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Just For Kicks
THE "Dream Team" will arrive on Maui in a few days to begin training for Sydney under secure conditions, protected from their public. Gold medal coach
prefers the way it wasThey're a millionaire's dozen, and when they get to Sydney, two things are certain. They'll roll over the competition and they'll sleep in luxury hotel suites.
The Olympic Village? That's for the common athletes.
"They should have the rich experience what my guys had," said Pete Newell, who coached the 1960 Olympic men's basketball team to gold in Rome.
The Hall of Famer, who will turn 85 next week, stormed his way to gold with a squad of amateurs who slept in bunk beds.
Newell doesn't like the way the silk-sheet Dream Teams treat the Olympic experience.
"They've made it very difficult for the rest of the Olympic teams by creating a double standard," said Newell, who recently concluded his seventh Big Man's Camp here.
"We had people living four to a room in Rome. Little rooms. And that was fine. Living in the village, you met people from other countries, mingled with them. You felt the Olympics. Two of the greatest players to ever play this game were on my team: Jerry West and Oscar Robertson."
Ten of Newell's 12 players went on to play in the NBA. The team averaged 101.9 points a game with an average victory margin of 42.4 points.
"We stood in chow lines to get our food," said Newell. "It was an honor that we were a handful of people in our sport to represent our country."
Newell said he doesn't buy the argument that the NBA players should be allowed special accommodations so they can avoid being besieged by autograph seekers.
"Jerry and Oscar were pretty big. We had Cassius Clay in the village and all kinds of track people who were world famous. Back then, and even now, some of those other countries don't know an NBA player from a load of hay. But they know marathon runners from Kenya. Just because the basketball players are so big in this country doesn't mean they're going to be bothered over there. I think they get as many (autograph seekers) or more going in and out of the hotel. In the village they'd have to live a Spartan way of life and they're not used to it."
There were no limousines when Newell coached his gold medalists.
NEWELL recalled what happened after his team's semifinal victory over Italy at a new arena far from Olympic Village.
Exiting the arena with his players late that night, he was startled to find the team bus gone.
A group of AAU officials and their wives had commandeered it.
The gold medal game was the next day.
So, Newell, West, Robertson, Jerry Lucas, Walt Bellamy, Darrall Imhoff and the others trudged two blocks to catch a city bus. No one spoke Italian.
Newell did his best to instruct the bus driver: "Olympico Villagio."
"I must have sounded like I had marbles in my mouth," said Newell. "But he finally understood."
There were stops every two blocks for passengers.
"An hour and half later he got off the bus and pointed down a dark street.," said Newell.
The team got back to the village at 1 a.m. and Newell knocked and kicked on the door of every AAU official to express his anger.
"That's the flavor of the Olympics," said Newell who now chuckles at the travails of 1960.
"Jerry and Oscar say they much preferred it the way it was."