Portal:Basketball/Selected article/2008
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This is an archive of selected articles that have appeared or will appear on the front page of Portal:Basketball. To nominate an article, please see Portal:Basketball/Selected content nominations.
The 1972 Olympics marked the first time that the United States did not win the gold medal in Olympic basketball since the sport's introduction as an official medal event at the 1936 Summer Olympics.
It was perhaps the most controversial result in Olympic history. The United States basketball team had been unbeaten in 62 Olympic competitions. Then they met the Soviets in the 1972 gold medal game.
USA guard Doug Collins sank two foul shots late in the game, giving the Americans a 50-49 lead with three seconds remaining and what looked like the gold medal.
The Soviets inbounded the ball right away but the referee, Renato Righetto of Brazil, blew the whistle with one second on the clock.
Following a conference with the officials, it was determined that the Soviet head coach Vladimir Kondrashin had called a time out. The Soviets were given a second opportunity to inbound the ball with three seconds left. After a Soviet player heaved a desperation miss from half court, the U.S. began their celebration, which proved to be grossly premature. The Soviet coach, Kondrashin, protested that the clock had been reset incorrectly and demanded a third chance.
The Soviet team received the ball, and this time got the ball to their star player Aleksandr Belov, who sank the winning basket at the buzzer. The U.S. team, convinced they were robbed of the gold, flatly refused the silver and did not attend the victory ceremony, filing an official protest. On appeal, the five-man panel ruled the result fair despite testimony from the referee and the timekeeper pointing to the contrary; the 3-2 vote was split along Cold War lines.
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The Sunflower Showdown is the series of athletic contests between Kansas State University and the University of Kansas, most notably football and men's basketball. The name is derived from the official nickname for the state of Kansas: the Sunflower State. In addition to being natural geographic rivals, both schools are members of the Big 12 Conference North Division, so they are guaranteed to play each other annually in all sports.
The basketball series dates back to 1907, and is the most-played series in either school's history. The University of Kansas leads the basketball series 174-90 following a Kansas State victory in the first contest of the 2007-2008 season.
The two schools had a strong rivalry in basketball for several decades, peaking in the 1950s. For the past two decades, the University of Kansas has dominated the series, including a winning streak over K-State that lasted from 1994 to 2005. Even when the schools have been at different levels, however, upsets are always a possibility in the rivalry, as when Kansas State upset a KU team that was ranked #1 in the AP Poll on January 17, 1994, or when KU pulled the upset on a K-State team ranked #1 on January 17, 1953.
Over the decades, the rivalry has seen a number of notable coaches match wits, including Jack Gardner, Tex Winter, and Jack Hartman at Kansas State, and James Naismith, Phog Allen, Larry Brown, and Roy Williams at KU. During the 2006-2007 season, both teams featured noteworthy coaches with high winning percentages – Bill Self (KU) and Bob Huggins (KSU). Following that year, however, Huggins left Kansas State to return to his alma mater, West Virginia University. The 2007-2008 season promises a high degree of interest in the Showdown, as Kansas returns nearly every player from the previous season, losing only Julian Wright to the NBA, and Kansas State debuts the top recruiting class in the country under the tutelage of an untested first-year head coach, Frank Martin.
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Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game, named by the National Basketball Association as one of its greatest games, took place between the Philadelphia Warriors and the New York Knicks on March 2, 1962 at Hersheypark Arena in Hershey, Pennsylvania. The Warriors won, 169-147, setting what was then a record for the most combined points in a game by both teams. But the game is most remembered for the 100 points scored by Warriors center Wilt Chamberlain, who demolished the NBA single-game scoring record.
There was little advance excitement about the game, which was a meaningless late-season match. On a cold, rainy Friday night, only 4,124 spectators paid to see the match, partly more to see the footballers from the local Philadelphia Eagles, who played a show basketball game against their colleagues from the Baltimore Colts before the NBA game started. The opposing Knicks were shorthanded, because their starting center Phil Jordon was injured. So, the inexperienced backup pivot Darrall Imhoff had to play against the scoring champion Chamberlain.
From the beginning, Chamberlain's Warriors dominated against the Knicks. After a few minutes, the Warriors led 19-3, and their star center had already scored 13 points. At the end of the first quarter, the Knicks trailed 26-42, and in his typical style, Chamberlain had finger-rolled, dunked and jump-shot his way to 23 points. Imhoff was soon benched in foul trouble. By halftime, the Warriors had lost some of their edge, but still led with 79-68. After 24 minutes, Chamberlain's point total stood at 41. However, as he scored 60 or more points 32 times, the Warriors felt little excitement about this fact. "I often came into the locker room with 30 or 35 points, therefore, 41 points was not a big deal", he later explained. Warriors coach Frank McGuire ordered his men to feed Chamberlain: "Wilt is always open, so pass him the ball".
The simple tactic proved unstoppable. Soon, he had surpassed the 50-point barrier, causing arena speaker Dave Zinkoff to fire up the previously sleepy crowd. He also kept his cool despite getting perpetually triple- and quadruple-teamed by the Knicks, who did not shy away from hard fouls to distract the center. McGuire was irate and demanded that the referees called more fouls, but Chamberlain himself could not be stopped. He scored another 28 points to lift his Warriors to a commanding 125-104 lead when the third quarter ended. His own total stood at 69, nine shy of his previous scoring record. Knicks third center Dave Budd, who alternated with the foul-troubled Imhoff at pivot, later stated resistance was practically futile: "You couldn't play [Chamberlain] conventionally because he was so big. The only thing you could attempt to do was either front him, and in that case they'd try to lob it in to him, or beat him down the floor and set up where he wanted to get and force him out a couple of extra steps. The guy weighed 300 or 270 [pounds], so that wasn't easy, either." Darrall Imhoff later even stated, "He literally stuffed us through the hoop with the ball. It didn't even help we quintuple-teamed him." Chamberlain at first thought he would possibly break a free throw shooting record, but stated that at the end of the third quarter he realised he could break his own 75-point scoring record (for a 48-minute game) or his record 78 points, set in double overtime.
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A slam dunk (or simply a dunk) is a type of basketball shot that is performed when a player jumps in the air and manually powers the ball downward through the basket with one or both of his hands over the rim. This is a standard field goal worth two points. The term "slam dunk" was first coined by the late Los Angeles Lakers announcer Chick Hearn. Prior to that, it was known as a dunk shot.
The slam dunk is one of the highest percentage field goals one can attempt in basketball as well as one of the most crowd-pleasing plays. Other terms for slam dunk include "jam", "stuff", "flush", "cram" or "throw down." Slam dunk contests are quite popular, and perhaps the most popular contest is the NBA Slam Dunk Contest held during the annual NBA All-Star Weekend. The first slam dunk contest was held during an American Basketball Association All Star Game.
Dunking was banned in the NCAA from 1967 to 1976. Many have attributed this to the dominance of the then-college phenomenon Lew Alcindor (now called Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) upon his entry into the NCAA. Subsequently, the no-dunking rule is sometimes referred to as the "Lew Alcindor Rule."
Wilt Chamberlain was known to have dunked on an experimental 12-foot basket set up by Phog Allen at the University of Kansas in the 1950s. Michael Wilson, a former Harlem Globetrotter and University of Memphis basketball player, matched this feat on April 1, 2000. Wayne Clark surpassed this recently and now holds this record dunking at 12'1.
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Portal:Basketball/Selected article/October, 2008
Portal:Basketball/Selected article/November, 2008
Portal:Basketball/Selected article/December, 2008
