WORLD SPORTS SCENE / RANDY HARVEY : Against Its Will, U.S. Creates Team of NBA Stars for Games

Would it be too much to ask for the people who are so loudly participating in Dream Team-bashing to please turn the volume down long enough to listen to the facts?

They have been reported over and over again, ever since basketball’s international federation, FIBA, voted overwhelmingly to allow professionals to play international tournaments, including the Summer Olympics and the World Championships.

But, apparently, they are not getting through to some people who seem so offended by the idea of seeing Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, etc., become teammates for a dozen or so games this summer.

We refer in particular to some of our media colleagues--radio talk show hosts, newspaper columnists and television commentators--who continue to misrepresent the assembly of perhaps the greatest team ever as the United States’ revenge against the countries that tweaked our college kids’ noses in the 1988 Summer Olympics and a couple of Pan American Games.

It is not true.

Repeat, please. It. Is. Not. True.

In fact, when FIBA’s leadership presented the idea at a routine session after the 1988 Summer Olympics, the United States’ governing body for international basketball, U.S. Basketball, led the campaign to quash it, arguing that a vote in favor of allowing NBA players into the Olympics would determine the gold-medal winner long before the Games at Barcelona began.

Although the United States stood to win that gold medal--and many more in future Olympics--U.S. Basketball officials are no more fond of train wrecks than anyone else, even when they are driving the train. Their reasoning carried the day. Motion denied.

But Yugoslav Boris Stankovic, FIBA’s secretary general, was far from beaten, calling an extraordinary Congress two years later with only one agenda item, the NBA.

Why was he so persistent?

U.S. Basketball officials, who might not have been the best source on this subject because they believed they had been run over by the FIBA secretary general, were suspicious that a deal had been struck between Stankovic and International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain.

They suggested a scenario in which Stankovic agreed to give Samaranch something he wanted, an Olympic basketball tournament in his hometown of Barcelona that featured all of the world’s best players, and Samaranch reciprocated by delivering a seat in the IOC to Stankovic.

In light of some of Samaranch’s more recent manipulations, it certainly seems possible that such an arrangement was forged, although he and Stankovic deny it. In any event, they prevailed. Stankovic was elected to the IOC a short time before FIBA, in its extraordinary Congress, voted, 55-13, in favor of his proposal to open international competitions, including the Olympics, to all professionals. Voting with the minority was the United States.

If FIBA asked its delegates to vote again today, even with the ridiculous scores from the Tournament of Americas at Portland, Ore., so fresh in their minds, the result would be virtually the same. One difference, however, is that the United States would be with the majority.

The change of heart among U.S. Basketball officials has nothing to do with the outcome of the games at Portland. They knew all along the games would be routs. But they never imagined how enthusiastic the best NBA players would be about representing their country in the Olympics, nor how enthusiastic most basketball fans in the United States would be about watching them.

Despite criticism from those who would prefer more competitive contests, the most persistent complaint from viewers to the networks last week was that more games were not televised.

Interest in much of the rest of the world is expected to be even greater than it has been here when the Olympics begin later this month. Basketball is the world’s fastest-growing spectator sport, even beginning to force soccer to look over its shoulder in some countries, and Bill Wall, U.S. basketball’s outgoing executive director, says that one reason FIBA voted to open international play to the NBA was to further promote the sport.

If you ask basketball fans in Europe or South America or Asia if they would rather see the United States win by 40 points with Michael Jordan or play a closer game with Shaquille O’Neal, they will take Jordan every time.

Sorry, Shaquille, they don’t know you. Yet.

As for players from the 11 other countries that have qualified for the Olympics, the ones who have to take the beatings, if they can’t play like Mike, they can at least tell their grandchildren some day that they played against him. If the Dream Team’s opponents from the Tournament of Americas are an example, the players at Barcelona will have autographs and snapshots to prove it.

A few of them, such as Lithuania’s Sarunas Marciulonis, Croatia’s Drazen Petrovic and the Commonwealth of Independent States’ Alexander Volkov, already get to play against Jordan in the NBA, which brings us to another reason some countries wanted to open the sport to professionals.

Not only does the United States get to use its NBA players at Barcelona, so does everyone else. Since most other countries concede the gold medal to the United States anyway, they figured they could strengthen their chances for a medal of a different color. Germany, for instance, is a considerably more competitive team with the Indiana Pacers’ Detlef Schrempf than without him.

As more foreign players earn places on NBA rosters, it will not be long before other countries narrow the gap between them and the United States. They might never be as deep in talent, but their best 12 will some day be able to stay in a game with our best 12.

You laugh. But it was only 32 years ago, in 1960, that our U.S. college kids, including Jerry West, Oscar Robertson and Jerry Lucas, won their games in the Rome Olympics by an average of 42.5 points--102 to 59.5.

Thirty-two years from now, perhaps the best teams in other parts of the world will have caught and passed our pros, just as they did our collegians. When that happens, we will have a Dream Olympics instead of just one Dream Team.