The Olympic Final Where the Last Three Seconds Were Played Three Times

Through the first thirty-six years that basketball had been on the Olympic program, the United States had never lost a game. Sixty-three straight wins. On the night of 9 September 1972, in Munich, that streak was about to end with a near-miss when, with three seconds on the clock and the Soviets up 49-48, Doug Collins took a hard foul on a layup and went to the free throw line. He hit both. United States 50, USSR 49.

What happened next is the part nobody quite agrees on. The Soviets inbounded. The horn sounded. Officials, hearing it, halted play. They were told the Soviets had called a timeout that should have been administered before Collins's second free throw. The clock was set to one second; the inbound was retaken. The horn sounded again. Then FIBA's secretary general, Renato William Jones, came down from the stands — he had no jurisdiction over the officiating crew but used his position to demand the entire three seconds be replayed from scratch. The crew complied. On the third try Aleksandr Belov caught a long pass from Ivan Yedeshko under the American basket, fended off two defenders, and laid it in. Final: USSR 51, USA 50.

The Italian referee, Renato Righetto, refused to sign the official scoresheet. The American team filed a protest with the FIBA jury, which deliberated and voted three to two — Cuba, Hungary and Poland in favor of the Soviet result; Italy and Puerto Rico opposed — to let the result stand.

The twelve American players voted unanimously not to accept the silver medals. The medals are still in a vault in Lausanne. Several players' wills explicitly forbid their families from collecting them. The captain, Kenny Davis, made his wife sign a clause to that effect on their wedding day.