My junior year at Allentown College of St. Francis de Sales — forty years ago this year — we Centaurs ended our season at 6-and-11. A brutal campaign, as chronicled here at HoopsU.com, it boasted, so to speak, a nine-game losing streak and defeats by … 2 … 12 … 7 … 2 … 15 … 15 … 5 … 29 … 36 … 6 and 18 points.

(Click a number, any number, to read about each at CENTAUR SEASONS. Time for just one? “I CRIED FOR 15-20 MINUTES” tells all you need to know.)

The saving grace is that we went 4-and-2 over the last six games. Our coach, Jack Saboda, somehow convinced us at 2-and-9 to put the ghastly opprobrium of the first eleven games behind us – forget it, fellas –  and look only forward, our season begun anew. And so we did.  It was one of Jack’s best mentoring moments in the three years I played for him. His guidance allowed us to end the season on an improbable up note – 4-and-2! — feeling good about ourselves and looking forward already to next season.

That next season coming, of course, will be my senior year, 1973-’74, my last chance to get it right, to be a player, to prove – though to whom I was never sure (myself, most likely) – that all 6-feet-8-inches of me should have played basketball in high school. Last chance.

There was however one more basketball game played that ’72-’73 year at Billera Hall, and it must be mentioned. With spring upon us a team of Lehigh Valley college all-stars – featuring our own Centaur, Dennis Ramella, the school’s first 1,000-point scorer, and Jack Saboda as coach – squared off against the Big 5 All-Stars, up from Philadelphia, in the first-ever Lehigh Valley Collegiate Classic to Benefit Multiple Sclerosis.

The Philly draw was Tom Ingelsby, a recent second-round NBA draft pick of the Atlanta Hawks, the Villanova star who’d played against UCLA in the 1971 championship game, and the high school best friend of Centaur senior co-captain  Chris Cashman, who’d been the manager of the Philly Catholic prep team on which Tom had starred.

For added glamour, the Big 5 contingent was to be coached by one of our Oblates, Bob Devine, himself a Philly school-boy hoops legend and a three-year ironman for a Top 10 Notre Dame team.

But before we get to the game, a word about our sponsor.  Because the All-Star tilt was, in truth, a fairly small part of a much wider campus extravaganza: the Allentown College Multiple Sclerosis Carnival in Center Valley, Pennsylvania.

Allentown College of St. Francis de Sales  – and I’ve said this before – was a make-it-up-as-you-go-along place back then, right then. Brand new, out there somewhere in the middle of some cornfields. A couple of buildings. That’s it. In the absence of everything else a college is supposed to have, the only resource the school really had was its handful of students, and so we were tapped into constantly to find the next idea.

What-d’-ya-wanna-do?

I dunno, what–d’-YA-wann-do?

I KNOW! — let’s do a carnival!

That, more or less, or at least kinda-sorta, is how the MS Carnival happened, as remembered by John Cooper (the guy who played me onto the bench this junior-year season now ended, although that’s another story).

Says Coop: “I still remember sitting in Zeke’s room, and he was talking about how he wanted to do something and he’s saying, ‘What do you think about having a carnival on campus?’ I said, ‘I can get us rides and amusements.’ Zeke says, ‘What’re you talking about?’ I said, “I’ve been doing this stuff since I was a kid; my dad used to run the carnival for the Catholic War Veterans and stuff. He knows the carnies.’ Zeke says, ‘You think we can do that, a carnival?’ “I said, ‘Sure!’ ”

It was more complicated than that. But it was also just that simple.

“It was the Center Valley phenomenon” that made the MS carnival (and pretty much everything else) happen at the school back then, says Bob Zeccardi, the “Zeke” in Coop’s remembrance. Our ability to make something out of the nothing was unique to time and place.

“I saw a group of people come together to make things happen in a way that I think defies logic,” Zeke wrote me in an email about “our tenure” in Center Valley — or, as he calls the place, “Never-Never-Land.”

And so, all but pulled from that Center Valley soil appeared a carnival with rides and betting booths and food stands and dunk tank and all-star basketball game and Todd Rundgren concert one year, everything squeezed into less than a week, virtually everyone at the college involved somehow.

“What made the place so great was our ingenuity, our creativity, our spontaneity,” Zeke told me. And it was unique to where we were, and why we were there, the place just getting started.

“It all comes back to the same thing: We were given this opportunity. There was an environment created that allowed us to do things that I don’t think happen at a lot of other places. I look back on some of the crazy stuff we asked people to do. In the environment I work in today? People’d say, ‘What are you, Bob, NUTS?’ But I never experienced that there. From the people above us or our friends around us.”

And now, back to the Lehigh Valley Collegiate Classic to Benefit MS.

It was a foregone conclusion, of course, that the Big 5 All-Stars would win. They had Inglesby, after all. And Craig Littlepage, the star from the University of Pennsylvania — Ivy League Penn still being a ranked power. Plus some other guys who had to be good because, well, we’d seen them play on television. The Lehigh Valley All-Stars had players no one had ever heard of — and they comprised the home team in the white jerseys.

