THE 1987 PAN AMERICAN GAMES : Basketball : U.S. Routs Argentina’s Leftovers : Real Team Stays Home and Misses 85-58 Trouncing

INDIANAPOLIS — So you think you had a bad day Monday. The boss was cranky. Your head ached and you had the sniffles. You got a call that the plumbing in your house had backed up.

Take heart. You could have been Flor Melendez, coaching Argentina’s basketball team in the Pan Am Games.

Headaches? Sniffles? Melendez would have traded places with you in a minute. His story begins, or perhaps, ends with his team losing to the United States, 85-58. The score was really not a true indication of the game. It was worse than that.

Nor is the score a true indication of the way Argentina can play, or Melendez can coach. No, the real game for Melendez and his Argentine team was played before the game, before the team even arrived.

Here is the story:

Once upon a time, Argentina had a national team that beat a United States national team--not the one it played here Monday--in the most recent World Games. The Argentines were a veteran team, hardened to world competition and ready to give the United States a run for the gold medal here.

After the World Games, Melendez’s team played in the recent South American Games. When it won that tournament, the players asked for money they apparently were promised by the Argentine basketball federation. They received money but instead of the promised $1,000 each, they got $850.

So six of the players, deciding to press their demand, announced that they would strike. Pay up or put up with a lesser team, was the message. Having a distaste for blackmail, Argentine officials balked.

Into the fray stepped Melendez, a highly regarded international coach, who was quite successful with the national team in his native Puerto Rico and who has a contract “until 1999” as coach of Argentina’s team. Melendez, who built this team into an international contender, could see his year’s work dribbling away.

When he could see he was getting little sympathy from anywhere--the tack taken by all was pretty much: Don’t cry for him, Argentina--he took matters into his own hands. Or, more precisely, his own wallet.

He called his striking players together and told them he would make up the difference in pay himself. So he literally threw about $1,200 right on the table. But the players refused to take their coach’s money, out of principle and respect for him. And, realizing it was getting very near time to leave for the Pan Am Games, they got together and decided to fold their cards and quit bluffing.

To which the Argentine federation responded: “ No es posible .” That’s Spanish for, “Buzz off, guys.”

That left Melendez with six vacancies on his basketball team of 12. Four of the strikers were starters, one of them the team’s 6-foot 10-inch center.

Left without much choice but to fill the uniforms with bodies, Melendez drafted five players from the junior ranks and filled the other spot with a player who was a marginal veteran.

“We still had some players to decide on 20 minutes before the plane left for the Pan Am Games,” Melendez said.

The good news was that they all made the plane--good news, that is, for the U.S. team.

Coach Denny Crum’s team, overwhelming under the most common of circumstances, was awesome in its demolition of the Argentines, who played hard but were like a posse with empty pistols. Nor was Argentina the least bit lucky. The one starter who remained, the non-striking Carlos Romano--who was quickly dubbed Senor Scab by the sarcastic U.S. press corps--went 1 for 12 from the floor and had 3 points. The best Argentine player, Marcelo Milanesio, who was a reserve guard until his teammates hit the bricks, spent the entire game being banged around by the bigger, stronger and faster U.S. team.

Milanesio finished with 17 points, even though he took a shot in the eye early in the game that put him down for the count, slightly sprained an ankle a few minutes later, suffered at least half a dozen knockdowns, played right through a couple of standing eight counts and finally left the game for good with a cut in his mouth that required five stitches. All of which at least earned him the admiration of Crum.

“That little No. 9, he could play on my team anytime,” the U.S. coach said. “He had great quickness. And guts.”

Not to mention a jaw like Joe Frazier’s.

Everybody on the U.S. team played at least 11 minutes, except for Ricky Berry, who aggravated a sprained ankle but is expected to be fine for the team’s next game.

Willie Anderson, Rex Chapman and Danny Manning each had 11 points for the balanced U.S. team, and Crum kept substituting entire fresh teams at the Argentines.

The whole thing was kind of like a basketball invasion of Normandy. Except in Normandy, the Germans had a chance.