In June, before the draft, Kyrylo Fesenko trained with David Thorpe at the Pro Training Center at IMG, in Bradenton Florida.

One of his first days there, Thorpe recalls, Fesenko was working on finishing around the basket, with coach Mike Moreau. Fesenko missed several shots in a row, and got frustrated. He's a big, strong dude. And in anger, he fired a pass into the wall.

"Three of the walls around our gym are concrete," explains Thorpe. "But that one wall, the one that seperates the gym from the weight room, is sheetrock."

Boom. Big, basketball-shaped hole in the wall.

Coach Moreau saw what happened and said "ooh, that's going to cost you fifty bucks."

He was kidding.

The next morning, Fesenko arrives for workouts with fifty dollars in cash, and hands it to a perplexed Coach Moreau. They have some kind of conversation, and Moreau explains that he was kidding, and anyway a piece of sheetrock only costs a few dollars. Fesenko tells Moreau to keep a few dollars.

Time goes by. Fesenko gets drafted in the second round, plays in the Rocky Mountain Revue, gets signed to a three-year deal with the Jazz, and flies back home to the Ukraine. Moreau and Thorpe are coaching away, having forgotten all about that hole in the wall.

Then, suddenly, it dawns on Moreau that soon Fesenko will be back in the gym, tuning up for the season. And if that hole is still there, he's going to think Coach Moreau just pocketed that money!

"Sure enough," says Thorpe, "the other morning, there was a maintenance guy patching up that hole."