So of course the Lehighs came out like gangbusters and took immediately control of the game. At one point in the first half Jack Saboda had them up by seven, 45-38. At the half they still led, 58-56.

And showing the way was the Centaur Dennis Ramella. Of course.

Dennis had 14 points in the first half. I see him hitting deep over a surprised Ingelsby. I see him at the basket, in traffic, getting ball on backboard and through the rim. I hear Billera buzz ever time he bounced the ball.

“[T]he crowd favorite was Denny Ramella, Allentlown College’s only representative on the Lehigh Valley squad,” the Morning Call wrote the next day.

It gets better.

“Although the smallest player on the floor at 5-7, he proved himself more than capable of being with the ‘big guys’ as he hit with great success from long range and scored a couple of times because of quickness and great moves.”

Dennis finished with 18 points. Had the Lehigh team held on to win – the Big 5ers of course won inevitably, 123-107 – Dennis (and not the inevitable Inglesby and his 26 points) would’ve been the MVP. And exactly how spectacular would that have been?

So what that he wasn’t.

I was genuinely, unselfishly thrilled for Dennis that night. (A new experience for me, unselfishness.) The spotlight was all his and it was wonderful to see him in it.  Allentown College had granted him one more of those opportunities unique to the school that Zeke recalled, and Dennis had grabbed hold and made it work.

Nearly a thousand people had come out, an insane number at Billera. In front of the largest crowd of his college career and against the best competition – TV-certified big guys — Dennis had come through, shown them all. Shown us.

He made our 6-and-9 season seem just a little less awful.

And he made the next season coming seem laden with opportunity.

[This is part 1 of a 2-part series. Read part 2, Miami Heat Secondary Break Options]

The Miami Heat’s fast break can be virtually unstoppable at times.  The speed and athleticism of key players such as LeBron James and Dwyane Wade is simply breathtaking.  Interestingly enough, a football coach, Philadelphia Eagles Head Coach Chip Kelly, is the mastermind behind this offense.  Miami Head Coach Erik Spolestra got the idea for the Miami break while watching Kelly’s Oregon Ducks practice their spread-option offense during the NBA Lockout back in 2011.

The Miami break is a lot different than the Carolina or the Suns fast break offenses.  Whereas both the Carolina and Suns fast breaks have assigned positions, the Miami break has no assigned positions.  Anyone can run to any position on the floor.  It is a very difficult fast break to defend against because the Miami break is very unpredictable.  The defense will not know what to expect on any given possession. Miami can run this offense effectively because they have versatile players that play multiple positions.

I would only recommend this offense if you have perimeter players on your roster that can play multiple positions.  You must have players that are able to handle the ball and shoot from outside.  Make sure your team has the personnel to run this offense before implementing it.  I would not recommend this offense if you have a dominant low post presence.

Notice that all the positions in the Miami break can be filled by anyone on the floor.  There is no assigned point guard.  Anyone can bring the ball up.  There are five basic options in the Miami break.

Option #1: Pass the ball to the player running in the middle.  Player looks to score by attacking the basket.

Option #2: Pass the ball to the player running to the strong side corner.  Player looks to score by either taking an outside shot or attacking the basket.

Option #3: Pass the ball to the player running to weak side corner.  Player looks to score by either taking an outside shot or attacking the basket.

Option #4: Player bringing the ball up looks to score by either taking an outside shot or by attacking the basket.

Option #5: Pass the ball to the trail running down the middle.  The trail looks to score by either taking an outside shot or by attacking the basket.

Not quite sure how to teach your players the Miami break or any other fast break system?  Breakthrough Basketball’s “Transition Offense and the Four-Second Fast Break” DVD will teach your players the nuances of running a successful fast break.  You will learn techniques and tactics to teach your players on how to be successful at executing an effective fast break.  I highly recommend this DVD for any coach who wants to have a successful fast break offense.

Continue to Part 2, Miami Heat Secondary Break Options.

[This is part 2 of a 2-part series. Read part 1, Miami Heat Fast Break Offense]

When the primary break options are not available, the Heat shift to a 5 out set. The 5 out secondary break flows directly from their primary break.  The trail moves to the top of the key in order to balance the floor.

Keep in mind that any player can play any position in this offense.  Only run this offense if you have players that can play multiple positions.

These secondary break options do not necessarily require a great deal of player movement.  The offense does require your players to read the defense and to understand passing and dribbling angles.  Here are five secondary break options that I have seen the Heat run in games.

Option #1: Swing the ball until there is an open driving lane

This play against the Detroit Pistons is a perfect example of how they move the ball in this offense.  The ball is swung until it goes to Norris Cole in the left corner.

Once Cole receives the pass, he recognizes that he has an open lane so he attacks the basket immediately.

