With FIBA's Basketball World Cup beginning today, here's a look back at how it was in 1974.
Puerto Rico hosted 13 other teams from across the globe. Of these teams that gathered in three Puerto Rican cities, eight advanced to the final round. All teams that won medals finished 6-1, points scored divided by points allowed breaking ties (or so USA Basketball says).
The Soviet Union featured Aleksandr Belov, the man who "scored" the "basket" that "won" the gold medal two years prior. That team's leading scorer in 1974 was a future two-time Olympian, Aleksandr Salnikov, who scored 38 points in the last game July 14. Salnikov made his first international tournament appearance that summer, but Modestas Paulauskas (a Lithuanian) was one of the five players from the 1972 Olympic team, as were Sergei Belov, Aleksandr Boloshev, and Ivan Yedeshko.
Despite a three-point loss to the United States, Yugoslavia (having defeated the Soviets by three) finished second, with a young Drazen Dalipagic making the first of four world championship appearances in his Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame career. One of his teammates was a Croatian named Zeljko Jerkov.
Wouldn't you know it, the USA was undefeated in the tournament until the Stars and Stripes faced the Hammer and Sickle on that second Sunday of July. This was a clear-cut, 11-point loss that put Team USA in third place, even though Yugoslavia's ratio of points scored to points allowed was 1.107 and the USA's was 1.182 (the Soviets led with 1.228).
Guards John Lucas of Maryland and Luther "Ticky" Burden of Utah led the team in scoring for the tournament, and they along with forward Tom Boswell of South Carolina made the all-tournament team according to USA Basketball, but Land of Basketball has it that no Americans did.
Seven U.S. players got called for four fouls or more in the game against the Soviets, including Lucas, Burden, guard Steve Grote of Michigan, and guard Quinn Buckner of Indiana (an Olympian in 1976). Boswell fouled out, as did center Joe Meriweather of Southern Illinois and forward Myron Wilkins of Northwestern Oklahoma A&M Junior College (the team's oldest player).
Rounding out the selection of 12 collegians: forward Gus Gerard of Virginia, center Rich Kelley of Stanford, guard Frank Oleynick of Seattle, forward Rick Schmidt of Illinois (playing for his school's head coach, Gene Bartow), and forward Eugene Short of Jackson State.
EDIT, 3:26 p.m.: For perspective, Team USA finished fifth in 1970 and fifth in 1978, and fourth in both '63 and '67. This was the first U.S. medal in the worlds since 1959 and only one in the '60s or '70s. The Americans medaled at every world championship held in the '50s, '80s, and '90s.
EDIT 8:51 p.m., 10/26/24: Had originally spelled Salnikov's name "Salinkov" in the first reference.
SOURCES
FIBA hub for tournament information
USA Basketball PDF on team history, with 1974 on Page 41
Land of Basketball hub for more on the tournament format, possibly
