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Three Seconds at 1972 Olympics Haunt U.S. Basketball
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Nikolai Beshkarev, chief of the basketball office of the Soviet Sport Games Department, rarely traveled abroad with the national team. He made an exception to attend a pre-Olympic tournament from June 30 to July 2, 1972, in Munich for the Soviets and three other European squads.
The tall, elegantly dressed bureaucrat found time to visit Renato William Jones, secretary-general and co-founder of the International Federation of Amateur Basketball, known by its French acronym, FIBA, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its September issue. A bow-tied, cigarillo-smoking, ex-British spy, Jones ran the sport’s Olympic and world championships out of his office in a leafy Munich suburb.