Cole’s penetration causes LeBron to react to the defense by cutting to the basket.  Dwyane Wade also cuts to the basket in case Cole does not see LeBron cutting to the basket.  The play results in LeBron making a layup.

Option #2: Trail sets a ball screen

Everybody else spreads out on the perimeter in order to give the play a lot of room to operate.  The screener can either roll to the basket or pop at the three-point line.  If the defense contains penetration, shooters will be open at the three-point line.

Option #3: Strong side wing posts up

Miami often likes to have the strong side wing post up while the player bringing the ball up dribbles towards the wing’s initial spot.  The trail moves to the strong side in order to balance the floor.  You can exploit mismatches from this option if you have wings that can post up.

Option #4: Side pick-and-roll

This play is all about spacing and timing.  The pass is made to the strong side corner.  Then, the passer cuts to the weak side corner.  Everybody else moves a position in order to properly space the court.  The point guard moves to the weak side corner in order to give misdirection to the play.

The trail sets a screen on the ball as soon as the entire right side is cleared out.  The dribbler has several options in this play.  A jump shot is available if the defense sags off.  A driving lane is available if the defense does not switch the screen.  If the defense overplays the dribbler, the screener will be open for either a cut to the basket or a jump shot.

Option #5: Pass to trail then screen away

Another option Miami likes to run is to pass and screen away.  The play starts with the trail receiving the ball at the top of the key.

Once the trail receives the pass, the two wings look to set down screens for the players in the corner.  This play requires reading the defense.  If the defenders sag off, a quick pop to the wing will yield an open jump shot.  A driving lane will likely be available if the defense tries to close out on the shot.

If the defenders overplay the screen, a curl to the basket will yield a potential driving opportunity.

If the defense switches the screen, the screener can quickly slip the screen to receive a pass towards the basket.

Each of these secondary break options is easy to learn yet difficult to master.  Breakthrough Basketball’s DVD titled “Don Kelbick’s Transition Offense and the Four-Second Fast Break” is the best way to help you teach your players how to run effective secondary break options such as the Heat run.  The DVD will explain how to flow into your offensive sets from your primary fast break, making your offense far more efficient and dangerous.

Return to Part 1, Miami Heat Fast Break Offense.

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I figured out why your blog and book will be a winner. 

Well, I am certainly glad someone has! (And yes, one of the goals I’ve been shooting for with this blog is to find the book in these Centaur Seasons.)

Those dozen italicized words that tip-off this particular CENTAUR SEASONS post here on HoopsU.com  were written in an email to me by a friend, Kathryn, who pens her own blog at RAGGED RECOVERY. Kathryn was reacting – quite viscerally, you’ll see — to an interview she read that I had done about CENTAUR SEASONS for the “Varsity Letters” sports-reading section of the online site GELF Magazine.

In response to a ‘VL’ question posed by interviewer Justin Adler, WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO GO TO ALLENTOWN COLLEGE OF ST. FRANCIS DE SALES?, I answered: “It was kind of by accident. I planned on attending Niagara University, but my father passed away in September of my senior year of high school, and [after that] I wanted to go to a school that was closer to my hometown of York, Pennsylvania. … … [E]verything just clicked—it all felt right.”

Got chills as I thought about this driving home …  wrote Kathryn, as always passionate and enthusiastic as she typed.

Regular readers here on HoopsU.com are aware that another objective for CENTAUR SEASONS has been to try to divine what it was exactly about Allentown College of St. Francis de Sales (full name, always full name) in Center Valley, Pennsylvania, that made this tiny-little brand-new nothing-there place in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by cornfields such a unique and special opportunity for a post-secondary education.

“The Secrets of the Centaur,” I’ve called them.**

As you know, Kathryn wrote me, sports plays a bit part in my life, outside of tennis and skiing. … but when the interviewer was grilling you about what made your experience special. … and you said, ”I’m trying to articulate that” ….

Well, my take away, and my ENVY, is that you took what life handed you and you engaged and embraced and reveled in it. … Here you were, losing your Dad senior year in high school, having to shift gears and go to a nearby college — one without much to offer, on paper.  But you plunged in and made it matter.  There’s a huge lesson here about acceptance and attitude and … I’M HERE AND I AM GOING TO MAKE IT SPECIAL….

Kathryn then went on to write … you will fill in the rest … as if there was something I needed to add to the perspicacity she had so observed, and yes, divined about Allentown College of St. Francis de Sales in its right-then/right-there moment forty years ago.

Hardly.

Thanks, Kathryn, for saying so well for me what I’ve been trying to say now about the Secrets of the Centaur for lo these past six months.

You should know her words on my behalf have come hard-wrought.

In the “About Me” section of her RAGGED RECOVERY blog Kathryn declares: Addiction drives people to do things they truly don’t want to do.  I realized: THIS IS ME AND FOOD! For more than thirty years, prompted by my first binge at sixteen, I’d been up and down the scale twenty-five pounds at least ten times.  I’d always pegged myself as your garden-variety yo-yo dieter. In truth, I used food the way a drunk scarfs Ketel One: too eagerly, too often, in amounts too large and to no good end.

