Thompson Raps Blazers for Helping Soviet Star

U.S. Olympic basketball Coach John Thompson doesn’t believe that the Portland Trail Blazers should be helping injured Soviet Olympic basketball center Arvidas Sabonis.

Thompson told the Sunday Oregonian of Portland that he deeply resents the Trail Blazers’ efforts.

The 7-foot 3-inch Sabonis, a 1986 first-round draft choice of the Blazers, arrived in Portland at the team’s invitation April 28 to rehabilitate his injured Achilles’ tendon. He has been seeing Dr. Robert Cook, the Trail Blazers’ team physician, twice a day for physical therapy.

“Realistically, I see Sabonis as being a fulfillment of Lenin’s prophecy: The capitalists are selling (the Communists) the rope that they can hang us with,” Thompson said. “I personally feel we’re being used. . . . We are in direct competition with them. To prepare Sabonis to play against us just isn’t right.”

Commissioner David Stern of the National Basketball Assn. said: “Coach Thompson is a great coach, but I’m glad he’s not our Secretary of State, conducting our foreign policy.

“The concept that basketball could be used . . . as a way for the two countries to achieve a better understanding of each other is very exciting for us. I’m sorry that Coach Thompson doesn’t share that view of the world.”