Actually, this isn’t a question about the repeated last three seconds.
What I’d like to know is “what was the halftime score?”
Did the lead seesaw a lot, or did one team stay ahead most of the game?
(I haven’t had a chance to see HBO’s “:03 from Gold,” and even at that, they didn’t necessarily have to show an accurate running score.)
Featuring a pair of 8-0 teams, the USA-USSR final was as expected, a hotly contested ball game. The USSR took a 7-0 lead and by half was in possession of a 26-21 lead.
ddammnnnnn it MMMMMMy keeeybbbboaaaaadddd iis acctttttiiiiiiiing uuuuuppppp… My fffffiiiiirrssstt post wassssssssss a quoote frommmmmmmthe sittte mmentttionnneeeeedd. ii just cut and pasted cause it was easier. Whew the trouble just passed. What was that all about?
I believe the US only led once 50-49 with :03 left in the game.
The Soviet team had dominated play throughout the game and only a late rush by the US got the Americans back into the game.
The US came into the game with a horrible game plan, playing 1950s style basketball, which played right into the Soviet Union’s hands.
And if John Wooden hadn’t been pissed off at the NABC, who chose the US squad, there might have been some better players on the squad , i.e. Bill Walton. It’s unlikely that the Soviets could have matched up against Walton’s superior post position skills.
Just my two cents.
The USSR wasn’t known as the “Evil Empire” until Reagan christened it in 1983. In the 70’s we called them commies or russkies or just plain reds.
BobT: Yo’re right of course, about John Woden’s feuds with the Olympic powers-that-were. The problem didn’t start in 1972, either. In 1968, Lew Alcindor (later named Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) didn’t play for the U.S., either.
People forget that the Russians gave the U.S. a huge scare in 1968. Only superior performances by then-unnown Spencer Haywood gave the U.S. a win. Obiously, a U.S. team with Alcindor would’ve been unbeatable.
Bob… do you have any details on what got Wooden in such a dander? Had he wanted to coach the Olympic team himself?
I’ve been trying to figure out what Wooden’s beef with the Olympics was. Walt Hazzard played on the 1964 team.
I think Lew Alcindor’s (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s) decision not to play in 1968 was also the result of Harry Edwards’ lobbying to get black athletes to boycott the games.
I don’t think Wooden wanted to coach the team. What I think (and I don’t have any factual support for this, just a hunch) that Wooden didn’t want his players being coached by anyone else.
Some additional info:
There was a UCLA center originally chosen for the Olympic team in 1972, but it wasn’t Walton. It was his backup: Swen Nater, but he later withdrew from the team (couldn’t find out why) and was replaced by Tom McMillan of Maryland, who would later go on to misinterpret the official’s signal on the last play of the game and back up off the baseline to allow the Soviet player a clean pass to A. Belov at the basket.
After the Olympics, McMillan’s coach, Lefty Driesell, ripped Hank Iba for his poor coaching job.
The end was an obvious rip-off, but shouldn’t the US have pounded the Russians anyway? Was this just a case of a team not taking an opponent seriously?
I don’t think so. In the '68 Olympics, we beat the Yugos by only 5 points, I think. And if you look at some of the other scores in the gold medal games, some were pretty close. We were always a cut above the second best teams, typically the Yugos or the Soviets, but only a cut. It was just a matter of time. They did finally “snatch the pebble from our hands” fair and square in Seoul.
The “fair and square” statement is certainly debatable.
Well, I was 11 when the Russians won that Olympic gold medal in 1972, and I remember clearly what a rip off the ending was. The U.S. certainly deserved to win, but…
I KNOW I’ve made this point before, but it bears repeating. In 1956, the U.S. collegians, led by Bill Russell, were as dominant at the Olympics as the NBA pros were in 1992. A mere 16 years later, the Russians had closed the gap. Their “amateurs” were about as good as ours. If the officials hadn’t messed up at the end, the U.S. team still would have won by only 1 measly point.
By 1988, it became pretty clear that the best “amateurs” in Eastern Europe were at least as good as our top collegians. and maybe a little better.
Now, the NBA pros proved in 1992 that the best American professionals were by far the best basketball players on Earth. But things change. We’re seeing superb, NBA-caliber players in many countries now. So, it won’t be shocking if a European country wins an Olympic gold medal, fair and square, one of these days… remember, Lithuania (coached by Don Nelson Jr.) nearly beat the U.S. twice in 2000!
Gosh, seems like an ETERNITY ago that people scoffed at Don Nelson Sr. for drafting Germany’s Dirk Nowitzki in Round 1, doesn’t it?
I think he was referring to the 1988 Seoul Olympics. The Soviets won that game 82-76. The US team had a lot of college players who would become NBA stars, like Danny Manning, David Robinson, and Mitch Richmond.
But the Soviets had Arvidas Sabonis among others.
The US beat Canada by only six earlier in that Olympics.