RUSSIAN ROULETTE : With a Feisty Coach and a Feisty Star Center, Soviet Basketball Team Is Spinning Its Wheels

As if emerging from a mist or a long sleep or its normal swirl of controversy, the Big Red Basketball Machine rises anew, just in time for its long-deferred rematch against the United States, loaded as usual with personality and tiptoeing as usual on the border of chaos.

You thought last week’s special party conference was wild? It has nothing on the Soviet Union Olympic men’s team, with its coach back from basketball exile and its star center, who may or may not be ready to make a miracle return from the injured list, depending on whom you ask.

The coach is the Gray Fox himself, the Red Auerbach of the Red army, Col. Alexander Gomelsky, newly returned to the bench after his players ate his successor for lunch.

The center is 7-foot 2-inch Arvidas Sabonis, who has been spending his time recently in Portland, Ore., having his torn Achilles’ tendon nursed to health by the Trail Blazers, to the wails of U.S. Olympic Coach John Thompson.

Even with Western care, however, Sabonis had been considered an ultra-longshot for the Olympics, so wait till Thompson hears this one:

“I talked to (Sabonis) by telephone last week,” Gomelsky said. “He’s looking good, he’s feeling very well.

“He will come to Moscow Aug. 5 and start practicing with the national team. I think he plays in the Olympic Games.”

This is the short, not to mention diplomatic, version. The story goes that Sabonis, growing restless in Portland, recently flew to Chicago to attend a Lithuanian festival and was photographed there by a local paper. When Gomelsky saw the picture, he is supposed to have blown up, perhaps precipitating their telephone conversation.

“I know this problem,” Gomelsky said.

Was he angry?

“This is normal,” Gomelsky said, smiling bewitchingly.

“In Russia now, perestroika (restructuring). No problem.”

No problem?

In Portland, Sabonis told The Oregonian, through an interpreter: “When I say that I am playing, I’ll play in the Olympics. Then you can listen to Gomelsky.”

Also, the Trail Blazer team doctor, Robert Cook, said he was recommending that Sabonis not play.

No problem?

All Soviet basketball has is problems.

Also sitting out now is Valdis Valters, the former star point guard, who has been left home. Too selfish, whisper European basketball writers.

Soviet demotions and promotions are of great interest in the West, where the buzz is always that so-and-so is in the dog house and so-and-so has a drinking problem, and so-and-so was busted for smuggling. Maybe it’s all true, maybe none of it is, but it’s all part of the new mystique, now.

The Soviets have all these terrific looking basketball players--three members of their national team have already been drafted in the first or second round by the National Basketball Assn.--so how come it’s taking so long to catch up to the United States?

They haven’t met in the Olympics since 1972, when the Soviets were officially credited with a victory at Munich. By 1984 the Americans had geared up--how do you think they’d have done in ’72 if Bill Walton had played?--but Gomelsky thought he had a team that could get over the top, even in Los Angeles, against Bob Knight’s perhaps-the-best-amateur-team-ever. A little problem with his country’s boycott cut Gomelsky off at the knees, though.

“Bawbby Knight, no problem now,” said Gomelsky ruefully, after the Soviets announced they’d stay home.

“Russians no come. He win gold medal.”

In retrospect, fate might have been kind. As talented as the Soviets were, they’d have been decided underdogs to the U.S. team, and Knight might not ever have called off the dogs. But we’ll never know, will we?

Two years later, however, the Soviets got their shot, in the ’86 World Games at Madrid. There a less-imposing U.S. team--David Robinson, Charles Smith, Kenny Smith, Tyrone (Muggsy) Bogues--ran up a 16-point lead on them, held off a late rally and won.

Gomelsky, though, was nowhere in sight for that one.

Was it his choice?

“No,” he says. “My federation.”

What happened?

“I don’t know.”

Vladimir Obukov, a coach from the national junior team, took his place but wound up with sneaker prints all over his chest.

Jerry Pimm, the UC Santa Barbara coach who was Lute Olson’s assistant at Madrid, said of Obukov:

“After the Yugoslavia game (the Soviets rallied to win in the semifinals), he didn’t even come out to meet with the press. He was so disgusted. It was like he was humiliated. He was crying.

“It was obvious, he didn’t have much say. Against us, they held their last timeout without him even saying anything.”

Gomelsky returned to the national team in 1987.

A towering figure in European basketball, Gomelsky is popular but controversial. He stays at Billy Packer’s home when he’s in the United States, and Packer talks him up. But another ex-coach, Big East Commissioner Dave Gavitt, says publicly that Gomelsky owes his job to politics.

Indeed, rival European coaches commonly whisper that Gomelsky is a powerful man in the Soviet Union, with connections in the Politburo, itself.

“You’re going to hear a lot of things about him,” said Dan Peterson, an American who coached in Italy and is now a TV commentator there.

“You’re going to hear he really doesn’t know all that much about basketball, that the game has passed him by, that he’s a political operator. But he’s one of only two coaches who ever won in the European Cup with two teams.

“He won his first three with ASK Riga. He won four more with CSKA Moscow. He’s won seven and nobody else has ever won more than four. That’s like John Wooden’s 10 NCAA championships and Red Auerbach’s nine NBA titles.”

In Euroball, where there is only a small class of elite players who are highly paid or richly subsidized, a national coach’s first task is to get control of his team. Gomelsky has that much going.

What else does he have going?

Well, the cupboard isn’t exactly bare.

Sabonis was a first-round pick of the Trail Blazers.

The Atlanta Hawks drafted the young forwards, 6-9 Alexander Volkov and 6-8 Valery Tikhonenko, in the second round, and are negotiating with 6-5 point guard Sharunas Marchulenis.

Said Peterson: “One great misconception, people think Russians--regimented, little wooden soldiers. That’s bull. They make guys playing a pickup game in Watts look like they’re over-controlled.”

But the Soviets are young, and not as large as they were in Madrid, when they were packing three 7-footers, and they’re beatable. With Sabonis gone, little Greece trimmed them, 104-103, a year ago in the European championships, and the Yugoslavs are generally picked to beat them here.

The Soviets figure to get one of the three European spots in Seoul, but where else are they going? Without Sabonis, they’d figure to be little more than cannon fodder for the Americans, and with him, they’ll be nice underdogs, too.

A once-cocky comrade acknowledged as much.

“Eighty-four team much better,” Gomelsky said. “Because three big players--Sabonis, (7-2 Vladimir) Tkachenko, (7-0 Alexander) Belostenny.

“Today only one--Belostenny. In ‘84, Belostenny No. 3. Today he is No. 1.

“Sabonis come back, possible good team. But this team not bad.”

Unfortunately, neither Mother Russia nor America the Beautiful pays off for not bad. It’s win or take the consequences, perestroika or no.