Adam Katz, a Lebanon native who represents big-league baseball players including Hanley Ramirez and Sammy Sosa, recently joined Tellem and WMG.

"It's a pretty impressive client list," Melchionni said recently. "[Tellem] is almost the Godfather of sports agents. He's someone you look at to see how it's done. His clients are like an extension of his family."

Actually Melchionni is like an extension of his family. He's living in Tellem's house at the moment.

They met at Duke when Tellem went to Durham in 2005 to make a presentation in hopes of landing NBA prospects Sheldon Williams (Melchionni's college roommate) and J.J. Redick as clients.

Williams and Redick are in the NBA, Williams with the Atlanta Hawks and Redick with the Orlando Magic. They are Tellem clients.

Tellem also had dinner with Melchionni, hooked him up with an associate who handles the European pro leagues and told him that, when he was done playing, he'd be interested in offering Melchionni a job.

From August 2006 through May of this year, Melchionni played for Cimberio Novara, a team in the second division of the Italian league.

"The basketball was good but really different," Melchionni said. "The game is more physical, some of the rules are different. It took an adjustment."

Still, living in Italy and playing hoops for a living right out of college? Not awful.

"It was a great experience, seeing another culture, learning a language, getting paid to do something I'd do for free," he said.

"You're by yourself a lot, though. It was lonely at times. There were some trade-offs."

Melchionni returned home to Lancaster for the summer and just acted like a kid, hanging out at the Jersey shore and playing basketball in Lancaster County summer leagues.

Then, about a month ago, he started his working life.

"It was the first summer I wasn't dedicating my life to basketball," Melchionni said.

"I was a little burned out, and I was spinning my wheels a little bit, but I knew my future was in business."

He won't have any actual clients for a while. He will go to law school, at Loyola Marymount, through an arrangement Tellem has where prospective agents take classes at night and work seven hours for WMG during the day.

"It'll be tough, but if you don't have [a law degree] there's a ceiling over you in this business," Melchionni said.

Melchionni's dad, Gary, who also played basketball at Duke and for the Phoenix Suns, is an attorney with the Lancaster firm Stevens and Lee.

Lee's uncle, Billy Melchionni, played at Villanova and for the Philadelphia 76ers and the ABA New York Nets.

The family's latest hoop prodigy is Lee's brother, Dean, a junior at Lee's alma mater, Germantown Academy in suburban Philadelphia.

Dean is a long-armed 6-foot-5, and was a varsity starter last year at GA, which won the Inter-Ac League championship.

He's already gotten feelers from Davidson and Virginia Tech.

"He's physically immature now," Lee said. "But, I think he'll be the next Melchionni to play at the next level."