1972 was the worst year ever for international sports. During the notorious Munich Olympics, eleven members of the Israeli delegation were killed by Black September, a terrorist organization later revealed to be under the control of the Fatah wing of the PLO. At the same Munich Games, the final seconds of the Men’s Basketball Gold Medal match were rigged to allow the Soviets to eke out a one-point victory. In contrast, 1977 was a great year for international sports, for reasons also involving Israeli and Soviet athletes. Dani Menkin chronicles Israel’s unlikely championship run in the 1977 European Basketball Championship and analyzes its historic legacy in “On the Map,” which opens this week in Los Angeles (and early December in New York).
Maccabi Tel Aviv was a scruffy club with a fraction of the resources of their European counterparts. However, they scored a coup when they lured highly touted NBA prospect Tal Brody away from the Baltimore Bullets. His storied career would be interrupted by stints of military service for both the U.S. and Israel, but in 1977, he still had the skills and prestige to attract the kind of local talent and just-missed-the-NBA American players Maccabi needed to compete with the Europeans.
