Giants Down Under

Fifty-one years ago today, the U.S. men's basketball team won the gold-medal game at the Melbourne Olympics behind the heroics of their two stars, Bill Russell and K.C. Jones. Disposing easily of the Soviet Union, 89-55, the American team won its fourth consecutive gold medal in basketball since the sport entered the Summer Olympic program in 1936. It wouldn't be until 1972 that the U.S. would taste defeat in the Olympics, in the controversial final against the Soviets in Munich.

Russell and Jones, teammates at the University of San Francisco, were just coming off their 1956 national championship with USF, and of course the gold medal in Melbourne was only another precursor to the great career they would share together with the Celtics. Both Hall-of-Famers, they are the only names on the 1956 roster that anyone would recognize today, and yet they were more than enough to allow the U.S. to cruise to victory down under - the smallest margin of victory for the Americans in the entire tournament was 30 points, and the largest was 82 in a 101-29 thrashing of Thailand (one can only imagine what the Thai players made of Russell.) Oh the glory days of U.S. Olympic basketball, back when we just sent our team of assembled giants out to terrorize the rest of the terrified world. Good times, now as extinct as clean athletes and the Cold War.