THE SEOUL GAMES : Manning Says Pressure Gets to Him : But Denies That He Wanted to Quit U.S. Basketball Team

You’re the toast of the college game, you’re about to sign a Clipper contract that will make you rich as Croesus and you’re hot, hot, hot on Madison Avenue. You’re campaigning abroad this summer and if that isn’t enough, they’re dusting off the top step in the Olympic awards ceremony for you and yours. You’re so happy about it all, you could just . . .

Quit?

The Olympic Village buzzed for two days with this one: Danny Manning had once been thinking about asking off the U.S. men’s basketball team.

A U.S. Olympic Committee official says that whether Manning was serious or not, he mentioned it to his agent, Ron Grinker, who must have been near shock. After all, they’re about to bring out Danny’s new line of shoes, and how many units of Air Benedict Arnolds could they move?

For perspective, however, similar thoughts of early retirement seem to have occurred to most of Manning’s teammates, too, and they’re all still here.

“That’s just rumors,” Manning said Friday. “Everybody probably has thoughts to themselves, wondering about it. But it’s nothing. It’s just speculation.

“I didn’t feel like I wanted to quit. You get tired. I’m sure you get tired of doing your job. I got tired of mine.

“For me, I think the low point was going to the trials at Georgetown (in mid-July). The NCAAs were over. People like Hersey (Hawkins) and me had to do a lot of public relations. Neither of us had that much time off.”

Guess what occurred to Hawkins at that moment?

Take this opportunity and shove it?

“I’ve thought about it a couple times. Maybe it’s a little too much basketball, maybe I should just go home and get ready for the NBA season,” said Hawkins, who will play for the Philadelphia 76ers. “Then again, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“Was Danny thinking the same thing? I don’t know if he was actually, seriously thinking about it. I don’t know if anybody actually, seriously thought about it. But it definitely crosses your mind: ‘Is it all worth it?’

“But when you think about it, it is worth it.”

Even if sometimes it seems close. Maybe the Amateur Basketball Assn.’s grimmer-than-the-grim-reaper, let’s-bunk-on-an-Army-base ambiance is getting to everybody. Maybe the players have gotten one earful too many from you-know-whom.

“Coach (John) Thompson’s like a carpenter who’s been given an old chair,” said USC’s George Raveling, U.S. assistant coach. “He strips the chair down and re-fashions it in his own image.”

If he has re-fashioned a lot of old chairs lately, Thompson at least understands their agony.

“I didn’t hear anything serious about Danny wanting to leave,” Thompson said. “But I did hear about it. I think (the report) is a bunch of crap but at the same time, I did talk to my team about it.

“The first guy who said anything was J.R. (Reid). He said, ‘I wanted to leave, too.’

“You do something like this, there’s a lot of strain, a lot of fuss. We have six, seven millionaires on this team. These guys are not afraid of me. They’re not afraid of me, believe me. Some of them are bigger, stronger, faster--and richer.

“They have made the sacrifice to do this, and for that I respect them. And if they got on that bus every day after practice and loved me, it’d be something sick going on.

“Believe me when I tell you there’d be something sick going on. A guy’s got to be flat-out crazy if you’re telling him to get his fat butt back down the court and he likes to hear that. Little Charlie Smith (Thompson’s Georgetown player) probably resents me more than anybody, because he’s heard more of this crap.

“The biggest fear of all is that you say, ‘Damn, it’s Oct. 1.’ On Oct. 15 (when pro camps open), something else happens.”

Sunday, something else will happen, all right. The U.S. team will play someone. Because they’re still all present, it’s Spain that faces the prospect of re-fashioning.

Basketball Notes

Coach John Thompson named his starting team: David Robinson at center, Danny Manning and Dan Majerle at forward, Charles Smith and Mitch Richmond at guard. Richmond’s selection was a surprise. The Kansas State-Golden State Warrior guard was thought to be on the bubble for the last cut and wound up edging out Hersey Hawkins, the star of the early going, for the first start.