Olympics: The straw that broke the camel's back
LONDON (Olympics) - The Seoul Games in 1988 will be forever remembered for the seismic effect it had on international basketball. After that Olympics, nearly everyone was left with the impression that countries, specifically the United States, had to send their best players to have a chance of reaching the top of the podium. The Soviet Union ...
LONDON (Olympics) - The Seoul Games in 1988 will be forever remembered for the seismic effect it had on international basketball.
After that Olympics, nearly everyone was left with the impression that countries, specifically the United States, had to send their best players to have a chance of reaching the top of the podium.
The Soviet Union did send their best team to South Korea and won the gold medal.
Along the way, they beat an American team that consisted of collegians because, at the time, FIBA rules dictated that only non-NBA players were allowed to compete in the Olympics.
Therefore, the USA players were younger and had less experience.
While the rest of the world were able to send their best players to the Olympics, the Americans had their hands tied and could only have their best non-NBA players.
The Soviets had an awesome team.
They had a who’s who list of players and they took on the USA side coached by Georgetown University great John Thompson in the Semi-Finals.
While a solid team in its own right, the Americans fell 82-76 to the Soviet Union in the last four.
All 12 Soviet players were well known in Europe.
The most famous included legend Arvydas Sabonis and his fellow Lithuanian, Sarunas Marciulionis.
Rimas Kurtinaitis, Sasha Volkov, Tiit Sokk, Sergei Tarakanov, Igors Miglinieks, Valeri Tikhonenko, Viktor Pankrashkin, Valdemaras Chomicius, Aleksandr Belostennyi and Valeri Goborov were the other members of that awesome team led by Russian coaching legend Alexander Gomelsky.
The Americans had David Robinson, Dan Majerle, Mitch Richmond, Hersey Hawkins, Danny Manning and other huge talents but they had to settle for a bronze-medal win against Australia.
The Soviets were so good that they also overcame a terrific Yugoslavian team that including European greats like Drazen Petrovic, Toni Kukoc, Vlade Divac and Dino Radja.
That Yugoslavia side had two players who have gone on to become magnificent coaches in Europe today in Zeljko Obradovic and Jure Zdovc, while the coach of that side was current Serbia boss Dusan Ivkovic.
The Americans’ failure to win gold in Korea led to calls back home for the United States to end their policy of selecting only college players.
Among the most vociferous was New York Yankees owner and US Olympic Committee member, George Steinbrenner.
There were also calls abroad for NBA players to be allowed to compete in international basketball.
While college players still represented the country at the 1990 FIBA World Championship that was won by Yugoslavia, in 1992, arguably the best Olympic squad of all time, United States’ Michael Jordan-led ‘Dream Team’, travelled to Barcelona and won the gold medal.
That ’92 USA squad had 11 NBA players and one collegian, Christian Laettner.
FIBA