Bus Trip Gives Better Perspective

They rode over on a rickety bus along a beachfront road and they were curious, UCLA’s Tracy Murray and the other young American basketball players, about what the arena would be like, what the pro-Cuban crowd would be like and mainly what the home team would be like--good enough to give trouble to a group of All-American boys? Good enough to give proof that we need our professionals to win the Olympics?

Then the bus turned the corner.

“Suddenly the things that we’re worried about hardly seem worth worrying about,” Murray said to his teammates Saturday.

They looked out the windows of the bus and the others knew what he meant, like Mike Peplowski, a friendly giant from Michigan State with a Fu Manchu mustache and a perpetual smile, who said: “We’re all so focused on doing this one thing, playing and winning this basketball game, and now we look outside and we see the impoverished conditions these people are living in, and it makes you want to cry.”

“No,” Murray said, “it makes you want to go back home and get down on your knees and give thanks for everything you’ve got.”

Said Peplowski: “Here I am feeling a little out of sorts because the village where we athletes are living is something that back home we would consider substandard housing. Now I’m looking at the slums, without windows or doors, and I’m going to be depressed if my room is a little small or if we are going to win a basketball game?”

Murray: “I was thinking how bad we had it because we’ve been away from home for a while getting ready for this. And then we got to the island yesterday and the food wasn’t so good and there were no toilet seats in the bathrooms and that sort of stuff. And now I’m going to go back to California and never take anything for granted again.”

Not that Murray has always taken these things lightly. One day during the last UCLA basketball season, Tracy went home to find that his family’s house had been half-destroyed by a fire.

“We’re back living there now,” he said. “Everybody’s almost back to normal.”

There might be places a college student would rather spend the summer than Havana, but it also presented an opportunity and a challenge. Not only is Murray getting a chance to field-test the Spanish he has been studying at UCLA, but the Pan American Games is practically the last place that America’s “amateurs” can prove their worth internationally, what with NBA players expected to dominate most of our future Olympic squads.

They wanted to do their best. But it took some time Saturday to get used to the place and the pace. Fouls were called for minimal contact, as Christian Laettner quickly learned. Traveling was called early and often, as Terry Dehere unhappily learned. The backboards did not come equipped with breakaway rims, as Thomas Hill proved, practically demolishing one during the warm-up.

And the floor?

“Well, it sure looked nice on television,” Murray said. “But the wood doesn’t have any protective glaze. When you fall down on this thing, you can get up with splinters.”

Early in the game between the United States and Cuba, there was a minor bump between Peplowski, who has a rather large bumper, and one of the Cuban players, who ended up in the splinters. A foul was called and Peplowski objected, making expansive gestures and saying: “Come on! I’ve hit my sister harder than that.”

Next time down court, a make-up foul was called, sending Peplowski to the line. When he sank the first free throw, the ebullient Spartan slapped palms with his teammates as though they had just won the Pan Am gold medal.

That earned him whistles--not from the officials, from the fans. That’s how they jeer here.

He ran off the court, waving to them.

“I’ve never been booed by an entire nation before,” Peplowski said later, a grin splitting that Fu Manchu. “I liked it.”

He and Murray were on the edges of their seats--Murray played only eight minutes--at game’s end, when the Americans, who had been behind at halftime, staved off and defeated by four points a Cuban team that had more heart than skill. Losing the last Pan Am championship to Brazil was embarrassing enough; losing this game might have been, for American basketball, an all-time low.

But big deal.

As Murray snipped the protective tape from his ankles with a pair of sharp scissors, he said: “Down here, they probably have to peel off their tape.”