rumored to be a Russian secret agent, which is possibly true, although the KGB hated him, too. No one ever knew exactly what the Silver Fox was up to. He was supposed to coach the national team at the Munich Olympics in 1972, but the state confiscated his passport, fearing that, as a Jew, he would defect to Israel. He was always involved in this deal or that deal—fora while in the early 1980s he was suspended from coaching for alleged smuggling—yet managed to be the major figure in the rich history of Soviet basketball.
Two days before a semifinal showdown in Seoul against Robinson and the United States, Gomelsky began visiting the Soviet players for personal pep talks. Sarunas Marciulionis, the Lithuanian star, remembers three visits from the Silver Fox, all of them with the same message:
You have to believe in yourself. The Americans are not gods. They are only college players
. Plus, the Soviets, at least players such as Marciulionis, Arvydas Sabonis, and Alexander Volkov, had an extra incentive:
Win the gold medal
, they were promised, either implicitly or obliquely,
and you can leave the country to play in the NBA
. “We considered the Olympics our freedom ticket,” says Marciulionis.
That
is serious motivation.
Then, too, Gomelsky was prepared for Thompson’s stifling press, which had intimidated and shut down so many collegiate opponents. Gomelsky worked on little else during the practice sessions in Seoul, insisting on an elaborate set of screens to free Marciulionis and get open shots for players such as Sabonis and Volkov. He didn’t want backcourt turnovers to be converted into dunks. “Don’t let them fast-break dunk,” Gomelsky told his charges. “When they do that, their arms turn into wings.” The man knew his way around a phrase.
The Soviets won 82–76, thus becoming somewhat the Darwin’s finches of worldwide basketball, the marker of the evolutionary changes that had come upon us. Unlike 1972, this loss to the Soviets was no fluke, no give-’em-three-chances-to-win. The United States just got beat.
The Admiral averaged a respectable 12.8 points and 6.8 rebounds in Seoul, but he didn’t dominate, didn’t snarl his way through the competition. And he took it very hard. “I thought, obviously, I had missed my one and only chance to get a gold medal,” he says today. “And it was an embarrassment because I thought we were good enough. The ’72 team was robbed. We just got beat. And man, I grew up with the Olympics. I loved the Olympics. This was a big, big black mark.”
In the United States, the 1988 team is still looked upon as an abject failure. That is wrongheaded. With a different approach, yes, the United States
could’ve
won, but its defeat wasn’t necessarily an upset. That was the message conveyed by anyone who had his eyes open.
Gold medal: the Soviet Union. Silver medal: Yugoslavia. Bronze medal: the United States.
We’re number three! We’re number three!
Nobody in charge ever wanted to see that again. But, seemingly, there was nothing that could be done about it.
Robinson was disappointed and discouraged that he had been blamed. But he wasn’t all that surprised. He had played on touring U.S. teams before and seen the growth in European basketball, his nimble mind uncovering the fact that, though he himself was athletically blessed, there was more to this game than running and jumping.
And there was more to life than basketball. It was around this time that Robinson began feeling the first stirrings of discontent with his life’s path, not the basketball so much but the spiritual part of it. He felt empty inside, and he began searching for something else.
CHAPTER 9
THE CHOSEN ONE
And So Does a Fork Become a Holy Relic
On the morning of May 7, 1989, I came down to breakfast at a suburban Cleveland hotel, the same one at which the Chicago Bulls were staying for their semifinal Eastern Conference series against the Cleveland Cavaliers. The deciding Game 5 was
Two days before a semifinal showdown in Seoul against Robinson and the United States, Gomelsky began visiting the Soviet players for personal pep talks. Sarunas Marciulionis, the Lithuanian star, remembers three visits from the Silver Fox, all of them with the same message:
You have to believe in yourself. The Americans are not gods. They are only college players
. Plus, the Soviets, at least players such as Marciulionis, Arvydas Sabonis, and Alexander Volkov, had an extra incentive:
Win the gold medal
, they were promised, either implicitly or obliquely,
and you can leave the country to play in the NBA
. “We considered the Olympics our freedom ticket,” says Marciulionis.
That
is serious motivation.
Then, too, Gomelsky was prepared for Thompson’s stifling press, which had intimidated and shut down so many collegiate opponents. Gomelsky worked on little else during the practice sessions in Seoul, insisting on an elaborate set of screens to free Marciulionis and get open shots for players such as Sabonis and Volkov. He didn’t want backcourt turnovers to be converted into dunks. “Don’t let them fast-break dunk,” Gomelsky told his charges. “When they do that, their arms turn into wings.” The man knew his way around a phrase.
The Soviets won 82–76, thus becoming somewhat the Darwin’s finches of worldwide basketball, the marker of the evolutionary changes that had come upon us. Unlike 1972, this loss to the Soviets was no fluke, no give-’em-three-chances-to-win. The United States just got beat.
The Admiral averaged a respectable 12.8 points and 6.8 rebounds in Seoul, but he didn’t dominate, didn’t snarl his way through the competition. And he took it very hard. “I thought, obviously, I had missed my one and only chance to get a gold medal,” he says today. “And it was an embarrassment because I thought we were good enough. The ’72 team was robbed. We just got beat. And man, I grew up with the Olympics. I loved the Olympics. This was a big, big black mark.”
In the United States, the 1988 team is still looked upon as an abject failure. That is wrongheaded. With a different approach, yes, the United States
could’ve
won, but its defeat wasn’t necessarily an upset. That was the message conveyed by anyone who had his eyes open.
Gold medal: the Soviet Union. Silver medal: Yugoslavia. Bronze medal: the United States.
We’re number three! We’re number three!
Nobody in charge ever wanted to see that again. But, seemingly, there was nothing that could be done about it.
Robinson was disappointed and discouraged that he had been blamed. But he wasn’t all that surprised. He had played on touring U.S. teams before and seen the growth in European basketball, his nimble mind uncovering the fact that, though he himself was athletically blessed, there was more to this game than running and jumping.
And there was more to life than basketball. It was around this time that Robinson began feeling the first stirrings of discontent with his life’s path, not the basketball so much but the spiritual part of it. He felt empty inside, and he began searching for something else.
CHAPTER 9
THE CHOSEN ONE
And So Does a Fork Become a Holy Relic
On the morning of May 7, 1989, I came down to breakfast at a suburban Cleveland hotel, the same one at which the Chicago Bulls were staying for their semifinal Eastern Conference series against the Cleveland Cavaliers. The deciding Game 5 was
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