LONDON (Olympics) - London, the host city for the 2012 Olympics, was a very different place the last time the city hosted the Summer Games.

The year was 1948, and Europe was still trying to recover from World War II.

Visitors to the British capital in those days did not see the London Eye or many of the other tourist attractions that exist now.

Times were hard and the name of the game was survival.

There was the rationing of food, and fuel.

One Olympic basketball player from that time was Lionel Price, who is now 85.

"Unless you lived through it, you have no idea how depressing London looked then," said Price, the last surviving member of the British basketball team at those Games.

"Huge gaps in buildings everywhere, everything rationed.

"This was a country that had been through six years of war, six years of hardship.

"They didn't stop the rationing for the Olympics, although the Americans flew in their own food because so much was unobtainable."

This summer, journalists from all over the world will converge on London to cover the Olympics.

Many other scribes had wanted to report on the Games, in fact, but have been turned away because demand for accreditations is so high.

Newspaper hacks could have taken their pick of the events to cover in 1948 because the media interest was nowhere near what it is in 2012.

One thing that hasn't changed is the status of the American national basketball team.

The USA were supposed to win in 1948 and did, and Team USA are supposed to win in 2012.

It remains to be seen if they will.

While USA Basketball now draws on NBA players, in 1948 it was a far different scenario as there were Olympic Trials.

Here is how the Americans came up with their team and eventually won gold.

The Phillips 66ers had captured the 1948 national AAU title in America and they ended up squaring off against the NCAA champions, the University of Kentucky, in the final game of the trials.

The 66ers won 53-49 and the triumphant coach, 66ers boss Bud Browning, was put in charge of the Olympic team.

Kentucky were led by the legendary Adolph Rupp and he was made Browning’s assistant.

The two men decided that the best way for the United States to win the gold was too have a starting five consisting of 66ers and the second five of Kentucky Wildcats.

This was a plan the two tacticians relied on until the Final, when the United States took on France.

Browning, with the French giving the American team all they could handle early in that contest, eventually abandoned the strategy and began using individual substitutions.

The USA ended up pulling away for a 65-21 victory.

Alex Groza had 11 points and Raymond Lumpp 10 for the winners in that title game.

The United States won all eight of their games and France (5-2) claimed silver.

Brazil (7-1), led by their scoring machine Alfredo da Motta and his 26 points, beat Mexico 52-47 in the battle for bronze.

What no one saw coming was the emergence of Argentina.

They came in a disappointing 15th out of 23 teams in London, yet two years later won the very first FIBA World Championship while hosting the event in Buenos Aires.

Their Olympian, Oscar Furlong, led Argentina to the world title with a victory over the United States.

While the Olympic field numbered 23 teams in 1948, the inaugural World Championship in 1950 had just ten teams.

The last two World Championships have had 24-team fields and the Olympics has had 12-team tournaments since 1976.

Another big difference is that in 1948, there was no women's tournament at the Olympics.

Olympic women's basketball didn't arrive until 1976 when the Games were staged in Montreal.

FIBA