Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The 1972 Olympic Basketball Gold Medal Game

Episode Date: October 23, 2021

The year 1972 saw two epic contests between the United States and the Soviet Union. The first was American Bobby Fischer defeating Soviet Grandmaster Anatoly Karpov for the world chess championship. The other took place on a basketball court in Munich in the gold medal game of the Olympics. It was one of the most controversial moments in Olympic history, and the ramifications of that game are still reverberating today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The year 1972 saw two epic contests between the United States and the Soviet Union. The first was American Bobby Fisher defeating Soviet Grandmaster Anatoly Karpov for the World Chess Championship. The other took place on a basketball court, in Munich, Germany, in the gold medal game of the Olympics. It was one of the most controversial moments in Olympic history, and the ramifications of that game are still reverberating today. Learn more about the finals of the 1972 Olympic basketball tournament on this episode of everything everywhere daily. Do you ever climb into bed ready to sleep only to have your mind start racing the moment

your head hits the pillow? Thoughts bouncing around, replaying the day or jumping ahead to tomorrow? That is exactly why Catherine Nicolai created Nothing Much Happens. Each episode is a gentle, cozy bedtime story where, well, nothing much happens. No drama, no tension, nothing you need to follow closely. Just soft narration, calming repetition, and soothing sensory details designed to help your mind slow down and your body relax. It's not about entertainment, it's about rest.

And millions of listeners around the world use it every night to quiet their thoughts and finally fall asleep. If you've ever struggled to shut your brain off at night, this might be exactly what you've been missing. You can listen to Nothing Much Happens wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are every Monday and Thursday. Going into the 1972 Olympics in Munich, the Americans had totally dominated basketball in the world stage.

The American men had won every gold medal in basketball. basketball that hadn't given out. They had never lost a single game at the Olympics. The 1972 Olympics appeared to be just more of the same. In the preliminary games, they crushed their competition. The smallest margin of victory was against Spain, where they won by 16 points, and their biggest blowout was against Japan, where they won by 66 points. At the time, the Olympics was strictly limited to amateur players, so the American team wasn't necessarily made of the best American players, all of whom were in the NBA. but rather the best amateur players, all of whom were still in college.

The best American amateur, Bill Walton, actually declined to play on the team. The 1972 American Olympic team was the youngest team that the Americans had ever assembled. Prior to the Olympics, the players in that team had never played together before. The Soviets actually had a pretty good team, but they were very different from the Americans. The Soviets didn't have professional sports, and they got around the amateurism rules by putting their athletes into token jobs at factories or in the military, where they didn't have to do anything but focus on sports. As a result, the Soviet basketball team was much older and much more experienced than the American team. They had played together for seven years, and one of the players was playing in his

fourth Olympic Games. The five starting Soviet players had a combined total of over 600 games of international play, and the Americans had just seven. Going into the gold medal game, the Soviets were also undefeated. They two had, easily defeated their opponents, but not by margins quite as big as the Americans. In the semifinals, the Americans beat Italy and the Soviets beat Cuba, setting up an epic gold medal game. The Americans were riding a 63 game and seven Olympic gold medal streak into the finals. Despite being younger and less experienced, they were still expected to win. The Soviets played really well. They led the Americans at halftime by five points,

26 to 21. They managed to hold the lead for most of the second half. Going into the last 30 seconds of the game, the Soviets were up by one point, 49 to 48. As the Soviets took the ball to their end of the court, American Guard Doug Collins stole the ball and ran down the court to score the game-winning layup. However, before he could get the shot off, he was fouled with only three seconds left on the clock. Remember that number. Everything which made this game historic, and the reason why I'm bothering to do a podcast about it, almost half a century later,

happened in those last three seconds. Three seconds of clock time, which took a lot longer than three seconds to complete. From the foul, Collins was given two free throws. On Collins's first shot, he swished it, and the Americans were tied 49-49. Here's where things started to get really weird. On his second shot, while in the middle of shooting, the horn from the scores table went off. Despite the horn, he continued with the shot, which went in giving the American, Americans the lead 50 to 49, with three seconds still left on the clock. After the basket, the Soviets regained control and took the ball from out of bounds and began to dribble up the court. Soviet assistant coach Sergei Bashkin charged the scorers table yelling that the Soviet head coach had called for a timeout, which should have been awarded before the second free throw.

