WORLD SCENE : Walker: No Apologies, but . . .

MIAMI BEACH â€”  The Dream Team has caused almost as many nightmares for LeRoy Walker as it did for Angola.

Elected Sunday to serve as U.S. Olympic Committee president for the next four years, Walker immediately set out to clarify comments that he made during the Summer Olympics at Barcelona about the U.S. men’s basketball team.

He met here with USA Basketball’s new executive director, Warren Brown, and plans to meet this week at Atlanta with NBA Commissioner David Stern.

For those who missed them last summer, Walker has repeated the comments so often since returning to his position as a senior vice-president with Atlanta’s organizing committee for the 1996 Summer Olympics that they sound like part of a campaign speech. But in case you have forgotten, he said:

--The 1996 U.S. men’s basketball team should consist of six pros and six collegians, instead of the 11-1 ratio at Barcelona.

--All the players, college and pro, should try out for berths.

--The players should be required to live in the athletes’ village during the Games.

Walker does not apologize. But he is worried that Brown and Stern misinterpreted his comments, as many did, to mean that he is against pros participating in the Olympics.

“The International Olympic Committee wants the best athletes in the Olympic Games, and I don’t think you have to be a rocket scientist to figure that the best athletes in some sports are from the pros,� he said this weekend.

But more important, he said he is concerned because Brown and Stern apparently believed his comments were made on behalf of the USOC. They were made, he said, on behalf of LeRoy Walker.

“I’ve been friends with Warren and David for a long time, and I don’t want them to think I’m undiplomatic by talking about this again,� Walker said. “But I want them to understand that, while I might have my own personal opinions, I’m not trying to dictate to USA Basketball what it does.

“When they submit their selection process for the ’96 Games to our games preparation committee, you will hear no more about this issue from me.�

Walker said that negotiations are underway between IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch and the president of the international soccer federation, Brazil’s Joao Havelange, that would allow the world’s best players to participate at Atlanta by removing age limits. Only players under 23 are eligible now.

In return for such a concession, Havelange is asking for the inclusion in the Games of women’s and indoor soccer tournaments. . . . The site for the 1998 Goodwill Games will be selected Friday. The finalists are Miami-South Florida, New York, Dallas and St. Louis.

During the U.S. Olympic Congress last week, participation of professionals in the Games was the No. 1 topic of discussion in several sports.

Walker said he met with National League President Bill White before Game 1 of the playoffs at Atlanta to discuss involvement by major or minor league baseball players in the Olympics. Acknowledging that any such plan would be unlikely because it would disrupt the season, Walker said that he and White might meet again this week.

Jerry Lace, executive director of the U.S. Cycling Federation, said he expects the international federation to approve a plan in November that will allow each country to use at least three pros in Olympic road races. Tentatively pencil in Greg LeMond, Andy Hampsten and Lance Armstrong for the U.S. men at Atlanta. Even if LeMond no longer is riding on the international circuit by then, Lace said that he believes the three-time Tour de France winner would return for the Olympics.

Baaron Pittenger, executive director of USA Hockey, said that odds were 80-20 a month ago that the NHL would allow its best players to skate in the 1994 Winter Games at Lillehammer, Norway. Now, he said, they are 60-40 at best and perhaps 50-50. He said several Canadian teams are unhappy with talk that the NHL season would be shut down in February, 1994, for 24 to 30 days.

Unshackled by new international rules that allow professionals to enter competitions formerly reserved for amateurs, the U.S. Figure Skating Assn. is trying to organize the sport’s first pro-am on Nov. 24-25 at Hershey, Pa. Men entered are Scott Hamilton, Paul Wylie, Todd Eldredge and Mark Mitchell. The women are Roslyn Sumners, Nancy Kerrigan, Jill Trenary and Tonya Harding. Winners would earn $40,000.

About 450 grade school students from South Dade Country whose lives were disrupted by Hurricane Andrew were guests of the USOC at the Congress here last week. One student, Daritza Berio, 9, received autographs from Dorothy Langkop, a speed skater in 1932, and Anita DeFrantz, a 1976 rower who now serves as a member of the IOC’s executive board.

“I’m going to put them on my walls . . . when the walls stop shaking,� Daritza said.