WORLD SPORTS SCENE / RANDY HARVEY : No, Seriously, U.S. Didn’t Want NBA Players on Olympic Team

On the eve of New Year’s Eve, there is a good chance that you already have been overwhelmed by a look back at the best and worst stories of 1991. For a change of pace, we will examine the most misunderstood story of the year.

It involves the men’s basketball team that the United States will send to the 1992 Summer Olympics at Barcelona, Spain.

The myth is that USA Basketball, which governs the international phase of the game in this country, sought changes in eligibility rules that would allow NBA players to participate at Barcelona because U.S. collegians have been pushed around in recent competitions, such as the Olympics, Pan American Games and World Championships.

This myth has been perpetuated by the media, print and electronic, who apparently have assumed it to be true because, on at least one level, it makes sense. And although surveys tell us the public no longer believes everything it reads or hears, it seems to have swallowed this one hook shot, line and sinker.

“To go back now and remind people that the United States is one of the few countries that did not vote to let NBA players into the Olympics is like howling into a gale,” said Mike Moran, spokesman for the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Energized by the upcoming new year, we will howl.

In 1986, USA Basketball led the charge against the rule change at the FIBA (Federation of International Basketball) Congress.

And won.

But three years later, FIBA’s secretary general, Boris Stankovic, summoned representatives from member countries to an extraordinary Congress, in which the previously proposed change in eligibility rules was the only issue. This time, with the aid of a full-court press by Stankovic, the proposal passed by a vote of 55-13. Among the unlucky 13 was the United States.

Why was Stankovic so favorable toward the proposal?

One theory is that he received his marching orders from International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch, a longtime proponent of opening all sports to professionals so that the Games truly will become a stage for the world’s best athletes. If the acceptance of NBA players also resulted in increased television rights fees for the Summer Games at Samaranch’s hometown of Barcelona, so be it.

So Samaranch was happy with FIBA’s 1989 vote. So was Stankovic, who had been voted, with Samaranch’s blessing, into the IOC the year before as a representative of his native Yugoslavia, although he has lived near FIBA headquarters at Munich, Germany, in recent years.

But, in fairness to Stankovic, it is important to note that the proposal had support from numerous other countries because, quite simply, it was an idea whose time had come.

As an increasing number of foreign players found places on NBA rosters, basketball officials in their countries recognized it would be to their advantage to have those players in uniform at the Olympics. Yugoslavia, for instance, could envision a lineup that included NBA regulars Vlade Divac and Drazen Petrovic and European stars Toni Kukoc and Dino Radja. Of course, there might not be a Yugoslavia by this summer, but who could have known that in 1989?

As for countries that do not have players who are competitive internationally, they had to decide who they would rather have beat them--a U.S. team with Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing and Charles Barkley or a U.S. team with Shaquille O’Neil, Christian Laettner and Jim Jackson. Most of them chose Jordan. Wouldn’t you?

Also, as pointed out recently by FIBA President George Killian of Colorado Springs, Colo., progressive members believed that the only way for basketball players in their countries to improve was to play against the best. Before the 1972 Summer Games at Munich, where the United States lost its first Olympic basketball game in a controversial championship game loss to the Soviets, few thought the rest of the world would ever be able to compete with U.S. collegians.

“With the NBA players, we should dominate for 10 to 20 years,” Killian said. “After that, who knows?”

It is those 10 to 20 years, and quite possibly more, that concerned USA Basketball when it voted against the proposal. Bill Wall, the group’s executive director, said at the time that he didn’t see much point in enlisting NBA players who would not be challenged in the Olympics.

If the games weren’t competitive, he said, television ratings for men’s basketball would be adversely affected, resulting in less exposure for the sport. With less exposure, he said, USA Basketball’s fund-raising efforts would be damaged, affecting its programs for women and juniors.

We are still seven months from the Summer Olympics, but Wall is breathing easier.

More than 80% of letters to the USOC in recent months have been from Americans who are bewildered or bothered by the prospects of NBA players participating in the Olympics. But the USOC apparently doesn’t get much mail, because those anti-NBA letters have totaled only about 200.

The USOC’s deputy secretary general, John Krimsky Jr., estimates that each letter represents 12 to 15 people who feel similarly but don’t take the time to write. If that’s the case, between 2,400 and 3,000 Americans are upset. If each one of them intended to make the average donation of $30 but withheld it in protest, the USOC will be out, at the most, $90,000.

But Krimsky said that the NBA’s involvement in the Olympics has resulted in a $1.5 million increase in licensing and sponsorship opportunities for the USOC. Besides that, he said, the NBA has agreed to pay all expenses related to the Olympics for its players.

As for USA Basketball, Wall said he has received no more than a dozen angry letters, many less than he got in 1988 after the United States lost to the Soviets at Seoul.

He also said that sales of Olympic basketball merchandise in the United States are up and that it took virtually no time to find 12 sponsors for next summer’s Tournament of the Americas at Portland, where this region’s representatives to the Olympics will be determined.

Outside the United States, interest in international basketball has never been higher. Killian said that $100 tickets for the men’s championship game at Barcelona are selling on the street for $400.

So, financially, the NBA’s introduction to the Olympics already is a success. Competitively, the United States no doubt will win the gold medal, but some other countries figure to be improved because they can use their professionals. And players for teams that don’t have a chance to win a medal at least will be able to return home and say they played against Michael Jordan. Everybody wins.