#FromtheArchives: Team USA women capture silver in Olympic basketball debut

The Power Plays Book Club returns with hot-dogging, shoelaces, 7' stars, and hugs for all.

Nov 11, 2022

∙ Paid

Hi, friends. So, last week we announced that the Power Plays Book Club is back. This month’s book is “Inaugural Ballers: The True Story of the First Women’s Olympic Basketball Team” by Andrew Maraniss.

If you don’t have the book yet, here are a few ways to fix that:

Here's a link to Parnassus, Maraniss’s local indie bookstore in Nashville. Maraniss told me: “When people order from the store, they can note in the special instructions section how they would like it signed/personalized, and the store will ship it.” Definitely take advantage of that!
You can also buy the book on his publisher’s website or on his own website.
Here’s a link to Bookshop, which can help you find the book at any indie store.
The book is also available in ebook and audiobook form! Both of those options are a bit cheaper than purchasing the hardcover, too.
Don’t forget you can also request it at your local library!

A tale of three games

“Inaugural Ballers” opens up in a locker room at the Montreal Forum on July 26, 1976, with the U.S. players gearing up to play Czechoslovakia in their final game of the Summer Olympics. This was the first time that women’s basketball had ever been contested in the Olympics, and the format was very minimalist: Only six teams made it to the Olympics — Soviet Union, United States, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Japan, and Canada — and they played a single round-robin group. The medals were determined by group rankings, not medal rounds.

The game against Czechoslovakia was the fifth and final game for the United States in Montreal, and if they won it, they’d win a medal — either silver or bronze, depending on the result of another round-robin game that day. The pressure was on.

According to Maraniss, head coach Billie More told the players before the game: “Win this game and it will change women’s sports in this country for the next twenty-five years.”

Obviously, you need to read “Inaugural Ballers” to get the *full* story, but in true Power Plays fashion, I thought it would be fun to go back through the newspaper archives and read some of the coverage at the time.

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Japan d. the United States, 84-71

From the Statesman Journal in Salem, Oregon on July 20, 1976

Friends, this was the very FIRST women’s basketball game in Olympic history. And yes, it was a loss for the United States.

The write-up of the game is full of xenophobia, theatrics, and lots of blaming the refs.

'Hot-dogging' helps Japanese women By GARY STEIN Gannett News Service MONTREAL - Namai Keiko, a 5-foot-4 inch bundle of energy and pigtails, is a student of sorts back in her native Tokyo. Whether or not she is a student of drama isn't known, but members of the United States women's Olympic basketball team think she could give Cecil B. DeMille a few lessons about acting. The Academy Award performance came Monday, when the American and Japanese women got together for a rather historic first the first women's basketball game in Olympic competition. Shortly after the 84-71 Japanese victory, the first-ever controversy in women's Olympic basketball history followed. "I DEFINITELY THINK it was a homer job," said guard Julienne Simpson of the United States. "We expected it . . . but apparently the refs didn't. The Japanese and Koreans play alike. They're so small . . . like little gnats. They just keep clawing at you. And they're really actors." Enter Paul Newman er, Namai Keiko. It seems like the Japanese players, in addition to being very skilled, don't mind "hot-dogging" it a bit, hoping the officials will call a foul on the opposition. While building up a 12-point lead in the first half, the Japanese women spent most of the time at the foul line after going through acting techniques that had the U. S. women moaning. The real Shakespearean expert in the group was Namai, who somehow found time to score 35 points when she wasn't falling backwards onto the floor every time an American girl took a deep breath. Namai could have opened up a beer stand at the free throw line. She hit on 19 of 20 from there; the Japanese team as a whole hit on 26 of 30 free throws. "They used every technique, and it worked," said U. S. coach Billie Moore of Fullerton (Calif.) State. "I DON'T BLAME the Japanese. I give them credit for getting away with it. They really play a foul all the way out." The U. S. women might not have complained that much about the "hot-dogging" had it not been for one other incident that may go down in Olympic lore as the "untimely shoe laces caper." The U. S. made a strong comeback at the start of the second half, and had the capacity crowd in Etienne Desmar-teau Centre going wild when it took its only lead of the second half with about four minutes gone. It was at this point, when the U. S. momentum was at its peak, that Na mai stopped the game, took about 30 seconds, and tied her shoe lace. Twice! A SMALL INCIDENT, but it quieted the crowd, stopped the U. S. momen-. turn, and the Japanese never trailed after that. "They definitely used that shoe lace thing to break our momentum," said Pat Head of the U.S. "You saw what happened," added Simpson, a teacher from New Jersey. "The crowd stopped yelling, our momentum stopped that one thing made an awfully big change in the ball game. "And they Japanese women were yelling throughout the game . . . just stuff like 'ya. ya, ya, ya.' You know, you can say that it doesn't bother you if they play dirty or yell ... but really, it does." Whether the officiating or the shoe lace incident were big factors in the eventual outcome of the game is really questionable, however; a U.S. team in recent months, containing many of the same players, lost three of four games to the Japanese. THE U.S. WOMEN, whose gold medal hopes now are slim, hit only 37 per cent of their shots, and iddn't dominate the boards the way they were expected to against their tiny opponents. The Japanese women were content to wait under the boards while the taller Americans grabbed the rebounds. stun U.S. and then slap at the ball when the U.S. girls would bring it down. It all added up to a rather unsucces-ful debut for the Americans, who play Bulgaria this afternoon. "The things that happened today are the things that you have to be able to put up with," said Moore, a former fastpitch softball player who gave up the game three years ago to concentrate on coaching. "I guess we just weren't able to put up with it. We just didn't do a good job of controlling the tempo of the game." The U.S. also didn't do a good job of staying out of foul trouble. Simpson and Ann Meyers both fouled out, and 6-3 star Lucy Harris from Delta State - who led the U.S. with 17 points was hampered with four fouls. "I think Lucy was probably intimidated; she felt the officials were going to call her for charging all the time," Head said. "But that's something we'll have to get used to." And some other things, too.

There are so many gems in this article, here are a few of my favorites:

“Namai Keiko, a 5-foot-4 bundle of energy and pigtails"
“Namai could have opened up a beer stand at the free throw line.”
“It was at this point, when the U.S. momentum was at its peak, that Namai stopped the game, took about 30 seconds, and tied her shoelace. Twice!”

Before heading onto the other two games featured in the newsletter, I want to make sure you all see this photo of Namai Keiko, which was printed in the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, New York on July 20, 1976.

Power Plays

#FromtheArchives: Team USA women capture silver in Olympic basketball debut

The Power Plays Book Club returns with hot-dogging, shoelaces, 7' stars, and hugs for all.

A tale of three games

Japan d. the United States, 84-71

From the Statesman Journal in Salem, Oregon on July 20, 1976

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