European Big Men Come Up Short : They Look Good to NBA on Paper, Not So Good on Court

This is the dream:

Somewhere on this fair globe is a place inhabited by men of such grace and size that the fly-by, walking-the-dog, tomahawk throwdown--the dunk, for the uninitiated--is a simple matter, and the ascension to basketball stardom and a full line of one’s own leisure wear, a la Air You-Know-Who, inevitable.

And this just might be it, basketball’s El Dorado. There are 17 National Basketball Assn. general managers, coaches and scouts here for the European Pre-Olympic tournament, watching Old World 7-footers fly up and down the floor, the unerring jump shooters, a human mother lode.

“There are 27 teams in our league,” says Marty Blake, NBA scouting director who works the pressroom like a Las Vegas lounge.

“We figure you only get a chance to grab a center on the first round every 19.5 years.

“Where are you going to find players? I found Scotty Pippen in Conway, Ark. I found Kevin Duckworth in Eastern Illinois. Know what he just signed for? Fifteen million. That’s what a duck’s worth.”

Thank you, thank you.

The drum roll has already started. The Portland Trail Blazers used a No. 1 pick for the Soviet Union’s 7-foot 3-inch Arvidas Sabonis and are doctoring him now in Portland. They’ve taken the Yugoslav head case, er, guard Drazen Petrovic, too.

Atlanta used No. 2 picks--really--for the Russian forwards, Alex Volkov and Valery Tikhonenko. The Boston Celtics, about to succumb to mass hardening of the arteries, have just found the answer: Yugoslavia’s 7-foot shot-blocking dervish, Stojan Vrankovic.

Oh, fertile NBA imagination!

Oh, internationalism!

Oy vey .

You could start a story on the emergence of European basketball that way, except for one little question:

Are any of these guys ready for the NBA?

The only two to have made rosters--Spain’s Fernando Martin at Portland and Bulgaria’s Giorgio Gluchkov at Phoenix--went home wrapped in spider webbing, each after a season on the bench.

Sabonis, clearly the prize of Europe, has size galore--he’s 7-3 and 279--speed and skills you have to see to believe, but a head that is who knows where after years of effortless domination and second-rate coaching. Had the Blazers gotten him at 17, Pat Riley wouldn’t be making any more guarantee speeches until 2001. But Sabonis is 23 and coming off years of sloth.

Also, he speaks no English, which is going to make it hard for him to understand when Mike Schuler says, “OK, Sweet V, when we’re on D, I want you to deny by placing your arm between your man and the rock.”

Said General Manager Jack McCloskey of the Detroit Pistons:

“When he was 17 or 18, I saw Sabonis. I said the guy can’t miss being a productive NBA player. But the last time I saw him, I didn’t think he’d gotten any better.”

Did that mean he thought Sabonis was sure to be a star?

“Oh no,” McCloskey said.

Someone must have forgotten to tell McCloskey that the NBA is supposed to be making happy talk over here.

In general, NBA people have become open-minded to a fault. In the ’87 draft, several actually vied for the chance to take 5-3 Muggsy Bogues in the first round. Washington’s Bob Ferry won, and has since packed Bogues off to Charlotte in the expansion draft.

There is a story going around that at a tryout camp this spring, Ferry, out for dinner with colleagues, saw a short waiter and began yelling, “Hold me back! Hold me back!”

Well, if McCloskey is a little down on Sabonis, he’s really down on the other Europeans.

“Two years ago, I saw the World Games,” McCloskey said. “I was really disappointed in the caliber of play. A couple of my friends who coached over there thought there were a lot of players who could play. I didn’t see it at all.”

McCloskey came to see Petrovic, whose age, 24; size, 6-5, and scoring ability make him about as blue-chip a guard prospect as Europe has to offer.

Unfortunately, he’s a slow blue-chip, too.

“No way could he play defensively in the NBA,” said McCloskey, bowing out of the bidding.

So what is he doing in The Netherlands?

“I think what it comes down to, none of us want to take the chance we’re going to miss somebody,” McCloskey said.

Then he’s just trying to protect himself?

“Oh sure. Maybe there’s somebody we see that we can use.”

The Celtics have their man, they think.

He’s 7-foot Stojan Vrankovic (say SHTOY-an FRAHNK-oh-vich), a human eraser from Zadar, a town on the Adriatic Sea.

