Operation Gold Put-back

President Trump can reverse the greatest rip-off in Olympic history

“The United States will host the 2028 Summer Olympics, one of the most prominent international sports events of the 21st century,” proclaims President Trump. “This extraordinary occasion offers a powerful opportunity to showcase American strength, pride, and patriotism while welcoming the world to our shores. Trump will head the task force on the 2028 games, and has the best – and probably last – opportunity to reverse one of the biggest rip-offs in Olympic history.

In 1972 the USA fielded its youngest-ever men’s basketball team: Mike Bantom, Jim Brewer, Tom Burleson, Doug Collins, Kenny Davis, James Forbes, Tom Henderson, Bobby Jones, Dwight Jones, Kevin Joyce, Tom McMillen and Ed Ratleff. The American collegians faced a more experienced Soviet team, for all practical purposes a professional squad.

In the closing seconds with the USA behind 49-48, Illinois State’s Doug Collins picked off a Soviet pass and drove for a layup. Soviet player Zurab Sakandelidze rammed Collins into the basket stand, leaving the American motionless on the floor. After some tense moments Collins got up, stepped to the line, and sank both to put the USA ahead 50-49. Three seconds remained, and the Soviets failed to score. The buzzer sounded and the Americans celebrated their victory.

Renato William Jones, a friend of the Soviet Union and Secretary General of FIBA, the international basketball organization, came out of the stands and ordered the officials to put three seconds back on the clock. Jones had no authority to make the demand but the Olympic officials put time back on the clock not once, not twice, but three times. The third time the Soviets scored a basket and the Olympic officials gave them the gold medal. The Americans decided not to show up for the silver because they had won the gold fair and square. Jones didn’t think so. “The Americans have to learn how to lose,” he famously proclaimed, “even when they think they are right.”

Gutless American officials passed up every chance for a put-back, even as the Olympics forced other athletes to return gold medals. In 2017, for example, the International Olympic Committee found that in 2008 Jamaican sprinter Nesta Carter, teammate of Usain Bolt, had violated anti-doping rules. Therefore, the entire Jamaican 4×100-meter relay team would have to return their gold medals, which now belong to the team from Trinidad.

In the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, American Jim Thorpe won gold medals in the pentathlon and decathlon. Those medals were taken away when it emerged that Thorpe had played minor league baseball, not even an Olympic sport. In July of 2022 on the 110th anniversary of the Jim Thorpe’s 1912 wins, and nearly 70 years after his death, the International Olympic Committee restored Thorpe’s gold medals in the pentathlon and decathlon. That opens the way for the 1972 U.S. Olympic basketball team, at this writing still around except for Dwight Jones and Jim Forbes.

President Trump should demand that, as a condition of holding the games in the USA, the Americans get the gold medals stolen from them in 1972. “Operation Gold Put-back” is a winner for those players and the nation. So in the spirit of Network’s Howard Beale (Peter Finch) you’ve got to get mad as hell about the rip-off and tell the world we’re not going to take it anymore. Go to your computers, pads and phones. Contact President Trump, the Olympic task force, all the sports networks and call-in shows, the NBA, NCAA and any players and fans you might know. Tell them to support Operation Gold Put-back because it’s the right thing to do, especially in the run-up to the election on November 7, 2028.

In the meantime, it’s long past time to eject Renato William Jones from the Basketball Hall of Fame, which includes Oscar Robertson, Jerry West and Jerry Lucas – Olympic gold winners in 1960 – Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor, Bill Russell, Larry Bird Michael Jordan, and such. The man who said Americans need to learn how to lose has no place in the company of these great winners.