50 years ago, Dean Smith led Team USA to gold

On Sept. 9, 1972, a 16-year-old Phil Ford watched his TV in stunned disbelief.

The U.S. Olympic men’s basketball team had just lost the gold medal game to the Soviet Union in Munich, Germany. Controversial officiating in the final seconds of the 51-50 defeat raised eyebrows across the United States.

“You never like to say that you were cheated because that just sounds like sour grapes,” Ford said. “But I’ll put it this way: There were a lot of questionable calls at the end of the gold medal game.”

The loss spoiled a perfect 63-0 Olympic record for the U.S. team, snapping a streak of seven consecutive gold medals. The game’s ending was so controversial that the American players refused their silver medals. Political tension bubbled behind the 1972 Olympics, and the intensity of the Cold War loomed heavily over the defeat.

Four years later, eager for a return to Olympic glory, U.S. basketball named Carolina’s Dean Smith its head coach.

As America turns 250 this year, 2026 also marks the 50th anniversary of Smith’s gold medal run at the 1976 Summer Olympics. The legendary Carolina coach guided the Americans to a perfect 7-0 record in Montreal, Canada, bringing the gold medal back to American soil — and to Chapel Hill.

In true, loyal Smith fashion, the head coach’s roster featured four Tar Heels: Ford, Walter Davis, Mitch Kupchak and Tom LaGarde. Carolina’s Bill Guthridge served as an assistant coach.

“We knew there was going to be a lot of pressure on the ’76 team to bring the gold medal back to the United States — where it’s supposed to be,” said Ford, who was a 20-year-old Carolina rising junior at the time.

“It was a great feeling to represent the country, represent the United States. We just had a great team that kept getting better and better the more we played together.”

The path to gold

In response to the safety issues of the 1972 Games — where a terrorist attack in Munich had claimed 12 lives — security was tightened in 1976. Athletes lived in an insulated, pyramid-shaped Olympic village in Montreal, and visitation rules were strict.

Occasionally, the U.S. basketball team would run into their Soviet Union counterparts in the elevator or the cafeteria and try to strike up conversation — only to be ignored.

“They were told not to speak to the American team,” said LaGarde, a 6-foot-10 Carolina forward and rising senior in ’76. “They’d act like they didn’t understand English and would just walk away.”

Most sports pundits pegged the Soviets, led by star guard Sergei Belov, as the team to beat in 1976. Those same pundits were bearish on Team USA’s chances. Unlike the Soviet squad, which plucked players from professional teams, Team USA was composed entirely of amateurs. (NBA players were not allowed to compete in the Olympics until 1992.)

Critics called the U.S. team too young, too inexperienced, too small. Smith drew flack not only for having four Tar Heels on his team but for pulling seven of the team’s 12 players from the Atlantic Coast Conference.

“I think it was four or five weeks that we had as a team to practice together, and we were going to be playing against professional teams that basically had been playing together for 10 or 11 years,” Ford said. “Coach Smith didn’t have a lot of time to put our team together, so he just wanted guys on the team that he knew would do what he said to do.”

Critics grew silent when Smith’s well-oiled team won its first six contests in Montreal. Ford, a Tar Heel great and future NBA star, led the Americans with nine assists per game at point guard, averaging 11.3 points. Tar Heel big man Kupchak added 12.5 points per game, with LaGarde and Davis contributing off the bench.

The Americans played Smith’s patented style of basketball — with a slightly different flavor.

“When Smith was coaching at North Carolina, the most important thing was doing the right thing and playing the game the right way, and if you did that, you’d win a good number of games,” LaGarde said. “But he always said that his focus when he coached the Olympic team was purely on winning.”

That one-track focus brought the Americans back to the gold medal game. To the surprise of many, including Team USA, the Soviet Union failed to meet them there, losing to Yugoslavia in the semifinals. Smith later admitted to Ford that he was worried the Americans “would have a letdown” playing against Yugoslavia instead of the Soviets in a revenge match sportswriters had prognosticated.

But there would be no letdown, with the Americans handily defeating a talented Yugoslavia squad 95-74 to win gold.

“When the horn went off, all of us ran to midcourt and jumped up and down like it was the first time we had won a major championship,” Ford said. “We were all like schoolkids. That’s what I remember.”

The legacy of 1976

When LaGarde thinks back to the Montreal Olympics, it feels dreamlike, almost like the moment happened to someone else entirely — to an older brother or a father figure.

Fifty years later, the memories of that gold medal run have become foggy. But the feelings of pride still pop up from time to time, especially during Olympic summers.

“I think we’re all very proud of what we were able to accomplish,” said LaGarde, 71, who lives in nearby Saxapahaw, North Carolina, and is a founder of the popular music venue Haw River Ballroom.

These days LaGarde keeps his gold medal securely locked in a deposit box, while Ford’s medal is still displayed in his Triangle home. One time, unbeknownst to Ford, his son Mitchell Ford took the gold medal from its case, put it around a teddy bear’s neck and brought it to his second-grade classroom. Ford discovered the bear, and the medal, days later at a school PTA meeting. “I thought it was hilarious,” he said, chuckling.

That medal still travels with Ford as he visits with students at local schools and talks with them about his career at Carolina and in the NBA.

“To get a gold medal is an experience that only so many people in the world have experienced,” said Ford, now 70. “A whole lot of people have never seen a gold medal in person before.

“Mine is 50 years old and doesn’t look like the ones the athletes get now — but it’s still a gold medal.”