No fewer than five Celtic officials are here to see him, including their new coach, Jimmy Rodgers; their old coach, K.C. Jones; General Manager Jan Volk and co-owner Donald Gaston, who is either helping scout or making sure he can write off his vacation.

Missing--significantly?--is presiding genius Red Auerbach.

It’s hard to say what the Celtics expect of Vrankovic. Boston writers say they’ve been pretty bubbly, as if they expect him to come in and play right away as a backup center.

However, they’ve signed him to a contract--reportedly $200,000--with only scout Forddy Anderson, and the club’s European bird dog, a Yugoslav, having seen him personally.

Thus, this trip.

Guess what? Vrankovic has some rough edges.

Like, staying awake.

“You know, he is very big talent,” Yugoslav Coach Dusan Ivkovic said. “He is very good rebounder and very good ability to block the ball.

“I don’t like to tell you that coaches who work before me didn’t give him good practice but I notice that he needs work. He needs more work and he can become better, 100%.”

Whatever the Celtics were expecting, after one game, they’ve become very realistic. Rodgers agrees that the right word for Stojan is project.

That’s the nice way of putting it.

Here’s another:

“For over here, he’s great,” said Jens Kujawa, the 7-foot West German center, recently of the University of Illinois.

“He still has problems with his mental approach. He doesn’t have the right approach to the game right now. He smokes, he drinks. He can turn it around at game time, but the whole day, it’s like, who cares? It seems, at times he wants to, at times he doesn’t.

“He doesn’t play the ball. He lets his man get the ball. After that, he starts playing defense. If he lets Kareem (Abdul-Jabbar) get the ball, he won’t be able to do anything.”

It is not that Vrankovic is a bad actor, but that the European approach is so much more casual than the big-stakes American game. In Europe, a star on the national team is a member of an elite; in the U.S., he’s up to his neck in competition.

Detlef Shrempf, Uwe Blab and Chris Welp, all West German NBA players, weren’t the most talented players in Europe. They were the ones who went to the U.S. as high schoolers and stayed for college.

“People work a lot harder in the States,” Kujawa said. “People put up with a lot of pain. Over here, people just quit.

“The approach is totally different in the States. People learn how to listen to the coach. They learn to accept the coach as the authority, not as a buddy.

“Here, it’s buddy-buddy. You call him by his first name. You tell him everything you like and everything you don’t like in his coaching.

“Over in the States, I never said a word. Right now, I’m getting used to the attitude here. You talk back. You get mad. You do crazy things. Here, guys are temperamental.”

Vrankovic seems easygoing and pleasant. Approached by American writers, he summoned a team official to translate.

Does he know anything about the Celtics?

“K.C. Jones is not the coach any more and Robert Parish is 36,” he said.

That’s a start.

Can he play in the NBA?

“Is difficult to say but I like to play there,” Vrankovic said.

One of the German players has said he’d have to change his ways, give up smoking and drinking.

“Da,” said Vrankovic, himself, laughing.

He may be signed, but he isn’t quite sealed and delivered. Volk said he expects him in camp but Vrankovic said he has to see how the Olympics turn out.

One Yugoslav journalist said that Vrankovic wants to stay home with his wife, who’s having a baby, and report next season. Another journalist said he thinks Stojan is scared.

“Here’s how you have to look at it,” said Hubie Brown, the former coach of the New York Knicks and Atlanta Hawks, who is here watching.

“My last two years in New York, without Bill Cartwright, Marvin Webster, Truck Robinson, we’re giving 30 minutes a night to people like Ken Bannister, Eddie Wilkens, Kenny Green. Not one of those guys could play with this kid and I was expected to win, wasn’t I?

“I have a respect for big guys. First, he’s 7-3 (actually, the Yugoslavs list Vrankovic at 2.14 meters, which is slightly more than 7-0). He can definitely block shots. Now, there is no offense but he can catch the ball and he’s mobile.

“The Celtics want a big body. To me, he can be a backup center. Sit down with the NBA rosters and take a look at the people who are backup centers. Do you think he couldn’t play for Charlotte or Miami?”

OK, bottom line: If Manute Bol and Tito Horford can be in the NBA, so can Stojan.

Besides, they have to start somewhere. If Stojan doesn’t work out, there is the real Yugoslav prodigy, 6-11 Vlado Divac, who’s only 20.

“He is biggest talent,” said Ivkovic, his coach.

Divac won’t be eligible for the draft until he’s 22, but when he is, the line is going to reach from Belgrade to Zagreb. Give us your huddled masses, indeed.