The Worst Basketball Teams in Olympic History
The 1992 American men’s basketball squad, known as the “Dream Team,” first announced its presence with a stunning 116-48 win over Angola. Afterwards, “Angola” became a basketball punchline in the U.S., despite the fact that the country went on to hang within 10 points of Croatia, Brazil and Germany (a close 64-63 loss), and was a three-pointer away from defeating Spain in the 9th place game. Truth is, there are a whole lot of other teams in Olympic history that were a whole lot worse. Here are five of them.
Basketball was staged as a demonstration sport in 1904 at St. Louis and at Paris 1924, but wasn’t an official Olympic sport until Berlin 1936. “The majority of the spectators belonged to the nations competing in the tournament,” proclaimed the Official Report of those Games. “Those countries in which basketball is unknown or has hardly any following were greatly fascinated by the matches, and many new adherents to the game were recruited, especially in Europe.”
One place where very few adherents were recruited was Belgium. Under overcast skies (the tournament was held outdoors), the country’s entry stumbled out of the gate against Mexico, scoring just two points in the first half. The final score was 32-9. The Belgian basketballers’ Olympic dreams were over the next afternoon in the consolation round, when the team was the first eliminated from the tournament — by a 17-10 count against Uruguay. Belgium has been a basketball backwater ever since, and has not appeared in the Olympics since an 11th place finish in 1948.
It would be easy to fill out this list with host countries since Olympic tradition (and ticket-sales logic) generally allows the home team an automatic entry, which is especially helpful for local interest with sports more popular in other regions. And in London, the British provided a pleasant doormat for Group A, losing all five of their preliminary games. But they were never able to sharpen their skills against the team from Iraq, which propped up Group B by scoring 113 points and allowing 545. The team opened with a 102-30 loss to the Phillippines, and conceded triple digits twice more, including an Olympic record 125-25 blowout loss to China (pictured, above). But perhaps most embarrassing was the 98-20 loss to 1936 milquetoasts Belgium. Iraq withdrew before the placement rounds, allowing Switzerland to claim 22nd position by forfeit.
The Helsinki Games of 1952, as did the previous version, had 23 entries. But throughout the Fifties and Sixties, many of the less skilled teams were flushed out in pre-Olympic tournaments designed to narrow the field to a more manageable 16. This era also saw the dawn of FIBA’s quota policy of allowing teams from every continent compete at the Olympics. While this exposed newer basketball nations to top competition, it also resulted in some lopsided scores.
At Mexico City in 1968, Morocco made its one and only Olympic basketball appearance, hard-earned with an African championship in 1965. Once there, the rest of Group A lit them up, not allowing Morocco a single win. The Soviet Union destroyed the Moroccans 123-51 in the preliminary round, and a 33-point, 13-for-14 shooting performance by Seyad Mokhtar against Poland was ruined when five teammates missed all their shots. Poland won 85-48.
Two days before the gold medal match between the U.S. and Yugoslavia, there was a classification game for 15th place that only a select few were waiting for. Against African rivals and fellow 0-7 Senegal, Morocco’s 16th place finish was complete after a sloggy 42-38 loss, in which the squad shot 15 for 56. The team did leave Mexico with a moral victory, however: they won the second half, 20-18.
Despite its fledgling status as a basketball nation, Japan acquitted itself quite well in its Olympic debut in 1936. The country won its first two games over China and Poland at Berlin. But not much has gone well since, reaching rock bottom at Montreal 40 years later. The Japanese team won 11th place over Egypt in a 2-0 forfeit, but only because the Egyptians left the Games as part of the African boycotts after an initial 105-64 loss to Czechoslovakia. Japan gave up at least 97 points in all five of its preliminary matches, sinking to the bottom on Group A and dropping a final match shootout 111-91, to a Puerto Rico team that was similarly defensively challenged.
India is well known for its past field hockey prowess, not hoops. In its only Olympic appearance, made possible in large part due to Western boycotts, the country finished 12th and last, giving up a staggering 387 points in its three preliminaries. India’s leading scorer was Amarnath Nagarajan, who scored 36 points for the tournament… well short of the 205 scored by Australia’s Ian Davies, the Olympic scoring champion that year for an eighth-place team not so well-balanced. In the final game for both teams, India had a 41-37 halftime lead but Davies ended up dropping 36 points, leading the Aussies to a 89-51 win.
(Image via 1948 Official Report)
