The year

saw two epic contests between the United States and the Soviet Union.

The first was American Bobby Fisher defeating Soviet Grandmaster Anatoly Carpov

for the World Chess Championship.

The other took place on a basketball court in Munich, Germany, in the gold medal game of the Olympics.

It was one of the most controversial moments in Olympic history, and the ramifications of that game

are still reverberating today.

Learn more about the finals of the 1972 Olympic basketball tournament

on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. The Going into the 1972 Olympics in Munich, the Americans had totally dominated basketball in the world stage.

The American men had won every gold

medal in basketball that hadn't given out. They had never lost a single game at

the Olympics. The 1972 Olympics appeared to be just more of the same. In the preliminary game The

1972 Olympics appeared to be just more of the same. In the preliminary games, they crushed their competition.

The smallest margin of victory was against Spain where they won by 16 points

and their biggest blow was against Japan where they won by 66 points. At the time the Olympics was the Olympics was strictly limited to amateur players. So the

American team wasn't necessarily made of the best American players, all of whom were in the

NBA, but rather the best amateur players, all of whom were still in college.

The best American amateur, Bill Walton, actually declined to play on the team.

The 1972 American Olympic team was the youngest team that the Americans had ever assembled.

Prior to the Olympics, the players in that team had never played together before.

The Soviets actually had a pretty good team, but they were very different from the Americans.

The Soviets didn't have professional sports and they got around the amateurism rules by putting their athletes into token jobs at factories or in the military

...