Walker: Take Basketball Off Its Pedestal : Delegation: Probable next USOC president says he wants to unify U.S. team, which means getting NBA players to stay in Olympic village in ’96.

While strolling through the Olympic village one night this week, LeRoy Walker, head of the U.S. delegation at the Summer Games, joined a crowd of U.S. athletes gathered around a television to watch the men’s basketball team play. He was disturbed by what he saw, not on the television, but in front of it.

“I saw American athletes pulling against American athletes,” he said. “They told me: ‘The basketball team has gotten so much attention, we hope they lose.’

“I may be from the old school, but when I find Americans pulling against Americans, it bothers me.”

Walker, 74, said he wants the U.S. Olympic team to become a team again, and as the man who probably will become the U.S. Olympic Committee’s next president in an October election, he might be in a position to turn some of his ideas into policy before the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta.

One such idea would require all U.S. athletes to reside in the village while they are competing.

“People are going to twist my words and say that I’m against our pros being in the Olympics, but that’s not true,” he said. “That doesn’t bother me at all. I’m for all of our best athletes being here.

“But that doesn’t mean they have to be put on a pedestal. I have no problem at all with the Dream Team, for instance, except for the problem it creates when they’re treated so much better than everyone else.

“I don’t know why they couldn’t be like Jim Courier. He’s no pauper himself, but he told me he was enjoying being in the village and meeting all the other athletes who are not tennis players. Why couldn’t the Dream Team go through that for 16 days?”

The U.S. men’s basketball team, which includes 11 NBA players, is staying in a luxury hotel that charges $900 per room per night. But others, such as track and field stars Carl Lewis, Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Mike Powell and tennis player Pete Sampras, also opted for alternative residences, even though the village is a new seaside condominium complex with units that will sell for up to $400,000.

The basketball players’ choice of staying outside the Olympic village takes into account the strains of the NBA season, according to NBA Commissioner David Stern.

“We tried to get the best accommodations for the players,” Stern said Tuesday. “These guys are on the road without their families hundreds of nights a year. What we tried to do was establish a situation where they could bring their families and kids.

“Of course I read that Mr. Walker questioned why the basketball players aren’t staying in the village.

“They say they’re going to pass a resolution that everybody should stay in the village. If they do that, let them do that. Then our guys will probably do it, too.”

Some athletes have complained about the lack of air-conditioning in the village, but in general, they have said that it is comfortable. Most athletes who are not staying there say that security is a larger issue than comfort, contending that there would be too many demands on their time from other athletes and the media if they were in the village.

A USOC spokesman said space is available for all U.S. athletes in the village but, depending on their means, they can reside wherever they wish.

Michael Lenard, a USOC vice president from Los Angeles, said Walker discussed a possible change in policy for future Games at the end of Tuesday’s meeting of the USOC’s Games administrative committee.

“It was seriously raised and will be seriously discussed,” Lenard said. “We need to learn better ways of doing things from each Olympic Games. Maybe that includes all of our athletes living in the village and maybe it doesn’t. It’s not a new issue.”

Of Tuesday’s meeting, Walker said: “I might end up being alone on this, but the response was good. It’s behind us for ‘92, but in the next four years, we need to get our act together and bring the team back into some reasonable structure. I don’t like it that we seem to have created first- and second-class Olympians.”

What would be his reaction if a potential gold medalist, or the pro basketball or tennis players, told him they would not compete in Atlanta if required to live in the village?

“I wouldn’t give a damn,” he said. “The athletes are looking for leadership. If you tell them they have to do something, they’ll do it. If they don’t want to, they don’t have to be on the Olympic team.”