CENTAUR SEASONS: Six Degrees of Michael Bantom (part 2 of 3) — The 1972 Olympic basketball gold medal he did not receive and the silver medal he did not earn

Posted on April 24, 2013

On a Thursday evening in early May in 1973 Mike Bantom – he of St. Joe’s College, the Philadelphia Big 5, and the ill-fated 1972 U.S. Olympic basketball team and its disputed loss to the Soviets in the gold-medal game – appeared seemingly out of nowhere as the guest speaker at our Allentown College of St. Francis de Sales Centaur sports banquet.

He handled his duties with aplomb – as written about here in this previous CENTAUR SEASONS post. Subbing at the last moment for his St. Joe’s coach, Jim Lyman, Mike Bantom was everything we in his audience were not. Athletically gifted, wondrously tall, African American, very afroed. Not to mention urbane and worldly by comparison with any of us — or at least certainly me.

So when he began his remarks by telling the exact truth: This is the most unusual experience of my entire life, it was such equal parts charming and disarming that it slowly extracted from us loud applause of appreciation.

All of this about Mike Bantom at Billera Hall in Center Valley, Pennsylvania, in 1973, has come to mind at CENTAUR SEASONS and here on HoopsU.com because ESPN recently posted on Grantland.com‘s “30 for 30 Short Film Series” a 12-minute documentary called “Silver Reunion” by the director Rory Karpf and First Row Films.

“Silver Reunion” is the quickly told tale of that U.S. Olympic team when its members gathered, Mike Bantom included, in the summer of 2012, to discuss that disputatious game. With Rory Karpf serving as a sort of jury foreman, the team voted on whether at long last to accept (or not) the silver medal they had together walked away from, leaving the members of the Russian team to get their gold medals without them. The decision would need to be unanimous.

At our sports banquet in 1973 I don’t recall that Mike Bantom gave an actual speech, inspirational-style. (That would have been too weird; he was the same age as us.) He did though open the floor to questions.

What’s it like to the play at the Palestra? Who’s the toughest Big 5 player? There were questions about the recent Olympic Games, I’m sure. The Israeli massacre. The controversial U.S.-U.S.S.R. game.

And then someone stood up and asked point blank: Don’t you think it would have been a better gesture for the U.S. players to have accepted their silver medals and been on the platform when the Soviets received their golds, rather than being absent and displaying such bad sportsmanship?

It was a heck of a question, for sure – and maybe fair enough as far as it went. Mike Bantom, alone among us in the room, did not hesitate with his answer.

To write this post I rewatched the video of that Munich Olympic basketball final.

Mike Bantom played a terrific game, first off. He had a game-high nine rebounds. With eight-plus minutres to go he ran down a ball in the Russian corner and, on the ensuing play, he battled for the ball inside and then tipped it in. They were his only two points in a struggle where baskets were hard to come by. His tally brought the U.S. to within four, 34-38, and for the first time you can feel the arena come alive.

As for the game, it is difficult to watch. The Russians are robotic, mechanical — and oppresively effective. The U.S. team, straining under Coach Hank Iba’s famously deliberate approach, play the same slow-ball style. “Some of the things I disgree with,” ABC analyst Bill Russell says with the U.S. down 19-9. “They don’t show enough imagination on offense — and they are capable of it.”

Late in the second half, still down 10, the Amerks stage a mini revolt on Iba’s deliberations, get imaginative, and on their own push the pace. Kevin Joyce’s three baskets get the U.S. to 44-47. At 1:50 Doug Collins hits two free throws and it’s 46-47. Two foul shots by the Soviets make it 46-49, and with 43 seconds left Jim Forbes drains an ice-water 20-foot jumper to the right of the foul circle and it’s 48-49.

There is no shot clock. The Soviets do not have to shoot. The game is theirs to win. Inexplicably, however, Aleksandr Belov, underneath, reaches up to the basket with less than ten second left. Tom McMillen blocks the attempt to the left corner, where Belov tracks it down. He lofts a hurried pass toward midcourt.

