Free Dream Team by Jack McCallum Page A

this,” Gavitt told the FIBA reps, “you need to realize a few things and help us. We’re dealing with a powerful organization in the NBA, and we’re going to have to get your cooperation with dates and things like that.”
    There were questions from other nations about how the United States would get its NBA players to participate—it wasn’t only Packer and McGuire who thought the idea of pros giving up their summer was folly. But Stankovic would have none of it. “That’s not our problem,” the Inspector of Meat told the delegates sternly. “That’s the problem of the United States. What we have to do is the right thing, and then let them work it out.”
    After the vote, the U.S. delegation had a layover in Amsterdam on their way back. Gavitt had dinner with Bill Wall and Tom McGrath, the executive and assistant executive director, respectively, of ABAUSA. The future was uncertain, particularly for Wall, who had run the organization since the mid-1970s. That’s when ABAUSA was created to supplant the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), the confederation of stuffed shirts and clueless bureaucrats who, with an infuriating arbitrariness, had run amateur sports in this country for decades.
    McGrath was an ABAUSA guy all the way, but he was younger than Wall and more politically nimble. He might’ve resented the NBA intrusion, but he saw the future and knew that much of the old organization’s resistance came from, as he puts it today, “notwanting to vote ourselves out of office.” Wall could see that his time was up and absolutely resented it. At the 1986 FIBA Congress, when the resolution of open competition was first brought up by Stankovic and soundly defeated, Wall had spoken out passionately against admitting pros, and he still felt the same way. Wall was aligned with George Killian, a politician of the first order who would later become a U.S. delegate to the International Olympic Committee. Gavitt and Killian never got along, so Wall didn’t get along well with Gavitt, either.
    But Wall did grasp the irony, too: the NBA was about to do to ABAUSA exactly what his group had once done to the AAU—turn it into the Edsel.
    “You have to understand how much change this was for the college guys, and I was one of them,” said C. M. Newton, who, like Granik and Gavitt, was an important person in keeping the peace between the college types and the pro types. “Charter flights and exclusive hotels and the idea that we were going to train in Monte Carlo? These were things that David [Stern] and Russ [Granik] insisted on, and they were foreign to us.”
    There would be talk later, from both Wall and McGrath, about how well the NBA had treated ABAUSA. But much of that is attributable to the fact that it’s not wise to piss off David Stern, not then, not now, not ever. Make no mistake about it: by the time the vote for open competition had been taken, the NBA had angered the amateur organization. The McDonald’s Open, for example, should’ve been an ABAUSA operation, but it turned into largely a Stern-Stankovic operation. The two men—oligarchs both, masters of their respective kingdoms—had become simpatico and done much of the planning and negotiation with their own people, their eyes now on a joint prize.
    But at that dinner in Amsterdam, there was still business to discuss, as hazy as the future might be. Wall wasn’t out yet, and he, Gavitt, and McGrath began talking. Nobody could be sure of how substantial the NBA participation was going to be. The group finally reasoned that six NBA players, probably none of themtop-flight stars, would sign on. They figured that elite NBA players would never sacrifice playing time for the sake of pursuing a gold medal.
    There was also the matter of a coach. All discussions were premature, but none of these men thought for a moment that the monarchial progression would not take place, which meant that, in all likelihood, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski would be the 1992 Olympic