MUNICH OLYMPICS 30 YEARS LATER

Swede, Pole Win First Gold

Ragnar Skanaker, a 38-year-old Swedish businessman, won the first gold of the Munich Games by scoring 567 of a possible 600 points in the free pistol shoot. Poland’s Zygmunt Smalcerz won the second gold medal by lifting 744.05 pounds in weightlifting’s flyweight division, a division later dropped.

Young U.S. Cagers Hungry

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Limiting Czechoslovakia to three first-half field goals, the United States won its opening basketball game, 66-35. It was the 56th consecutive victory for the United States. In a quote that proved prescient, Coach Henry Iba said, “We’ve been awfully egotistical through all of this winning. We’ve thought nothing could happen to us, but it can--and soon. I just hope it isn’t these Games.”

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“If you can’t stop it, legalize it.”

--U.S. discus thrower Olga Connolly on amateur athletes accepting money to compete

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By the time the Olympic basketball tournament began in Munich, John Wooden had won eight NCAA titles at UCLA.

Good enough credentials, one might say, to warrant selection as coach of the U.S. team.

Instead, Henry Iba, a retired coach from Oklahoma State, got the job. Although Iba had won gold in 1964 at Tokyo and in ’68 at Mexico City, and had an 18-0 Olympic record as the Munich Games began, the combination of Iba’s unpopular ball-control game and Wooden’s success prompted the question: Why not John?

What occurred is best chronicled by Bill Wall, longtime coach at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Ill., who, for 18 years, was executive director of the U.S. basketball federation.

At the time of the selection process for the 1972 U.S. Olympic coach, the national basketball governing body was a conglomerate of NCAA coaches, a few NAIA coaches, a large group of AAU coaches and even some military basketball officials.

“There were eight of us representing NCAA schools,” said Wall, 71. “Of those eight, three are still alive--me, Tex Winter and John Bach.” Winter is a Laker assistant and Bach a Washington Wizards’ assistant.

“Against our eight were maybe 38-40 of the AAU and other factions. They were dominant and their choice was Adolph Rupp. Ours were Dean Smith or John Wooden.”

Rupp, the legendary Kentucky coach, was in failing health, Wall said, the AAU faction recognized that, but did not want to relinquish its voting power to the NCAA faction.

“So Iba became the compromise choice,” Wall said, “and with his two gold medals already, we pretty much felt we could live with that.”

That decision became a hot-button issue later, when Iba’s team was beaten in the most controversial gold-medal basketball game. The Soviet team won with its last-second, court-length pass after the clock had been reset twice and the Soviets given second and third chances. Lefty Driesell, Maryland coach at the time, said then that no Wooden-coached team would have even been in a tight, late-game situation against the Soviets.

Wooden said recently that he remembered talk about his being a candidate, and that he would have liked coaching an Olympic team, but that he never was familiar with the details.

By 1976, the U.S. basketball federation control had shifted to the NCAA coaches. Wooden had won two more NCAA titles and retired in ’75.

“I remember having a conversation with John about ‘76,” Wall said. “We were in a TWA lounge at the Chicago airport, and I asked him about his interest in the ’76 Olympic job. And he said he didn’t think so.”

So Dean Smith of North Carolina was named coach and--after a scare from Marquette’s Butch Lee, who hadn’t had a chance to try out for the U.S. team but scored 35 for Puerto Rico--won the gold medal.