It would seem an interesting or even impossible leap from girl with eating disorder to boy on basketball team at a barely-there college in eastern Pennsylvania, but for Kathryn, no. Did you notice earlier when she wrote, Well, my take away, and my ENVY … ? Well, here is MY envy: that she indeed could make this jump so effortlessly, especially without ever having, you know, BEEN to Allentown College of St. Francis de Sales in Center Valley, Pa.  That’s leaping ability. The woman must have like a 38-inch vertical.

It is one of the great regrets of my life, Kathryn continued in her email, that my father’s dying (yes, we share that) triggered my eating disorder that then derailed the end of high school and my college career.

Instead of doing, I conclude she means in leaping, what I and so many of us at Allentown College of St. Francis de Sales did by being there then during the school’s make-it-up, try-it-out formative years: plunged in and made it matter, as Kathryn says. There’s a huge lesson here about acceptance and attitude. …

And then Kathryn ended by saying, perhaps concerned that she had wandered too far afield into a world she thinks she doesn’t understand: In my humble opinion.

Yeah, right. As I said: If only I could have thought to have thought of that about these CENTAUR SEASONS.

** Links to previous “Secrets of the Centaur” posts:

SEARCHING FOR THAT … SOMETHING ELSE. Posted October 1, 2012.

WHY US? WHY FIRST? Posted October 12, 2012.

BRICKS AND A BIRTHDAY   Posted October 22, 2012.

THE NIGHT THE CENTAURS MOVED THE BUS: Part Three of a Metaphor in Three Parts. Posted November 6, 2012.

AT THE END OF THE BENCH:  What a Centaur Turned Coach Learned at Allentown and Shares with UCLA Coach John Wooden. Posted November 19, 2912.

KEEP YOUR FOOT IN THAT BUCKET, STEVE! Posted December 10, 2012.

ON THE PASSING OF JACK KLUGMAN Posted December 28, 2012.

THE YEAR THE CENTAURS PLAYED THE FIGHTING IRISH (yes — in football!) Posted Janaury 7, 2013.

SLEEPING IN THE GYM, or “The Process of Becoming a Basketball Team” Posted January 17, 2013

CENTAUR SEASONS, DAVID BROOKS OF THE NEW YORK TIMES, AND LOOKING TO THE FUTURE… Posted February 15, 2013

CENTAUR SEASONS POSTS UP … ON D3HOOPS.COM  Posted March 5, 2013

THE GIANT SHADOW THAT IS JOHN WOODEN Posted on March 25, 2013

What CENTAUR SEASONS Can Teach the Scarlet Knights of Rutgers U. … Seriously Posted April 5, 2013

This post, like the two before it on CENTAUR SEASONS and here on HoopU.com — Micheal Bantom of the ill-fated 1972 U.S. Olympic basketball team and his sudden appearance at Allentown College of St. Francis de Sales’s 1973 Spring sports banquet (This is the most unusual experience of my entire life), and the answer he gave to a question about why the U.S. team refused the silver medal after losing 51-50 to the Soviets in a still-debated finish (I would proudly wear the silver medal. But I did not earn the silver medal) – has been inspired by a recently posted short film on Grantland.com.

It is by the film maker Rory Karpf and it is called “Silver Reunion.”

Last summer Karpf brought together all twelve men from that team and filmed them as they talked about the game — the disappointment, the hurt, the anger — and had them vote to “accept, or forever refuse” the silver medal they had walked away from in the immediate aftermath of that Munich game. The decision would need to be unanimous.

“Silver Reunion” is a terrific dozen minutes with a dozen men who once were boys.

For as Frank Gifford, the ABC game announcer in 1972, reminded his audience too many times: At an average age of 20.6 years, this was the youngest hoops team the U.S. had ever sent to the Olympics, with scant international experience. The Russians, meanwhile, had been playing together for years: five had won bronze in 1968; Gennady Volnov was at his fourth Olympics.

It is also worth noting that Bill Walton, the dominant player of that U.S. basketball generation, opted not to participate. His UCLA back-up, Swen Nater, made the team but then quit. And Ernie DiGregorio, the wizard-like passer from Providence College, wasn’t asked to try out, near as I can ascertain. I know Friars basketball people who still shake their heads over that.

None of which is to cast aspersions upon those who did play. The opposite, in fact. These were the guys who raised their hands, wore the colors, took the court. These are the guys who have lived with the outcome now for forty years. All best to them:

Michael Banton (going alphabetically), Jim Brewer, Tom Burleson, Doug Collins, Kenny Davis, Jim Forbes, Tom Henderson, Bobby Jones, Dwight Jones, Kevin  Joyce, Tom McMillen, Ed Ratleff. All of them still alive.

