REAL TWIN TOWERS : 7-2 AND STILL GROWING : They Still Have a Long Way to Go, but 15-Year-Old Lanier Brothers are Just Starting to Serve Notice in Michigan

They are not ballet dancers, OK? Watching them move, you’d think their feet had been nailed to the floor.

One of them gets up on jump ball, all right, but only high enough that you’d be able to slide a piece of onion skin--real quick--under one foot. As for hand speed, those big semaphore paddles of theirs can hardly get out of each other’s way.

But since they’re 7 feet 2 inches, both of them, good posture is about all they need for now. As for the game of basketball, all it needs is patience. See, these guys just turned 15.

Mike and Jim Lanier, basketball’s true Twin Towers, will not make you forget Fred and Ginger when it comes to the two-point tango. But no matter. This is not a story about the fabulous front line of Birmingham Brother Rice’s indomitable junior varsity.

Rather, this is an advisory. Next year, the year after, three years from now, you will be hearing about these identical twins--who knows how big they’ll be by then--and how Rice is making pilaf of the Detroit area opposition. But then, you will have heard it here first. So, on with the advisory.

First, have we made the point so far that grace is not yet in their repertoire? They are, well, they are awkward. But we should be fair and point out the obvious. How could they be comfortable with their bodies when they wake up with a new one almost every day. For a while, they were growing a quarter-inch each month.

“Seem like the basket’s getting closer, Jim?” Mike would ask. And Jim would say, “Yup.”

For the time being, it is enough that they are tall, and growing, although why remains a mystery, since Dad is 6-2, Mom 6-1, and Sis 5-5. The varsity coach, Nick Tonti, said that until this season began, they were growing a full inch every three months.

“I first met them in the sixth grade and they were a legit 6-8,” he said. “In the seventh grade, they were approximately 6-10. In the eighth grade they topped 7 feet. It’s kinda scary to think where this is going.”

They twins are already in the Guiness Book of World Records as the tallest identical twins in the world. Revisions, presumably, are planned.

The Laniers’ parents do not give interviews, and Tonti does not permit them with the twins. He talks very well himself, though, and says that the family came from the Athens High School district in nearby Troy.

“Lived about a 9-iron from the school,” he said. “But they decided to move here in large part because of a complete dissatisfaction with the boys’ development in the area of basketball.”

Tonti is up-front about his recruitment of the twins. “We gave them a car. Moved the seats way back,” he said.

Come on, Nick.

Actually, Tonti said, he waited until they were in the eighth grade to mention moving to the parents, although he’d had the kids in his summer camp for years. At that point, according to Tonti, the boys’ mother said, “I’ve been waiting three years for you to bring it up.”

Tonti was quick to point out that the recruitment was entirely legal. A private high school knows no boundaries and can gather talent wherever it finds it. That is why, he also is honest enough to point out, Brother Rice is a powerhouse in football and basketball, “sports dominated by black players.” Birmingham, it should be pointed out, is where the GM vice presidents live, where all the brothers are white.

The Laniers, working-class people, finally made the switch. It appeared that there was no basketball future for the twins in their home school, since they did not start on the eighth-grade team and probably played less than half a game. Not that the Laniers were bent on creating basketball players.

“This was no ego trip for them,” Tonti said. “They just had the feeling that the chance to find out if they could play wasn’t being afforded them. Mrs. Lanier would like them to develop to a point where they might be offered a scholarship. It doesn’t have to be Notre Dame or even a Division I school. If basketball provides them a way to go to college free, well, it will have been worth it.”

For now, it is costing the Laniers as much as $4,000 in yearly tuition to find out, although it is possible the twins have been extended financial aid based on need. Tonti has asked administrators that he not be told, and if there is any aid, it is not based on athletic ability.

Whatever the investment by the Laniers, though, it could pay off big. Tonti already gets bushels of mail from coaches, inquiring into the daily disposition of the twins. He throws it all into the nearest wastebasket.

Part of his job, he believes, is ensuring a normal adolescence for these clearly different kids. That is why he does not permit interviews. “I’m not shielding them,” he said. “But their parents would like them to have some sense of what it’s like to be an everyday teen-ager. Their attitude is, ‘Let’s wait and hope they become good basketball players. We don’t know for a fact that they will.’ ”

Tonti, though, is betting on it. He has told the junior varsity coach that he can start any three other players he wants. “I’m just making sure they get an opportunity to play, to run up and down, to drop the ball, to kick it around,” Tonti said. He also said their progress has been impressive.

“Take something like skipping rope. That was once a difficult chore. Now, they’re pretty darn good. Their flexibility is improved. They both completed the mile-and-a-half. These are kids who were averaging one or two points on the eighth-grade team. Now, after 11 games on a 7-4 team, Mike is averaging 16 and Jim 7.”

Tonti said that in the beginning, he was afraid of advancing them past freshman play, for fear of embarrassing them. “But they’ve made unbelievable progress in the areas of how they play the game,” he said. “They’re better all the time at catching the ball. You never see them put the ball on the floor or even take it below their shoulders. And I don’t think we taught them that.”

Certainly they can be effective, even as they learn to work with their new bodies. If the ball can be gotten to them, they know how to turn around and put it up six more inches. They can score. And although they can be beaten on defense, they get their share of blocked shots.

But why put such high expectations for performance on two high school freshman?

“These are just two normal players who happen to be 7-2,” Tonti said.

Right. And only 15 years old.