 |
When looking at just about any kind of conflict, it's necessary to
view things in terms of shades of gray. People try to characterize
things as either one way or the other, either good or evil, but of course
it's really not like that. But
every once in a while, things turn out much more black and white than you
might expect. This may be no more apparent than in the gold medal
game of the 1972 Olympic men's basketball tournament.
I think it's hard sometimes to talk about justice in sports. With
the outcome almost always in question, you can't completely blame others
for interfering with what "should" have happened (as you might with a jury)
because it's difficult to tell what the outcome "should" have been.
I mean, it's easy to blame the failure of the Chicago Cubs to reach the 2003
World Series on one overzealous fan, but that would be ignoring some very shoddy
play on the part of the Cubs over the final two innings. In other words, blaming the people we think are responsible
for a questionable outcome may be taking something away from the victor,
naturally. The 2003 emergence of the Curse of the Goat, the 1985 World Series, the 1997 Nebraska-Missouri
football game, the Orioles-Yankees playoff series of 1996, and even the
1919 Black Sox scandal may be tough to call, but this one's easy: the lie
that took place in the 1972 men's basketball final is the biggest injustice
in the history of sports, and it's important because it tells us a lot
about the way the world was.
Going into the final game in Munich, the nation that invented basketball
had never lost in international competition. The United States took
a 63-0 Olympic record into the gold medal game against the Soviet Union,
the only other team that had not yet lost in Munich. Helped by a
lackluster American performance and the ejection of the U.S.'s leading
scorer and rebounder, the Soviets led for nearly the entire game and had
the ball and a 49-48 lead as the clock wound down. But with ten seconds
remaining, Doug Collins intercepted a pass and raced toward the basket,
where he was undercut with three seconds remaining. He hit what might
have been the two most important free throws in basketball history (my
apologies to Rumeal Robinson), including sinking the second as the horn
sounded, giving the United States a 50-49 lead. The Soviets tried
unsuccessfully to score, but an official had blown a whistle with one second
remaining, and the Soviet Union was granted a time out as well as the original
three seconds on the clock. The referees gave the ball to the Soviet
Union, which subsequently threw the ball away, as the clock was being reset.
The United States, which had already twice celebrated victory, then had
to reset as the Soviets were given one more chance, granted by the Secretary
General of FIBA (the International Basketball Federation), who had no authority
during a game. This time, the USSR's Aleksander Belov caught the
long pass and made the ensuing layup, giving the Soviet Union a 51-50 victory.
The United States' appeal of the outcome was rejected by three Soviet bloc
nations, and the Americans did not accept their silver medals.
|