Business Notes PRODUCTS

The Detroit Pistons may have won the N.B.A. championship last week, thanks to their Motor City moxie, but they couldn't have done it without a contribution from South Korea. How's that? Despite the all-American Spalding name on N.B.A. basketballs, they are made in South Korea. In fact, many products with red- white-and-blue names are manufactured abroad, including Rawlings baseballs (made in Haiti), Bell telephones (Singapore and Taiwan) and the Pontiac LeMans (South Korea).

Now a Maryland-based group called the Made in the USA Foundation plans to compile a list of popular products and their place of manufacture for a forthcoming book titled Made in the USA: A Catalog of the Best American Products. Joel Joseph, the group's founder, plans to contrast such U.S.-made goods as Levi's and Macintosh computers with ringers that include Perry Ellis "America Series" shirts (made in Mauritius) and Rockport shoes (Portugal and Taiwan). Joseph is lobbying for legislation that would require advertisers to disclose where their products are manufactured.