Anyone for Pallacanestro?

At the close of the basketball season last year, Jim Tillman and Gary Schull were stars with no place to shine. Till man, one of the highest scorers in the na tion in his junior year at Loyola Uni versity in Chicago, was drafted by the home-town Bulls last year to play in the National Basketball Association. But when the Bulls failed to offer a contract to his liking, Tillman decided to forgo pro ball for a season or two.

Schull, a springy pivot man from Florida State, bypassed an N.B.A. tryout three years ago to join the Phillips 66ers in the A.A.U. league. Then, at the end of last season, the Phillips team was disbanded.

What to do? Like many displaced U.S. basketball players these days, the pair hit on a happy alternative: dribble off to Europe. Tillman, 22, is currently averaging 19 points a game for Simmenthal, a team sponsored by a Milan meat-packing firm of the same name.

Schull, 24, is the leading rebounder for rival Eldorado, an ice cream company in Bologna. The N.B.A. it isn't; yet for American players unwilling or unable to buck the stiff competition at home, Europe is indeed an Eldorado.

All the Benefits. Today there are nearly 100 Americans playing for industrial teams and sports clubs in Italy, France, Spain and Belgium. The influx began five years ago, when sponsors, anxious to upgrade the sloppy play and win new friends and publicity for their teams, started recruiting U.S. college stars. Though the leagues imposed a limit of two foreigners for each team, the Americans have dominated the play. The imports have not only helped bring about a basketball boom in Western Europe, but have also ended the lopsided superiority of teams from Iron Curtain countries. The New York Knicks' Bill Bradley, for instance, while studying at Oxford University three years ago, commuted to Italy to help Simmenthal upset teams from Moscow and Prague for the European Cup Championship.

Theoretically, all the European teams are amateur, but under-the-table deals offered to the Americans allow them to enjoy, in effect, all the benefits of an expense-free vacation--and then some. In Italy, U.S. players are paid an average of $12,000 for the six-month season of pallacanestro, while such sought-after stars as Mike Lynn, a forward on U.C.L.A.'s championship teams for the past two seasons, command up to $30,-000. Like Gary Schull, some players are "on scholarship," which usually means that they are enrolled in a language course. Jim Tillman is listed as a public relations man for Simmenthal, meaning: "I make a few speeches at banquets and such."

Tillman lives with his wife Paula in a modern, two-bedroom apartment in Milan furnished by Simmenthal, which also picks up the tab for incidentals. Last month, when Tillman's wife entered the hospital to have her first baby, the company took care of all the bills.

And as far as Italian fans are concerned, their big bambini can do no wrong. Tooling around town with a fellow player in the company's racy white Fiat, Tillman says that "we've been stopped for traffic violations a couple of times. But when the cop sees us, he tells us to win some games and lets us off without a ticket."

At Ollie's Bar in Antwerp, the big attraction is dancing to soul music and ogling the American athletes who gather there after a game. The bar is owned by Oliver Howell, 28, from Indianapolis, the high-scoring forward for the Antwerp Basketball Club. In Belgium, says Howell, where rich backers send scouts to the U.S. to recruit players, the arrival of the Americans has improved not only basketball but, in his case, the bustling bar business as well.

Way of Life. For two members of the Real Madrid team, defending champions of the European Cup title, basquetbol has become a way of life. Clifford Luyk, 27, a 6-ft. 8-in. center from the University of Florida who was lured away from the New York Knicks by a touring Madrid scout, and Wayne Brabender, 23, from Montevideo, Minnesota, have both become Spanish citizens. "It was not for political reasons or anything like that," says Brabender. "But I like the life here and have lots of friends." More typical of the U.S. players abroad is Brabender's teammate, Miles Aiken, 27, a center from St. Bonaventure. He regards his sojourn in sunny Spain as an interesting but temporary cultural adventure, and plans to return to the U.S. to work in the poverty program.

Other American players, accustomed to the slick, fast-breaking style of play in the U.S., return home out of frustration; while improving, European basketball at best is on a level with junior-college ball in the U.S. Playing conditions, like the cramped court on the third floor of the Abbey of Mercy church in Venice, are often less than ideal. Refereeing, which one U.S. player says favors the home team by a good 25 points, is woefully bad. And the European players, to whom teamwork is a job performed by oxen, would just as soon uncork an impossibly long set shot as pass off to an unguarded teammate. In Italy the first words a newly arrived American learns is "Dammiil pallone" --"Gimme the ball."

For the newcomer at least, the affection of the European fans makes up for the shortcomings on the court. "I get two or three letters every day from the fans," says Gary Schull. "I don't fully understand them but I get a kick out of them. See this," he says, fingering a new beaver overcoat. "Some businessman gave it to me. I never had it so good." Sometimes the hero worship gets out of hand. After a championship game in Italy three years ago, souvenir-mad fans rushed onto the court and stripped an American player right out of his shoes, socks, shirt and shorts.

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