In 1968, the US Olympic team was in a bind. A lot of prominent African-American athletes, including UCLA’s brilliant basketball talent Lew Alcindor, later known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, were boycotting the Mexico City games as a political protest.
The total dominance of Olympic basketball by the US would only last another four years but it wasn’t easy in 1968 either.
Fortunately the well of talent was incredibly deep and so an unknown from Trinidad State Junior College emerged in training camp and became the brightest star of the team.
That player: Spencer Haywood.
After his Olympics triumph, Haywood played for Detroit for a year before deciding to play professionally to support his mother and nine siblings.