Here they are in “Silver Reunion,” bound together at the same table, inextricably bonded by the same experience. “We went through a lot together,” Doug Collins says. And doesn’t he know best?

It was Collins, of course, who made the now-iconic pair of free throws with three second remaining to give the U.S. its first lead in the game, at 50-49.

And then it was all chaos.

*The distracting horn from the scorers’ table during Collins’s second shot.

*The timeout the Russians wanted but either didn’t call for correctly or was botched by the officials.

* The sudden stoppage after the Russians inbounded the ball.

* The hand-of-god appearance by the head of the international basketball federation – who later conceded he had no authority to do so — demanding three seconds be put back on the clock and the play run again.

* The Who’s-On-First routine when the referees restarted the game before the clock was reset to three seconds.

* The insistence that it all be done … again.

* The overlay of American-Soviet Cold War politics.

*The referees waving the 6-foot-11 Tom McMillen back from the baseline, clearing the way for the Russian’s try at a full-court inbounds pass.

* Aleksandr Belov’s lay-up.

That’s a lot to get into a 12-minute film (the massacre of the Israeli athletes is given proper context, too)  but Karpf expertly fits it all together, the story fully told. Oh, for such efficiency when the team could’ve used it!

Karpf bills his film as a hoops version of “12 Angry Men,” and he sits in as a sort of jury foreman. The vote to accept or refuse must be unanimous. This part is forced and artificial.

Karpf gets much closer to his hoped-for angry men when Tom McMillen, ever the politician, suggests his pet project: A duplicate set of gold medals be struck for the U.S. team. Mike Bantom, for one, is among a few who seem O.K. with that. A few more seem noncommittal. The rest do NOT want to hear it. Kenny Davis looks as if he wants to get up and leave the table. As Jim Forbes says: “Why would we accept dual ownership, when we won the gold medal?” And don’t miss the final comment on this subject from Bobby Jones.

Where Karpf does succeed, he succeeds wonderfully: In the details. He has the players watch the game, and we watch them watching (or, now and again, not watching still).

A grimmace from Doug Collins. A quick shake of the head from  Jim Brewer. Tears from Dwight Jones and Jim Forbes. Stone silence from Kevin Joyce. It’s great stuff.

Karpf juxtaposes pictures of the men at the table with photos of the players they were immediately after the game. Bobby Jones wears the same thousand-mile stare in both portraits. And they all share the identical look – hurt, disappointment, anger. Then and now. Forty years later.

It is – no lie – Mike Bantom who brings it all together, stating the case for all twelve of them. Mike’s afro is gone, probably long gone, but he still has his hair, going gray. His face is rounder, the sharp edges softened. He’s wearing a pale-red Polo shirt, a little thick around he middle.

But when he talks, he could still be standing tall and thin in front of us at the Allentown College of St. Francis de Sales spring sports banquet of 1973, stylishly attired in gray turtleneck and blue double-breasted blazer.

“If we had actually lost, and won a silver medal, I would have proudly walked up there and claimed the silver medal,” he says in “Silver Reunion,” echoing closely his words at Billera Hall that brought forth from us a standing ovation. “Because winning a silver medal in the Olympic Games is a great accomplishment, and I would have been proud to take that medal.” Which in “Silver Reunion” brings forth a full round table of wistful affirmation.

For these twelve men this is what it’s been for these forty years: They would take the silver medal had they earned it. But they can’t take what they didn’t earn. That is why they vote as they must.

Denied the glory of winning gold, they have been no less denied the honor of winning silver. So they have nothing to show for anything except their adamant insistence that they accept nothing short of the one thing they will never get. And so the final three seconds will play in continuous loop, the ending never ending, never changing.

They ask no one to feel sorry for them. They don’t appear to feel sorry for themselves, either. They understand what happened to them was no tragedy; tragedy is what happened to the Israeli athletes, their fellow Olympians.

That’s the final irony, of course. From their 1972 Games these members of the U.S. basketball team did not take a medal. But the nothing they came home with was — and is — certainly something more.

“Hey,” Mike Bantom says toward the end of the film,” “I’ve always said, if this is the worst thing that ever happens to me in my life, I’ve lived a blessed life.”

On a Thursday evening in early May in 1973 Mike Bantom – he of St. Joe’s College, the Philadelphia Big 5, and the ill-fated 1972 U.S. Olympic basketball team and its disputed loss to the Soviets in the gold-medal game – appeared seemingly out of nowhere as the guest speaker at our Allentown College of St. Francis de Sales Centaur sports banquet.

He handled his duties with aplomb – as written about here in this previous CENTAUR SEASONS post. Subbing at the last moment for his St. Joe’s coach, Jim Lyman, Mike Bantom was everything we in his audience were not. Athletically gifted, wondrously tall, African American, very afroed. Not to mention urbane and worldly by comparison with any of us — or at least certainly me.

So when he began his remarks by telling the exact truth: This is the most unusual experience of my entire life, it was such equal parts charming and disarming that it slowly extracted from us loud applause of appreciation.

