Two years ago, when a fast-breaking, aggressive team of Soviet basketbolisty walloped a U.S. quintet 62-37 in a world amateur tournament in Santiago, Chile, Communists everywhere hailed it as another landmark in Khrushchev's campaign to overtake the U.S. in everything from meat production to widget manufacture. "When it comes to shooting at the moon or at the basket, the U.S. cannot keep up with Russia," trumpeted a leftist Chilean paper. "We won," declared Russian Coach Stepan Spandarian loftily, "because we did what we planned to do."
In his trumpeting, Dialectician Spandarian ignored the...