1972 Gold Medal Basketball Game

The 1972 Summer Olympics was filled with sad and really terrible things to come during the Summer of 1972. The sad event that happened was the Munich massacre.

During these Olympic games the USA basketball team lost the gold medal. The Soviets' controversial win made this the worst officiated game in Olympic history in my opinion. The USA had an undefeated record going into the gold medal game. They had seven wins and zero loses. They beat Cuba, Brazil, Czechoslovakia, Spain, Australia, Japan, and Egypt. The Soviets also had an undefeated record going into the gold medal game. The Soviets also had seven wins and zero loses. They beat Italy, Yugoslavia, Puerto Rico, West Germany, Poland, Philippines, and Senegal. The game was fairly fought until the last three seconds of the fourth quarter. Now the USA was down 49-48 and Doug Collins makes the first free throw to tie the game; but, here is where the controversy starts. The Soviets tried to call timeout after the first free throw but they were not granted one; when Doug Collins makes the second free throw the USA lead 50-49. Another event happened when the Soviets assistant coach got out of the coaching area and went over to the scorers' table and was saying that they should be given a timeout. Now the USA thought "hey he cannot do that" and the Soviets should have gotten a technical foul but they did not. The language barrier was not that strong. One of the referees spoke Portuguese and all the people at the scorers table spoke German. When the buzzer sounded for the game to be over the refs added three seconds and USA Coach Henry Iba was really upset about this and said that when they in-bounded the ball they were not going to try to defend--but Henry did not want to think that they were forfeiting the game as you might put it.

The final inbound play they added another three seconds onto the clock and this made USA Coach Henry Iba really madder than before... he told his assistants that he was not going to win the game sitting down . So when the Soviets in bounded the ball, Aleksandr Belov got the ball and Kevin Joyce and Jim Forbes were guarding Belov and when they were all near the rim the two USA players fell down and Belov was able to make a layup and win the game for the Soviet Union. Since that time the USA Basketball team from 1972 have not accepted the silver medals. The medals are currently held in a vault in Switzerland.

Joshua Hanner