All of this about Mike Bantom at Billera Hall in Center Valley, Pennsylvania, in 1973, has come to mind at CENTAUR SEASONS and here on HoopsU.com because ESPN recently posted on Grantland.com‘s “30 for 30 Short Film Series” a 12-minute documentary called “Silver Reunion” by the director Rory Karpf and First Row Films.

“Silver Reunion” is the quickly told tale of that U.S. Olympic team when its members gathered, Mike Bantom included, in the summer of 2012, to discuss that disputatious game. With Rory Karpf serving as a sort of jury foreman, the team voted on whether at long last to accept (or not) the silver medal they had together walked away from, leaving the members of the Russian team to get their gold medals without them.  The decision would need to be unanimous.

At our sports banquet in 1973 I don’t recall that Mike Bantom gave an actual speech, inspirational-style.  (That would have been too weird; he was the same age as us.) He did though open the floor to questions.

What’s it like to the play at the Palestra? Who’s the toughest Big 5 player? There were questions about the recent Olympic Games, I’m sure. The Israeli massacre. The controversial U.S.-U.S.S.R. game.

And then someone stood up and asked point blank: Don’t you think it would have been a better gesture for the U.S. players to have accepted their silver medals and been on the platform when the Soviets received their golds, rather than being absent and displaying such bad sportsmanship?

It was a heck of a question, for sure – and maybe fair enough as far as it went. Mike Bantom, alone among us in the room, did not hesitate with his answer.

To write this post I rewatched the video of that Munich Olympic basketball final.

Mike Bantom played a terrific game, first off. He had a game-high nine rebounds. With eight-plus minutres to go he ran down a ball in the Russian corner and, on the ensuing play, he battled for the ball inside and then tipped it in. They were his only two points in a struggle where baskets were hard to come by. His tally brought the U.S. to within four, 34-38, and for the first time you can feel the arena come alive.

As for the game, it is difficult to watch. The Russians are robotic, mechanical — and oppresively effective. The U.S. team, straining under Coach Hank Iba’s famously deliberate approach, play the same slow-ball style. “Some of the things I disgree with,” ABC analyst Bill Russell says with the U.S. down 19-9. “They don’t show enough imagination on offense — and they are capable of it.”

Late in the second half, still down 10, the Amerks stage a mini revolt on Iba’s deliberations, get imaginative, and on their own push the pace. Kevin Joyce’s three baskets get the U.S. to 44-47. At 1:50 Doug Collins hits two free throws and it’s 46-47. Two foul shots by the Soviets make it 46-49, and with 43 seconds left Jim Forbes drains an ice-water 20-foot jumper to the right of the foul circle and it’s 48-49.

There is no shot clock. The Soviets do not have to shoot. The game is theirs to win. Inexplicably, however, Aleksandr Belov, underneath, reaches up to the basket with less than ten second left. Tom McMillen blocks the attempt to the left corner, where Belov tracks it down. He lofts a hurried pass toward midcourt.

Doug Collins, lurking on the opposite side, appears out of nowhere, grabs the ball near the center jump circle and heads straight for the basket, where he gets undercut by Sako Sakandelidze. Collins crashes to the floor and winds up with his head buried under the padding of the basket support. He gets up woozily and goes to the line for two fouls shots, the U.S. down one, 48-49.

Collins takes the ball.  In the 40 years since he has always said he didn’t feel any pressure, that he was just shooting foul shots on his backyard rim. Watching it all again it is not difficult to believe him. He dribbles the ball three times, spins it in his hands and shoots. Good. 50-50. He takes the ball again. Dribbles. Spins. Shoots. Good.  U.S.A. 51, U.S.S.R. 50. The U.S. has its first lead of the game. Doug Collins may have just stepped down as the head coach of the Philadelphia 76ers, but he reamins forever the owner of the two most important made foul shots in the history of basketball.

Meanwhile, three seconds remain in the U.S.-U.S.S.R. game.

I will not attempt to explain those next three seconds, except to say that it’s forty years later now and people are still trying to explain them.

That day at Billera Hall, on the otherhand, it was only eight months later, to the day, when Mike Bantom stood before us, microphone in hand, enduring that question about sportsmanship and fair play. I’m sure he had been asked the question before. Now he’d been asked it again, and, as I said, he did not hesitate.

He would proudly wear that silver medal, he told us (I can see him with his hand on his chest, in front of his blue blazer, as if he were gently holding it), but he didn’t earn a silver medal.

The question itself had produced its own layer of nervous tension throughout the gym. Mike Bantom’s answer deflected it away. Our applause came slowly at first. Soon it is a standing ovation.

Which will bring us now – in a final post to come – to Rory Karpf’s “Silver Reunion,” an ESPN 30 for 30 Short Film on Grantland.com.

