1972 Olympic champion Ivan Edeshko told that the team, not the individual players, was the strength of the USSR national basketball team at the Munich tournament.
On Tuesday, a meeting of champions and winners of the Olympic Games of different years was held in Moscow.
– Surprisingly cheerful, you see everyone we were once young at the top with. And now, time has passed, the years have taken their toll. You look at everyone with delight and regret creeps in. Everyone has their own problems – health, all grandparents.
We did everything in the name of our country, we did not think, as they say now, about patriotism, that we are patriots – we were them inside. As a child, I didn’t even know what patriotism was, but I already loved my country, I knew where I live, what I stand for, who watches me and hopes for. It was the basis of everything, no material wealth existed for us, since we knew that we were the Soviet Union.
If you take our basketball team, we had seven nationalities. And everyone was the best. The art of the coach was to team up with everyone. It’s hard for a teacher to communicate when everyone else is great, and Vladimir Kondrashin did just that.
Who was the best on this team? Everyone said that Alexander Belov, who scored 20 points and scored the decisive 2 points, as well as Kondrashin. But that was not the case. The best player was the whole team! It was the basis of our victory in the Olympic Games. And the Americans were, are and will be the best, because it’s their national sport,” Edeshko told .
– Can the current generation repeat your feat?
“Today, money comes first everywhere, that’s evil. Withdraw the money, and the whole world will live in a different perspective. All the evil in the world is because of money.
In the final of the basketball tournament at the 1972 Olympics, the USSR team beat the USA with a score of 51:50. Belov in the final seconds fired a two-point shot from Edeshko’s pass.
Source : MatchTV
I’m Todderic Kirkman, a journalist and author for athletistic. I specialize in covering all news related to sports, ranging from basketball to football and everything in between. With over 10 years of experience in the industry, I have become an invaluable asset to my team. My ambition is to bring the most up-to-date information on sports topics around the world.