Doug Collins, lurking on the opposite side, appears out of nowhere, grabs the ball near the center jump circle and heads straight for the basket, where he gets undercut by Sako Sakandelidze. Collins crashes to the floor and winds up with his head buried under the padding of the basket support. He gets up woozily and goes to the line for two fouls shots, the U.S. down one, 48-49.

Collins takes the ball. In the 40 years since he has always said he didn’t feel any pressure, that he was just shooting foul shots on his backyard rim. Watching it all again it is not difficult to believe him. He dribbles the ball three times, spins it in his hands and shoots. Good. 50-50. He takes the ball again. Dribbles. Spins. Shoots. Good. U.S.A. 51, U.S.S.R. 50. The U.S. has its first lead of the game. Doug Collins may have just stepped down as the head coach of the Philadelphia 76ers, but he reamins forever the owner of the two most important made foul shots in the history of basketball.

Meanwhile, three seconds remain in the U.S.-U.S.S.R. game.

I will not attempt to explain those next three seconds, except to say that it’s forty years later now and people are still trying to explain them.

That day at Billera Hall, on the otherhand, it was only eight months later, to the day, when Mike Bantom stood before us, microphone in hand, enduring that question about sportsmanship and fair play. I’m sure he had been asked the question before. Now he’d been asked it again, and, as I said, he did not hesitate.

He would proudly wear that silver medal, he told us (I can see him with his hand on his chest, in front of his blue blazer, as if he were gently holding it), but he didn’t earn a silver medal.

The question itself had produced its own layer of nervous tension throughout the gym. Mike Bantom’s answer deflected it away. Our applause came slowly at first. Soon it is a standing ovation.

Which will bring us now – in a final post to come – to Rory Karpf’s “Silver Reunion,” an ESPN 30 for 30 Short Film on Grantland.com.

About
Latest Posts

Steve McKee

Steve McKee is the author of CENTAUR SEASONS, a memory blog about his basketball-playing days at Allentown (Pa.) College of St. Francis de Sales in the early 1970s (a good excuse for using his college yearbook picture -- though there's NO excuse for that mustache and hair!).

CENTAUR SEASONS can also be found at www.centaurseasons.com. The centerpiece will be the posting in "real time" of the diary that Steve kept of his 1972-1973 junior-year season, beginning on November 30. Prior to that (and after), Steve will be posting regularly about his freshman, sophomore and senior seasons, as well as about what it was like to be there at the beginning to help get a struggling college basketball program off the ground.

Steve was the original writer of The Wall Street Journal's popular sports blog, "The Daily Fix" in 2001-2002, and was even dubbed "The Unwitting Father of the Sports Blog" by Gelf Magazine, the online publication of the "Varsity Letters Reading Series. Steve was the Journal's sports editor for its original Weekend sport section and was involved in all of the Journal's Olympics coverage, Winter and Summer, from 1996 through 2008.

He is the author of three books, most recently "My Father's Heart: A Son's Reckoning With the Legacy of Heart Disease," which he is adapting as a one-man show. For his first book, "The Call of the Game," Steve traveled the country in search of sports events -- including the famous N.C. State Wolfpack victory over "Phi Slamma Jamma" of the University of Houston. For his second book, COACH, among the 150+ coaches Steve interviewed are/were college basketball coaches John Wooden (UCLA), Pat Summitt (Tennessee), Frank Layden (Niagara), Bobby Cremins (Georgia Tech), P.J. Carlesimo (Seton Hall), Bill Guthridge (North Carolina), Abe Lemons (Texas), Stan Morrison (USC), Kathy Rush (Immaculata), Jim Satalin (Duquesne), Charlie Thomas (San Francisco State), Butch Van Bredda Koff (Princeton), Bill Whitmore (Vermont) and LaDonna Wilson (Austin Peay).

For more, you can click on www.steve-mckee.com, where you can find a TODAY show appearance and an NPR interview.