The game clock was stopped with one second. Everyone was on the floor yelling. Had the clock not stopped, the Americans would have won. The referees conferred with themselves and decided that the Soviet timeout should not have been granted, and they also agreed not to issue a technical foul to the Soviet coach who ran on to the floor. According to the rules, technically, the Soviets should have been issued a technical foul. Even though the Soviets didn't have an official timeout, the delay in trying to sort everything out, gave them a minute to put together a play. The referees then decided the Soviets would get the ball back out of bounds near the half court line with one second left.

And this is where things really took an odd turn. Renato William Jones, the president of the FIBA, the International Basketball Federation, came down to the court and overruled the referees. He said that the last play should be replayed and that three seconds should be put back on the clock. There were no rules or regulations which gave him the authority to do this. All decisions about the game are supposed to be in the hands of the officials on the court. Renato William Jones had been the head of the FIBA since 1932, and he was the only person ever to hold that position up until that point.

He ran international basketball with an iron fist. Moreover, he had a very contentious relationship with the Americans who dominated the sport. And Jones, by the way, was British. He was extremely powerful in basketball, so the referees and the official score just did what he said. After much confusion, the officials reset the clock back to three seconds, and gave the Soviets the ball again on the other end of the court where they originally had it after the free throw. The Soviets this time tried to do the only thing they really could. They tossed a Hail Mary across the entire length of the court, hoping for a miracle.

Unfortunately, there was no miracle. The horn sounded and time expired. The Americans won 50 to 49 in a dramatic fashion. Everyone goes nuts and the American players start hugging on the court. Despite the clear end to the game, Jones then unilaterally decided to put another three seconds back on the clock to give the Soviets a third chance. There was no reason or rationale given for why the Soviets got another chance to take the ball out of bounds. There was no foul. There was no penalty. The American coaches debated taking their team off the floor and unilaterally declaring the game over. However, the head coach, Hank Iba, didn't want to give the Soviets any ammunition in an appeal by, declaring that the Americans had forfeited. It turns out the third time was the charm.

This time the Soviets tossed a full-court Aleoup, which made it into the hands of one of the Soviet players, who this time managed to put it in for two points. Subsequent analysis of the video shows the Soviet player throwing the ball had his foot on the line, but this too was never called. This time it was the Soviets who were going nuts on the floor as the final score was registered 51 to 50. The Americans, not surprisingly, were furious. American basketball officials immediately filed an appeal to the FIBA. The five-man FIBA committee ruled against them three to two, with all three votes coming from communist bloc countries, Hungary, Poland, and Cuba.

The players on the American team made a decision in the locker room. They took a vote and unanimously agreed not to accept their silver medals. They never attended the medal ceremony. A subsequent investigation into the game, which was presented to the International Olympic Committee, showed extreme irregularities. The head referee for the game was Renato Rigetto from Brazil. Supposed he refused to sign the official score sheet in protest, and he also went on record as saying that the Soviet win was, quote,

completely irregular and outside the rules of the game of basketball, end quote. He was never allowed by Jones to referee an FIBA game again. The official scorekeeper for the game was André Chappard of Germany. He went on record to say, that the decision by Renato William Jones to put time back on the clock, twice, was unprecedented in the game of basketball. Even Jones himself later admitted that he had no authority whatsoever to put time back on the clock. The controversy over this game has never ended.

The silver medals are still sitting in a vault in Switzerland. They have never been claimed by any member of the American team. Not only has the team never accepted their silver medals, but several members of the team have put clauses into their wills that none of their descendants may ever accept the medals on their behalf after they die. In 2012, the members of the team reunited for the first time since they were in Munich in 1972 for an ESPN documentary. While all in the same room, 40 years after the fact, they again voted on if they would accept their silver medals. And 40 years later, they once again were unanimous

in declining to accept them. In 2002, at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, Canadian pairs figure skaters David Peltier and Jamie Sale were awarded joint gold medals after a judging scandal was exposed which gave the Russian team the gold. In the same spirit, the American team has agreed to accept joint gold medals for the 1972 Olympics. They would allow the silver medals, which are still in Switzerland, to be sold at a sports memorabilia auction with the funds going towards a charity for Russian orphans. In the almost 50 years since the gold medal game in Munich, the International Olympic Committee has refused to budge or acknowledge any of the appeals of the American team. After 50 years, the American team still believes that they're only three seconds away from the

gold medal. The associate producers of Everything Everywhere Daily are Peter Bennett and Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please join the list of patrons over at patreon.com. And also remember, if you leave a review or send me a question, you two can have it read on the show.