Last week here at HoopsU.com a CENTAUR SEASONS post proffered “Six Degrees of Refereeing,” about the longtime and well-respected basketball official Jody Silvester. Jody whistled some of our home games at Billera Hall in Center Valley, Pennsylvania, but eventually he worked the big rooms – Madison Square Garden, the Palestra, two NCAA championship games – as a ref in the Atlantic 10, Big East and BIG 10.

Today here on HoopsU.com CENTAUR SEASONS’ six degrees is Michael Bantom. Philadelphia kid. Legendary early seventies Hawk at St. Joseph’s College, in his home town. Solid nine-year NBA veteran; seven-year Italian League player. Long-time NBA league executive.

And for our purposes, a member of the ill-fated 1972 U.S. Men’s Olympic basketball team that apparently won, then apparently won again, but then ultimately and irretrievably lost the gold medal game to the Soviet Union at those equally ill-fated Summer Games.

(Wait: “Ill-fated” barely describes those Olympics. These next three posts have been in the works for a few weeks now. Coincidentally or not, they conjure the Munich Games and the tragedy of the 11 Israeli coaches and athletes killed at that Quadrennial, in the first terror attack that targeted sports.  Now, this week, terror has again intruded on the games we play.)

ESPN recently posted on Grantland.com‘s “30 for 30 Short Film Series” a 12-minute documentary called “Silver Reunion” by the director Rory Karpf and First Row Films.  It is the quickly told tale of that U.S. Olympic team when it gathered, in the summer of 2012, to discuss the controversial game and then vote on whether at long last to accept (or not) the silver medals they had together walked away from forty years ago.

Watching the film I remembered that in May 1973, at the end of my junior year at Allentown College of St. Francis De Sales and our 6-and-9 basketball season, Mike Bantom (of all people) was the guest speaker at the Centaurs’ end-of-year varsity- and intramural-sports banquet.

This was a big, big deal. Mike Bantom of St. Joe’s and the U.S. Olympic team – and, perhaps more important, a high school Philadelphia Catholic League and college Big 5 player who’d run the hallowed floor of the Palestra! – here on our floor, right here in Billera Hall in nowhere Center Valley, Pennsylvania.

I remember everything about his visit.

I wonder if Mike Bantom remembers any of it.

Actually, he wasn’t supposed to be there. Jimmy Lynam, the St. Joe’s coach, was the scheduled speaker, but he begged off and sent his star player instead.

Mike was dressed in navy-blue blazer, double-breasted, gray pants and turtle neck. His afro was very early seventies, of the moment, making a statement. At 6-foot-9 (and close to seven with the afro) he had to duck to get through the Billera doors.

He listened to the invocation from Fr. Bob Devine, the Oblate of St. Francis de Sales priest who had started for three years at Notre Dame in the late 1950s and was on a team that had finished ranked No. 7 in the country. (Making Fr. D the ONLY person in Billera who was Mike Bantom’s athletic equal.)

Together with the rest of us Mike Bantom stood in line with paper plate in hand at the “banquet” buffet – glorified cafeteria stuff.

He sat through the awarding of plaques to eight intramural-sports champions and six varsity-sports teams, watching as each player, when called by name, walked up individually to collect his or her memento. This was a small school, this Allentown College of the Cornfields, proudly demonstrating one of its great and valued educational benefits (and I mean that sincerely and with affection).

He then waited as the most valuable players in each varsity sports were announced. (In men’s basketball, Dennis Ramella, the school’s first ever 1,000 point man.)  He listened as each varsity coach recapped the season, each one a more-losses-than-wins campaign. He shook hands with the outstanding intramural athlete of the year and with the outstanding varsity athlete (Dennis Ramella, again), then posed for pictures with everybody.

Next he listened to remarks by Coach John Compardo, the athletic director and sole proprietor of the school’s athletic department. Coach Compardo was beloved at the college from the moment he walked into the place. But as a public speaker he could be longwinded and digressive.

Finally, he waited as Chris Cashman, senior co-captain of the basketball team and emcee for the night, introduced our guest speaker. And with that Michael Bantom took the microphone.

I will never forget what happened next.

Mike Bantom was the same age as an Allentown College senior and a Baby Boomer college contemporary to the rest of us. Heck, any kid at the college who went to Roman Catholic High School in Philadelphia had four years before been his classmate. There was nothing about him that suggested “Sports Banquet Guest Speaker.” Such personages are, at minimum, supposed to be much much older than the audience.

But here he was anyway.

He was at least an inch taller, and probably more, than the tallest person (me) sitting at any table. He was likely the only African American among the 250-or-so present. (I say likely: in my years at AC I recall their being three African American students, one man and two women.)

Mike Bantom did have some things in common with us. He’d gone to a Catholic high school in Philadelphia, no small connecting rod. Our own Dave Glielmi, who had emerged as our best player this past season, had played at St. Joe’s Prep. He and Mike may have squared off agaisnt each other.

