Ghosts of a summer past: USA vs. USSR in 1972

1972 Olympic Games, Munich, West Germany, Basketball Final, USSR 51 v USA 50: Action during the match which was won by USSR for the gold medal, The USA hotly disputed their final basket and refused to accept their silver medal.

The group stages came to a close, the brackets were inked, and history sighed uncomfortably. As things stand, it would be forty years of baggage that accompanies a potential firecracker of a final. The United States of America, who many favor to win the gold, might have to face-off against Russia for the basketball gold in the 2012 Summer Olympics. Both teams know this – and neither can rest, as they prepare for the rematch of the most controversial event in Olympics history. It has been forty years; a country has been completely reconfigured in the meanwhile – but some wounds do not heal.

Three seconds. How much does three seconds mean? For the USA basketball team of 1972, the answer was – everything. How long can three seconds last? A lifetime – the US team both won and lost the Olympic Gold, every sportsman’s dream, in exactly three seconds, Olympic basketball time.

It took three seconds to break a 36 year old record, a period that saw the US basketball team win 63 consecutive games at Olympics, piling up gold medal after gold medal. They simply did not lose basketball games. And above all, they did not lose basketball games to the Soviet Union, a matchup where the sport ceased to be just a sport and instead became something else – a referendum on two superpowers, both staking a claim to rule the world.

But before that, a lifetime before even, with six seconds to play, and USA down by a point, future NBA player, head coach and sports commentator Doug Collins stole the ball at half-court, suddenly providing a ray of hope when just an instant earlier, there had been none. Collins was fouled hard as he drove to the basket, nearly knocked unconscious. For a while, he lay on the floor, dazed by the blow. Coach Hank Iba refused to take him out, instead saying “if Doug can walk, he’s going to shoot the free throws”. And shoot them he did – sinking the most important free throws of his life to give USA a one point lead leaving but three seconds on the clock, and despair in the eyes of the Soviet players.

What happened in those three seconds has gone down as the most baffling sequence of events in sporting history.

MUNICH, GERMANY: The US basketball players jubilate 09 September 1972 for a short moment as they mistakenly celebrate what they thought was a victory over Soviet Union in the final game of the Olympic basketball tournament in Munich.

After Collins’ shot, the Soviets inbounded the ball and ran it up to half-court, only to have their entire bench, complete with coaching staff occupy the floor in protest of something. The refs stopped the game, with the game clock now showing only one second left. The Soviet coaches claimed they had signaled for a timeout after the first Collins free-throw. The refs had failed to take note. After a number of discussions with both teams, the refs ruled that the Soviets would start the play from where it left off – at half-court, with a second on the clock. At this point, FIBA secretary William Jones, who, at that point, was at the centre of a huge political stand-off with USA Basketball, intervened – despite not having any official standing or authority during the live basketball match – and demanded the Soviets be given the ball with three seconds on the clock.

And thus the game started once again. The US defended the inbounds play successfully and exulted as the clock ran down and the buzzer sounded, dozens of fans spilling out onto the court. Only, as it turned out, they hadn’t won. The shot clock had not been reset to three seconds, and had merely run out the one second. The referees had not communicated the ruling to the timekeeper for the game, who later went on to state on record that in his fourteen years in official capacity, he had never been confronted by a situation as irregular as this. For those keeping count, the US basketball team ought to have won the game at least three times already. By Olympic rules, in fact, a technical foul should have been called on the Soviets for leaving the bench during a live-ball; that alone would have sealed the game.

But as things turned out, the Soviets once again got the ball with three seconds on the clock, and had somehow managed to make a substitution, though no timeout had been sanctioned by the referees, in clear violation of Olympic rules. The substitute? The only guy on the Soviet roster capable of making a pinpoint cross-court pass to Alexander Belov, the Soviet center. The US center, Tom McMillen, who was guarding the inbounds player, mysteriously backed away from his assignment, allowing the inbounder to make the pass easily. McMillen later stated that he was told to do so by the referee. Belov caught the ball and made an easy layup. Bang. For the first time in Olympic basketball history, USA had been beaten.

What followed was ugliness and politics that like of which world sports has never seen. The US appeal resulted in a five member FIBA tribunal, consisting of three members from Soviet bloc countries, and two members from countries allied to the US. It has long been suggested the ruling, which many suspect was 3-2 in the Soviets’ favor, was driven by Cold War politics.

The US basketball team, for their part, refused to accept their silver medals. They continue, at this late date, to not accept their medals. In fact, some members of the team have gone so far as to write into their wills barring their family members from collecting the medals after their deaths.

The US basketball team has not played a USSR/Russia team in a gold medal match since.

All that could change, this summer. The game will no longer be as politically framed, but the echoes of 1972 will still be heard. Two teams will feel the pressure of a time that neither was even lived through. The ghosts from ‘72 are lurking and just maybe, the US team will have a chance to exorcize them.