Sebastian Telfair, the Brooklyn high school basketball phenom, walked out of the training room after his first game at the Adidas ABCD Camp today at Fairleigh Dickinson University's Rothman Center with a bag of ice taped to his knee.

Asked if he had hurt himself, Telfair shook his head.

"Just growing pains," he said.

Telfair, who first came to the Adidas camp in 2000, has grown up in front of the many scouts and coaches who come here each summer for this cavalcade of prep basketball stars.

This is a place where reputations are made. Two years ago, LeBron James, then a sophomore point guard from Akron, Ohio, came to Hackensack as a raw talent who had a knack for making good passes and big shots, though mostly against inferior competition. But James left the camp later that week as a prospective N.B.A. lottery pick.

Telfair, a senior at Lincoln High School and a cousin of Phoenix Suns guard Stephon Marbury, who also starred at Lincoln, is not James. At 6 feet and 165 pounds, he does not have James's size or build. But he has become high school basketball's superstar in waiting.

Like many in his shoes, Jason Kapono could be publicly bitter about being a second-round draft pick.

Like many in his shoes, he followed the classic example of how to become an NBA first-rounder. He went to the right school, honed the right skills, won the right awards, stayed four years.

And like many, he became a victim of sorts to the overexposure of the talented teen-agers, the globalization of the sport, and being labeled a one-trick pony.

At a school renowned for its basketball history, UCLA, Kapono accomplished a laundry lists of firsts: first to ever be named Pac-10 first team four times, first to lead the school in scoring four times, first to win the John Wooden Award (for being team MVP) four consecutive years.

Yet on draft night, it was second, as a second round, for Kapono, 31st overall to the Cavaliers. He was still available, because many NBA scouts portrayed him as simply a shooter.

Not that Kapono is simple. He's got an NBA body (6-foot-7, 213 pounds) and was one of the top 3-point gunners in college basketball during his career, shooting 45 percent.

They traveled from different places to get to the makeshift stage at the Sonics' practice facility yesterday.

Nick Collison flew into Seattle after a three-day bash with buddies in Las Vegas to celebrate his lottery selection in last week's NBA draft. Luke Ridnour made the one-hour, 45-minute drive with his parents from his home in Blaine.

Collison, a forward from Kansas, and Ridnour, a point guard from Oregon, could have partied in New York last week if Ridnour hadn't declined the NBA's invitation to sit with the other draft prospects at Madison Square Garden.

Collison said he felt compelled to attend. But the glitz, glamour and throng of ESPN reporters would have been overwhelming for Ridnour, who had an uneasy feeling about all of the hoopla ? similar to the sensation he had when his 170-foot poster was unveiled in Times Square last year.

"He was mortified about that poster," said Muriel Ridnour, Luke's mother. "He was like, 'My team should be up there and not me.' That's totally how he felt. He did not like all of that publicity.

"He and (Oregon teammate) Luke Jackson were on several billboards in Eugene, and Luke was so glad he had Luke Jackson with him because he didn't want to be on it by himself because he's a team guy."