THE SEOUL GAMES / DAY 4 : SURE SHOT : Brazilian Sensation Oscar Schmidt Gets Ready for Another Crack at U.S.

As it was, so it will have to be again.

The night will be dark, the moon will be yellow and the leaves will be tumbling down. Some soul-less gunner without the sense to know what he’s going against is going to throw down on the mighty U.S. men’s Olympic basketball team all by himself, Don Quixote tilting at a tank division.

That’s the way it will have to be, if the U.S. men are to lose--as opposed to having one taken away, as in 1972--an Olympic basketball game.

As it was last summer in Indianapolis.

That was when a fancy gunner from Brazil named Oscar Schmidt--OH-scar, as they say in Brazil--shocked the haughty Americans into something resembling humility with that 1-man fireworks show in the Pan American Games.

Who could forget it?

The U.S. leading by 20 in the first half . . . Oscar going for 46 points, including 35 in the second half . . . Oscar nailing half a dozen 3-pointers . . . Oscar running down the floor slapping his temples . . . His teammate Marcel Souza taunting Rex Chapman . . . Oscar lying on his back on the floor at the buzzer, kicking like a bug, screaming in ecstasy.

Who could forget it, indeed?

Not Willie Anderson, the Olympian and No. 1 pick of the San Antonio Spurs whom Oscar scorched that night. Anderson said he had nightmares for weeks afterward.

Not Denny Crum, the U.S. coach in the Pan American Games. See if he ever is asked to coach an Olympic team.

Not Schmidt.

“We dream of that,” he said. “But we never think it could be reality.”

Not U.S. Olympic Coach John Thompson.

The Americans can’t ever take back the moment, but on Wednesday, they will play Schmidt and the Brazilians. Of course, Thompson has said nothing ungracious publicly, but how many of you find it hard to believe that he intends to reduce Schmidt to a grease spot on the floor?

Here, try a little Willie Anderson. There, take a little Stacey Augmon. We have defensive hounds aplenty where we come from. How’s 2 for 30 sound, popinjay?

“Yes, I know that,” said Schmidt, smiling, as he held court at great length for the U.S. press.

“I’ll try to play. I always play against hard defense. Sometimes it not going like I like.

“I remember first half (at Indianapolis). I touch ball 6 times.”

That’s either some memory or some shooting touch. Remember, he scored 11 points, before he actually got hot.

That’s some touch, all right. He has been a big gun on the Brazilian national team since he was a kid and the veterans were grumbling about the rainbows he and Souza put up. He’s a terror in Italy, where he makes the European version of big money--reportedly $75,000 tax-free, a car, an apartment.

Why couldn’t he have been a big noise in the National Basketball Assn., too? The Nets kept coming around, but he kept turning them down, and they kept sniffing that he wasn’t really that good.

“I have 3 years (a 3-year contract) now in Italy,” Schmidt says. “The Nets contact me in ‘84, ‘85, ’86. I refuse. They offer 1-year contract at less money.”

Was he insulted?

Said his friend Souza: “It was not the amount of the contract, it was the way it was offered. It was not a guaranteed contract, just for 1 year. So it is better for him to stay in Italy. He is getting the same money and he’s almost a god in his town.”

In size and style, the 6-foot 8-inch Schmidt resembles Kiki Vandeweghe. Each can shoot. Each can get a shot by himself, even though the opponent knows it’s coming. Neither is famous for passing or defense or anything else, other than putting it up and knocking it down. Such players may not be perennial all-stars, but there’s a place and a time for them.

“I think I could play anywhere,” Schmidt said. “Maybe not like a star, because I know my limitations. Maybe I could not play like a Larry Bird or a Magic Johnson. But I know I can play anywhere.

“My limitations? I started to be a center. At 20, I move to forward. I’m not fast enough to defend a quick player. I have this defect. A quick player can drive me every time.”

His limitations? The big one has been his lack of opportunity to play against the best.

Schmidt, 30, was an established international star when he led Brazil into the ’84 Olympics, but the team was a massive disappointment, and Schmidt was just some nickel-and-dime gunner working before sparse crowds in the preliminaries.

“When we were young, me and Marcel, the older players would like to shoot, shoot. When they go out, it was better.”

Souza has never met a 3-pointer he didn’t like, either. Nor has his brother, Maury, the point guard. Everyone else rebounds, defends and keeps his mouth shut about it. Schmidt once broke the roles down to pianists and piano movers. Guess which he was.

“That was a joke,” he says.

Kind of, anyway.

“Did you see that team in L.A.?” Marcel Souza asked. “It was better than this one, but everybody was jealous.

“It’s better to eat caviar with 1 or 2 shooting than to eat hot dogs with everybody.”

So, they’re not kidding. The joke was on the Americans, who aren’t laughing.