For U.S., Perfect, Not Perfection : World Basketball: Dream Team sleepwalks through 105-82 victory over Brazil and runs record to 3-0.

No jibes about the golf games of U.S. players, no Oscar shooting from the cheap seats, no tweaking the Americans’ noses, no nothing.

Like the decline in Dream Teams, Brazilian basketball has seen better days, leading to Sunday’s forgettable matchup and a drab 105-82 victory by the Daydream Team, which managed to avoid yawning on camera but barely.

“They’re much stronger than Dream Team I,” said Brazilian forward Jose Vianna, “but there’s something lacking there and I don’t know what it is. It might be some kind of philosophy or character.”

Try interest.

If the Dream Team had a knack for approaching mismatches with enthusiasm, this one is merely bored.

The Dream Team dispatched its victims by an average of 44 points. This team has beaten three opening-round tackling dummies by an average of 31.

The young Brazilians, already beaten by Spain and China, had little to scare anyone. Oscar Schmidt, the leading scorer in Olympic history, was left off the team. Guard Marcel Souza, who challenged Michael Jordan to forget about golf and Scottie Pippen to quit laying by the pool at the Tournament of the Americas two years ago, has retired.

Schmidt’s jump shots and Souza’s mouth led the Brazilians to their 1987 upset of a U.S. squad that included David Robinson, Danny Manning and Pervis Ellison in the Pan-American Games at Indianapolis, perhaps the most embarrassing defeat suffered by an American team on American soil.

Schmidt volunteered to play but was turned down by his federation, which claims to be rebuilding the team. This would be like the United States turning down Larry Bird and remains a cause celebre .

“I don’t want to talk about the past,” said Brazilian Coach Ennio Vecchi. “I only want to talk about the players who played here today.”

Vecchi’s game plan featured an old-fashioned weave, with three players running figure-eights and exchanging handoffs between the top of the circle and the half-court line to start its plays.

The offense has been so long out of fashion in the United States, it’s hard to recall what it was supposed to achieve. For Vecchi, its purpose was to kill time.

Whether for team harmony or by chance, U.S. Coach Don Nelson went with five new starters and even let Larry Johnson jump center, on the theory that international referees let players jump early and steal it. But Johnson, recovering slowly from his bad back, can barely jump.

If redistributing the playing time was supposed to energize everyone, well, that didn’t work either.

“Sometimes you tend to relax a little,” said Dominique Wilkins. “But we had to regroup and say, ‘Hey, let’s put these guys away and get on back to the hotel.’ ”

Missing nine of their 10 three-point shots, the Americans settled for a 12-point lead at halftime. Shaquille O’Neal and Shawn Kemp went on a dunk-a-thon in the second half, but the Brazilians avoided outright humiliation and celebrated as if they had won.

“We have proven to a lot of people,” said Vecchi, “that we have good players.”

The Americans, 3-0 in Pool A, advance to the quarterfinal round-robin in which they will play Australia on Tuesday, Puerto Rico on Wednesday and Russia on Friday. The games will be in Toronto, so at least the Dreamers can move back to the big city.

Nelson is giving his players today off, their first since opening camp July 20. If they can’t go home, it’s the next best thing.

World Basketball Notes

The round-robin quarterfinals start today with China playing Croatia and Greece meeting Canada. On Tuesday, Puerto Rico plays Russia. . . . Puerto Rico, needing a five-point victory to advance to the quarterfinals, beat Greece, 72-64, in Toronto to eliminate Germany from medal contention. . . . China held Spain to two field goals during a 9 1/2-minute stretch late in the second half for a 78-76 victory and its first berth in the quarterfinals.