Original Trail Blazer

GLENDALE — Sixty years have trickled by but Frank Lubin remembers it all as if it happened 60 days ago.

Even now, at age 86, he recalls details, names, circumstances.

Then again, what athlete could forget taking part in the Olympic Games?

For Lubin, who has lived in Glendale for nearly four decades, that opportunity came in 1936 in Berlin, site of the first Olympic basketball tournament.

“I had never been out of California and traveling to Berlin was an exciting time,” Lubin said. “It was one of the most-interesting sporting times I’ve ever had.”

Lubin was a 6-foot-7 center on the American squad that won the gold medal and that started a string of seven consecutive Olympic championships for the United States.

That winning streak extended to 62 games until the Soviet Union snapped it with a controversial 51-50 upset in the final game of the Munich Olympics in 1972.

It was the most-devastating defeat for the U.S. in Olympic competition until the 1988 team in Seoul lost to the Soviets in the semifinals and had to settle for a bronze medal.

In the two Olympics since Seoul, the U.S. has been represented by NBA superstars, the so-called Dream Team that swept in Barcelona four years ago. This year’s version in Atlanta also can finish unscathed with a victory tonight against Yugoslavia.

But it was Lubin and 13 other men who, almost a lifetime ago, set the table for American domination in Olympic basketball.

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The U.S. group that made history in Berlin was, in reality, two separate units made up primarily of players from the Universal Pictures and the McPherson Globe Oilers teams, both Amateur Athletic Union powerhouses.

Lubin, who was born in East Los Angeles and became an All-Pacific Coast Conference selection at UCLA in his senior season in 1931, was one of several former Bruins playing for Universal. He had become a grip in the movies after college and helped catapult Universal’s basketball team to national prominence.

“We would lose a game here and there, but we were a pretty potent team,” Lubin said.

With Lubin and former UCLA standout Carl Knowles leading the way, Universal plowed through qualifying tournaments in 1936 to reach an eight-team final in April at New York’s Madison Square Garden. The champion would earn the right to fill half of the 14-man Olympic roster.

The two AAU teams in the competition, Universal and McPherson, had to pay their way to New York because the companies refused to sponsor players who were willing to play in Nazi Germany.

“We played games around the country to raise the money to get there,” Lubin said.

They got there, all right, and defeated McPherson in the championship game, 44-43, to avenge a 47-35 loss two weeks earlier in the AAU national finals in Denver. Lubin scored 11 points and was one of three Universal players in double figures in the New York game.

With the victory, Universal placed seven men on the Olympic team and McPherson had six. The only outsider was James Bishop, the center from the University of Washington, one of five colleges at the final tournament.

In July, the Olympic team sailed from New York to Germany, but Lubin said the players were unhappy with the selection process.

“We went over there with bad feelings,” Lubin said. “We weren’t friendly with each other.”

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Once in Germany, the Americans encountered a few surprises.

When the tournament started, the International Basketball Federation tried to ban athletes who were 6-3 or taller. The U.S., which would have lost several players, protested and the rule was withdrawn. But the Americans were hit with another salvo.

The IBF then ruled that teams could not suit up more than seven players for the games. The U.S. hopped over that land mine by alternating units, with Universal playing one game and the Oilers and Bishop playing the next--in the clay outdoor arena built for the occasion.

Apparently, the Germans didn’t realize the sport was played indoors.

“It was kind of a shock,” Lubin said. “It was just like going out and playing in a playground. The first day we were there, we got our uniforms on and said to an official, ‘We’d like to go into the gym and practice.’ He pointed to the court and said, ‘Right over there.’ ”

After a forfeit victory over Spain in the opener, Lubin and his Universal teammates trounced Estonia, 52-28, and the McPherson outfit followed with a 56-23 shellacking of the Philippines. The Universal group then beat Mexico, 25-10, in the semifinals, creating a quandary for the coaching staff:

Who would play in the gold-medal game?

The coaches decided to go with four Oilers, two from Universal and Bishop. Lubin was excluded.

“I was very angry, but what could I do?” Lubin said.

So Lubin watched from the bleachers, with his wife Mary Agnes and two other relatives, as the U.S. defeated Canada, 19-8, in a downpour that transformed the converted tennis court into mud.

“There must have been two inches of water on the court,” said Lubin, who still received a gold medal. “Nobody wanted to catch the ball because the water would splash on their faces.”

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After the Olympics, Lubin returned briefly to Los Angeles and then spent three years in Lithuania, his father’s homeland, helping develop that country’s sports program.

He was known there as Pranas Lubinas--Lithuanian for Frank and his father’s family name--and was regarded as the godfather of Lithuanian basketball.

At the European championships in 1939 in Kaunas, Lithuania, Lubin was the home team’s player-coach and scored the winning basket in the final seconds of a 36-35 win over Latvia in the title game.

“It was a layup under the basket,” Lubin said. “I was always playing close to the basket. I hollered to the one player who had the ball to give it to me. . . . That basket made me quite famous in Lithuania.”

To this day, Lubin said, Lithuanians talk about his feat. He refers to current players from that country as “students of my students.”

Lubin played on AAU teams until he was 54, including one sponsored by 20th Century-Fox, for which he worked after returning from Lithuania. A few years ago, he was inducted into the Helms Hall of Fame as the best amateur player in Southern California for the first half of the century.

Lubin is one of four players from the 1936 Olympic team still alive. He gets around with the aid of a walker and has spent the past two weeks watching the Olympics on television, pulling for a Lithuania-U.S. matchup for the gold medal in Atlanta.

But Lithuania lost to Yugoslavia in the semifinals Thursday and is facing Australia tonight for the bronze medal.

“I hope they both [Lithuania and the U.S.] win,” Lubin said. “That would be nice.”