Olympic Basketball May Be Open to Pros : Eligibility Vote Would ‘Guarantee’ the U.S. a Gold in ‘92, Official Says

International basketball prepared today to open the Olympics to professional players, a move a top American official said would “guarantee” the United States the gold medal in 1992.

With the defending Olympic-champion Soviet Union proposing some limits and NBA players giving a lukewarm response to the chance of going for gold in Barcelona, Spain, officials of the international basketball federation said they are confident that the plan will be adopted.

“I am quite sure it will pass,” said Boris Stankovic, the secretary general of the federation, who has pushed for opening the Games and all other federation-sponsored tournaments to players from professional leagues around the world.

The federation’s ruling council voted to recommend that the measure be adopted at Friday’s special session, and whatever decision is taken will be in effect for the next Olympics. The International Olympic Committee leaves eligibility decisions to each sport.

Dave Gavitt, president of the USA Amateur Basketball Federation, said he supports the move but is not sure how his federation will vote, with 74 nations participating.

“Personally, I feel hypocrisy exists that can’t be defended. But at the same time I have to do what is best for USA basketball, and that includes colleges, junior colleges and amateur clubs, and they are not jumping for joy over this,” he said.

But Gavitt, who also is commissioner of the Big East Conference, acknowledged the incredible edge allowing basketball professionals in the Olympics would give the Americans.

“If we have this for ‘92, then I guarantee we’re going to win the gold medal,” the former Providence College coach said. “In all my years of coaching, I don’t think I’ve guaranteed many wins, but I feel safe with this one.”

One obstacle cropped up on the eve of the session: The Soviet Union, which beat the United States and won the basketball gold medal at the Olympics in Seoul last summer, proposed that the pro-eligibility plan be phased in, with each national team limited to two professionals for the first few years.

Sergei Karpov, head of the Soviet delegation, declined to comment on the proposed amendment, which the council unanimously rejected. The amendment still will be presented to the session.

‘Fear of the Unknown’

Gavitt, a council member, said the Soviets appeared to have a “fear of the unknown” about what professional eligibility would do to basketball in the Olympics and their own country, including possible defection to the NBA.

Basketball in the Olympics has been all-amateur, as all sports in the Games used to be. This means that the best players in the United States, the stars of the NBA, have been ineligible.

From 1936, when basketball was introduced, until a last-second loss to the Soviet Union in the 1972 gold-medal game, at the same arena where Friday’s vote will be taken, U.S. collegians and other amateurs won 62 Olympic games in a row. They resumed their unbeaten pattern in Montreal in 1976 and, after the boycott of Moscow in 1980, in Los Angeles in 1984.

But basketball, an American invention, is gaining popularity around the world, and other nations are gaining on the United States. Brazil won the Pan American Games tournament in 1987 on the American’s home court in Indianapolis, and the Soviets clobbered the U.S. squad in Seoul. The United States wound up with the bronze medal.

Those losses sparked grumbling that the United States could not use its best players, while other nations, particularly in the East Bloc, could because of more flexible rules on amateur status.