors' blessing to help China earn an Olympic berth at the Asian championships, the third-year veteran may get considerably more work as his new club's resident muscle.

"We've already said if he attacks anyone on the (opposing) team we're sorry, we can't pull him off," said Jerome Williams, the Raptor forward.

Added O'Neill: "I like how physical he is. He banged into (Raptors forward) Lamond (Murray) one time today and it was like, `Oh, my goodness.'"

Mengke is the son of a shepherd, but he's more bull than lamb. Last year, in 12 games with the Spurs, he tallied more fouls than points. If he played regularly, given his established average of about one foul every four minutes, he'd typically be disqualified early in the third quarter. The Coors Twins could walk through the world's largest construction site and fail to inspire more frequent whistles.

"He's one of those guys, no matter what he does, wherever he moves, they call a foul on him," said O'Neill.

"My problem is my footwork," Mengke once told Sports Illustrated. "I want to learn the moves (Hakeem) Olajuwon makes."

Here's hoping he doesn't learn Olajuwon's last move, i.e. suckering the Raptors into a three-year contract that'll pay the future hall of famer $6 million (U.S.) in retirement this season. Mengke, who considers countryman Yao Ming, the 7-foot-5 Houston Rockets star, a "little brother," will earn about a tenth of Olajuwon's wage. Still, if he gets a dollar every time a reporter mispronounces his name, he'll have Gold Club money.

No one, it seems, knows exactly how to address training camp's newest arrival. The Spurs media guide had it MENK ba-TUR last year. Broadcasters have made him MENK-ee bah-TEER and a host of variations. A couple of his teammates were even calling him Ming yesterday. But a team spokesperson, consulting with Mengke's California-born interpreter Jimmy Chang, came to this conclusion: It's MOANK BAH-ter.

Or perhaps there's a better alternative: The Chinese press, apparently, calls him Shaqi Chan.

"Obviously it is a hurdle with the language barrier," said Mengke through his interpreter.

"However, I will try my best to blend in with the coaches and the players through other means of communication."

Indeed, nobody had to tell Mengke to abide by the game's unwritten doctrines in yesterday's post-practice press conference.

He deferred to his team's star in Mandarin as well as anyone has done it in English: "There is no one in the world that can dunk like Vince Carter," he said.

He kissed up to the coach with expert lips: "My first impression — he's a kind person."

And he somehow managed to decipher the X's and O's of a new playbook at a key moment.

Smiled O'Neill: "He's been in this league, what? Three years ... he knew when it was his turn to get [the ball], I'll tell you that."

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