A TALL ORDER

The fear is gone from Gheorghe Muresan’s eyes. He is laughing and cracking jokes. He even seems able to smile and grimace at the same time while the physical therapist stretches his leg up and down, back and forth and every which way.

“He moves my legs like a piece of chicken,” said Muresan, grunting and clinching his fists to grip the raised mat he’s lying on. “He’s killing me, man. He’s very good.”

The truth is, one of Muresan’s legs would crush any chicken. Therapist Mike Kelly is a big man, but he looks as if he’s trying to manage one of the pillars from the Parthenon. Mending a 7-foot-7 aberration of nature so he can play in the NBA again is a task as mammoth as Muresan himself.

“He’s one guy you can tell enjoys life a lot,” said Kelly, the corporate fitness director of the Sinai WellBridge Clinic in Baltimore. “We have some interesting conversations, but his focus is on getting ready for next year.”

A year ago, a conversation with Muresan was a glum affair. Doctors couldn’t figure out why he had lost nearly all the feeling in his right leg, and the Romanian whose life was probably saved by basketball sat in street clothes night after night on the Washington Wizards bench, shuddering at the thought of never playing again.

Finally, after a series of misdiagnoses focusing on his Achilles’ tendon, a New York doctor found the problem: Three nerves in Muresan’s back had been compressed by his large bones, affecting the feeling and strength in both legs. The overlarge vertebrae were shaved during surgery last June, and--after nine months of rehab--Muresan is now able to run and shoot hoops on the clinic’s basketball court.

“I’m better now, 100 percent better,” said Muresan, getting up to show how he no longer has to drag his right foot when he walks. “I feel my leg. I feel I got power. I feel my foot.”

So, the tallest player in NBA history has hope that he will be able to return to the game this fall after a two-year absence.

“I don’t want to rush,” the 28-year-old Muresan said in his heavy Balkan accent. “When I get better, I want to be better. It’s not healed 100 percent. The doctor told me I need more time, but I will one day be there because the nerve was not dead, it was squeezed.

“My job is to play basketball. When I started, I was 14 years old. All my life, I do basketball. But now, I got sort of dispirited because what was I going to do? But I feel much better because I know I’m going to get better, and I will be one day on the court.”

Muresan averaged 10.6 points a game in four seasons with Washington, which drafted him in 1993 and arranged the pituitary surgery that stopped his potentially fatal runaway growth, which was caused by a disease called acromegaly.

Given what the Wizards had done for Muresan, some of his teammates were openly critical when he missed all of last season after spending the summer filming the movie “My Giant” with Billy Crystal. It’s now virtually certain that the injury wasn’t caused by the stint in Hollywood, and that Muresan would be playing by now if the doctors had discovered the nerve problem earlier.

Muresan’s contract expired after last season, but the Wizards and several other teams are keeping an eye on his progress. He started shooting again last month and was visited by Ed Palubinskas, the 48-year-old free-throw guru who once made 651 baskets in a row and whose Louisiana graphics company helped design the clinic’s new court.

“I was very impressed,” Palubinskas said. “He’s got very soft hands. He was starting to hit 9 for 10 every time.”

Added Muresan: “I can make right now 10 out of 10. These two years I don’t shoot a lot. But now, everyday, a hundred shots. I need more practice.”

When asked how he’s been passing his time--outside of his 2 1/2- to 3 1/2-hour rehab sessions--Muresan talked about fishing in the Chesapeake Bay and raising his first child, 11-month-old George. This summer, he’ll make his first trip to Romania in two years to visit his 72-year-old father, Ispas, who hasn’t made the trip to America yet because he doesn’t like to fly.

Muresan joked about working a night shift at McDonald’s rather than give a straight answer on how he’s doing financially now that he’s no longer drawing a check from the Wizards. Finally on the mend after two years of frustration, Muresan is clearly in good humor.

“When I go home, I’m a happy person with this life on this planet,” Muresan said. “My baby’s happy. My wife’s happy. All this time I take care of my wife and my baby. My baby just learned to walk, and I say, ‘I taught him how to walk, and now I am going to play basketball.’ ”