But in virtually every other way, Mike Bantom had grown out of and then into a completely different set of life and athletic experiences from anything we at Allentown College could realistically imagine. He had come to us from a different world — we knew it; surely he did, too — and he was on his way to another different world. He would be taken No. 8 overall by the Phoenix Suns in the upcoming player draft; his NBA career would total nine years at 12.1 points and 6.4 rebounds per game.  I mean, geez.

So Michael Bantom, Olympian, All-American, Big 5 Legend, stood there for  a long moment holding the microphone, looking out at all of us with our expectant faces. And then he said, as if in summation:

This has been the most unusual experience of my entire life.

Perhaps he said “most interesting” or maybe “most intriguing.”

In any event, he had nailed it — on purpose or by accident doesn’t matter. The best comedy, they say, tells the truth.

There were first some nervous titters of disbelief, but followed by growing-louder guffaws of understanding, and finally full-on laughter and applause of appreciation.

Yo! Mike Bantom! Here in Billera Hall!

In Part 2 of “Six Degrees of Mike Bantom” the St. Joe’s star and 1972 Olympian answers questions about the gold medal he did not receive and the silver medal he does not want. And in Part 3, a long look at the ESPN short documentary  at Grantland.com, “Silver Reunion,” directed by Rory Karpf for First Row Films.

Yesterday, while I was working on today’s CENTAUR SEASONS post to be available here on HoopsU.com, my wife, Noreen, yelled up to me: “Bombs at the Boston Marathon.”

I put aside what was going to be today’s post. Though the irony is worth noting: Today’s post was going to connect the early-Seventies Centaurs of Allentown College of St. Francis de Sales to the 1972 Munich Olympics, the Summer Games where terror first struck a sporting event.

Instead, there’s this:

Ten years after the September 11 terror attacks, I wrote an essay for my old hometown newspaper, the York Sunday News, in Pennsylvania. That 2001 morning at 8:46 a.m. I was at The Wall Street Journal offices, where I then worked, across the street from the World Trade Center.

Here’s why:

Yesterday, safely ensconced in Troy, New York, I went down to Noreen’s home office and watched a bit from Boston on TV. Here we go again.

“We gotta call Katie,” I said. “She could be there, easy”

Katie has been a friend forever and a runner since before that. She lived with her husband, Rene, in New Hampshire. They could be there, easy.

I dialed her cell. Listened to the rings. PickUpPickUpPickUp.

Then, from Katie, pleasantries dispensed: “I’m O.K.”

We talked again last night. “I knew it was you as soon as I heard my phone ring,” she said. She said it felt like 9-11 all over again, when she first heard that news and she immediately called Noreen at her job in Manhattan. “And now here you guys were calling us.”

So in sad and repeated memory I offer my story of what I saw and what it was like to be in New York City and live in Brooklyn on that 9-11 day, that night, that week, that month.

It is not the story of what happened in Boston yesterday. Or what it was like to be there last night, after. Or what it will be like to be living there a week from now. But it feels like it.

In the article, Boise State Football And The Blueprint For Organizational Greatness, the author talks about how the Boise State Football program has achieved a consistency of greatness among the BCS schools with much less in terms of budget, resources, and recruiting. He examines – and Head Coach Chris Petersen explains – the need for a strong organizational culture and how to implement it correctly.

There a couple of ideas and philosophies that jumped out at me. First, Coach Petersen shares the 3 core values the Boise State Football program is built upon:

1. Accountability – Make decisions with the knowledge that your actions control not only your own destiny, but the programs too.
2. Unity – Understand and embrace your role; use it to lift others.
3. Integrity – Do unto others as you would have them do to you; free yourself of pride, arrogance and falseness.

The second thing that stood out for me is how they evaluate the players they are recruiting. They look first for players that align with the core values of the program. Overall football talent is secondary because they can develop the talent (and, if you follow Boise State football at all, they most certainly do develop their players). This, from the article:

Every Boise recruit is evaluated in a number of areas, including: Character, Attitude, Effort, Toughness, and Football Intelligence (FBI). More particularly, Petersen seeks both players and coaches who exhibit a “High Performance; Low Ego” work ethic.

Now, we may not be coaching at a level where we are recruiting our players, but as we build our program and teach our players, these area’s should most definitely be emphasized! How successful do you think your teams will be if you have individual players with great character, good attitudes, toughness, a solid work ethic and a high basketball intelligence or basketball IQ? Yeah, you would have a solid and consistent program!

I do recommend reading the entire article. Click here to read Boise State Football And The Blueprint For Organizational Greatness.

In the article, they also mention a book that was recently released titled ‘Wise Beyond Your Field‘. The book is written by several authors, including Coach Chris Petersen. In it, they show how creative leaders use ideas from far beyond their own fields to do things differently and out perform their peers. The book reveals secrets and examples from leaders who compete with the best and soar beyond the pack.

This book is currently on my reading list and I will follow up with a review once I have read it. If you are interested, however, you can get a copy right now from the Hoops U. Basketball Store! Click to learn more and purchase Wise Beyond Your Field…