As ESPN repeatedly reminded us today, this was the 38th anniversary of a travesty that occurred during the 1972 Beijing Summer Olympic Games, when after several extremely egregious referee decisions, the Soviet Union's men's basketball team was given a victory over the US team, the rightful victors. The US team refused to accept the silver medals during the awards ceremony and this moment of ignominy has festered in our collective memory ever since, sort of like Roger Clemens's insistent and almost laughable claims that he did not take performance-enhancing drugs. Perhaps more bemusing is the reaction of Mike Krzyzewsk, the US team coach to comments made by the coach of the Russian team. It is one more clear example of why sports figures and history and current events do not mix. It seems that Coach K has an amnesiac sense of history compelling him to resort to righteous indifference as he prepares his apostles to take down an enemy that only exists in our memory.
The team that the US faced was Russia, not the Soviet Union, which ceased to exist in 1991. No player on either team was alive in 1972 so there is no is no direct connection to that fateful event. There really is no reason to view the game as incentive for US revenge. Had Coach K bothered to learn about his opponents he would have realized that the coach for the other team has dual American-Israeli citizenship and is not Russian as Coach K so derisively dismissed him. Coach K commits the sin of "assumption of guilt by association." David Blatt coaches the Russian team so clearly he must be Russian. This book cover intimacy with history and current events is disturbing in someone who occupies such a prominent place in the American landscape.
The only history Coach K seems to be interested in is the kind that he can rewrite. Perhaps someone should remind him of another shameful event that took place on a basketball court in 1993 and involved one of his players--Christian Slater.
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