KNOB NOSTER, Missouri.  Pro basketball scouts and agents have been flocking to this small town in central Missouri for months now, making for crowded conditions at the Motel 6 on State Highway 50.  "I've had to put two guys into the same room with a rollaway bed," says owner Gene Ray Hampton.  "They complain they don't have any privacy."

Clell "World" Furnell

What the scouts come to see is the man who is expected to make donkey basketball, a variation of the American indoor game played on the backs of Equus asinus, the domestic ####, as popular as the NCAA's Final Four tournament.

Driving to the hoop.

"Donkey basketball is the next major sport, and Clell 'World' Furnell is going to be its George Mikan and Michael Jordan rolled into one," says David Nurvine, a one-man promotional whirlwind who has bankrolled the National Donkey Basketball League's Springfield, Missouri franchise, the Missouri Mules.

Mikan:  He changed the way the game is played without using a donkey.

For smaller cities across America who clamor for the glamour and excitement of major league sports but don't have a local billionaire who can front the money for a baseball, football or NBA franchise, donkey basketball is seen as the next best thing.

Twenty-second manure time-out.

"We'll have eight teams to start," says NDBA President Horace Schuster, "Chicopee, Mass., Troy, New York, Birmingham, Alabama, Paducah, Kentucky, Hot Springs, Arkansas, Scranton, Pennsylvania, Moline, Illinois" and the Missouri entry.  "We hope to go global by 2012," he adds.  "There's a lot of donkeys in Mexico."

Kevin McHale

What has the scouts salivating is Furnell, who has a low center of gravity combined with an extraordinary reach that is drawing comparisons to Kevin McHale, the Celtics forward of the '80's who could tie his shoes without bending at the waist.  "Clell has the perfect body for donkey basketball, and he's going to revolutionize the game," says Schuster.

"The Mules are on the clock with the sixth pick."

With the league's first draft approaching fast, there are rumors of teams trading a bundle of picks to get at Furnell, who says he is looking to buy his mother her first double-wide house trailer with a signing bonus that is expected to be in the high four figures.

Home Sweet Home--at last.

"We been livin' in rented trailers as long as I can remember," says Furnell.  "If I have anything left over, I'm goin' out to the QuikPik and get a Big Gulp Slurpee."