Analysis : Thompson Prepares for Any Situation

John Thompson’s initial experience in international basketball, nearly 25 years ago, remains vivid.

“I remember going against the first big Russian center,” he was saying the other night, “and we both once had the ball at the same time.”

Here Thompson’s mind re-created the scene: the enormous opponent trying to control the ball, pulling it and also the still-clinging Thompson, all 6 feet 10 of him.

“Felt like I was on a merry-go-round,” he said.

That is the sort of surprise Thompson wants the players currently under his watch to avoid. As the U.S. Olympic coach, he is working to expose his team to as many unique situations as possible before the Games begin in less than a month.

His Olympians have played against a point guard like none they will face in Seoul, Isiah Thomas; they have endured a tiny pest of a shooter and slick ball theft no other country can muster, Michael Adams; they have gone to the mountain, the 7-foot-4, 290-pound one named Mark Eaton.

“Now there is a 7-footer,” said Thompson of one of the few men much taller and nearly as wide as himself. “I went up to him before the game and told him (gently, we were led to believe): ‘If you hear me yelling, I won’t be yelling at you.’ ”

Thompson knows that embarrassment very often is a useful learning tool. Two situations in the Olympians’ overtime victory over the latest gang of NBA players last Wednesday night will rivet in all minds this fact of international basketball:

There are three-shot free throws.

Yes, his players had been reminded that anyone hacked while shooting beyond the three-point line would get three foul shots, but little in their previous training had offered reinforcement.

It does make sense. If you’re going to have a three-point shot, the rules ought to allow it to be worth full value, not create moments when clobbering a player hoisting a rainbow earns an advantage.

That is how the NBA team forced an overtime here. Jeff Hornacek twice drained everything in three-to-make-three situations in the last 46 seconds. Thompson’s frustration was, like lightning, intense but brief.

“We had told them to foul on the dribble,” he said after the 105-103 victory. “Now, they’ll never forget it.”

Incidents off the court will not soon be forgotten, this being only the second time in six trips when all the preliminary preparations went smoothly.

Thompson did not order the bus problems in Providence, the scoreboard crash in Charlotte, the blown gasket in midair enroute to Cleveland or his own touch of food poisoning in Oklahoma City. Still, they are lessons.

“We’re prepared for just about anything in South Korea,” said Bill Wall, the executive director of the U.S. basketball federation. And what might the major problem in Seoul be?

“Traffic,” he said. “The orientals are good at patience; we’re learning it.”

Thompson was grateful that the NBA team composed mainly of Denver Nuggets stayed at its predictable hectic pace. On the court in Seoul, patience will not be a virtue.

The Americans will be at a disadvantage in a slower-paced half-court game, the coach said, adding: “We’ll be playing so hard our own players will want to come out. Our style makes us tired, too.”

So the Thompson shuttle service was on full-bore alert Wednesday, with nine players on the court for at least 15 minutes each.

“The NBA players (with Olympic experience) also talked to the kids after the games,” Thompson said. “About hand checking, push-shove, catching the ball strong.”

Although some insist the major competition in Seoul will be more finesse-oriented, Thompson is preparing his team for hand checks just slightly less intense than the one Mike Tyson gave Mitch Green.

The frailest Olympian, 165-pound Charles Smith of Georgetown, has proven one of the toughest.

“A little crazy,” Thompson said with affection of his overachiever. “I saw him wing (Charles) Barkley (with an elbow in Charlotte), give him a short one.” Barkley retaliated with a blatant elbow and was called for a technical foul.

“I asked Barkley about it the next day,” Thompson said. “ ‘Did Smitty elbow you?’ He said yeah. I said: ‘That’s when the coach leaves.’ ”

That’s a fib as large as Thompson, of course. In lots of ways, the players know Thompson will protect them. The players, in turn, are getting to know how to protect themselves.

Early in the trials, Thompson gave them a way to cut short an exhausting practice. If one of them, close to bone-tired at the moment, could sink two straight foul shots, everybody would leave. If the player missed, the running would go on.

Georgetown’s Smith was chosen the designated savior. And he came through with that swish-swish respite.

Try as Thompson might to create a hermetically sealed environment in Seoul, privacy will be invaded ever so slightly.

Thompson apparently has relented on his demand that not even a few U.S. soldiers be permitted to watch the team practice in an Army gym in Seoul. That had created the possibility of being denied the facility.

“Everything’s resolved,” Wall said.

Wall remains calm in most matters, for he has seen more in his 15 years flitting about the planet for U.S. basketball than nearly anyone. The hydraulic system of a 747 going on strike high above the North Atlantic, for instance.

And the absolute topper: failing to get a wakeup call in Madrid one morning in 1976. That caused him to miss the last flight to Algiers before a strike closed the airport.

Wall rented a car to Gibraltar and ferried to Morocco. There was no rental car for a trip across the desert, so he took a taxi that eventually led to rides on three trains and a near-sleepless night in a body-laden station.

He got a police escort to a bus that carried bicycles, chickens and a pig but no other humans. That soon led to 200 miles of hitchhiking, a short plane flight and a frantic taxi ride to his hotel, where the room reservation he’d made was canceled.

It developed that the meeting of international basketball officials had been moved to another hotel; the bellman proceeded to take Wall to the proper place and, three days later, he still was not late.