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      Steve Alford, 1985.

      IU Archives P0030877.

      Steve Alford

      1984

       America’s Last Amateur Gold

      STEVE ALFORD WAS COMING OFF A MOMENTOUS FRESHMAN BASKETBALL season. He averaged 15.5 points a game, scoring 27 in the Indiana Hoosiers’ 72–68 upset of top-ranked North Carolina and Michael Jordan in the NCAA tournament’s Sweet 16.

      Although the Hoosiers didn’t make it to the 1984 Final Four, coach Bob Knight did. He appeared on TV at halftime of one of the games on CBS. Alford was watching at home in New Castle, Indiana, with friends.

      Knight looked into the camera and said, “I know Steve’s watching back home. The thing I want him working on all summer is his defense and moving without the ball.”

      Alford shook his head. Here was Coach, two thousand miles away, chiding him about his defense. The next week, back in Bloomington, Alford was playing pickup. Those games were strictly for fun because no coaches were watching.

      “I’ve got the whole summer to get better,” Alford told Todd Meier, another freshman for the Hoosiers. “And no Coach Knight on my butt!”

      Or so everyone thought.

      Days later, Alford went to the mailbox at his dormitory, which usually had nothing other than letters from his mother. This time, there was an invitation to be among seventy-three players trying out for the US Olympic team, coached by Knight. That started the Hoosier on a summer in which he would see plenty of his coach . . . and Jordan.

      Alford not only made the team, he was fourth in scoring (10.3 points a game) and second in assists for the 8–0 gold medalists. The Los Angeles Olympics were the last played before NBA pros were allowed. Alford is the fourth-youngest gold medalist in Olympic basketball history, at nineteen years, 260 days.

      “To be the last amateur team to win gold is pretty special,” he said.

      Alford had not expected an invitation to the trials. The only younger players were Delray Brooks, eighteen, the Indiana Mr. Basketball who had committed to IU, and high schooler Danny Manning, seventeen, of Greensboro, North Carolina. Of the twelve players chosen, eleven were selected in the first round of the 1984 or 1985 NBA draft. The twelfth was Alford.

      Six invitees went into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame: Jordan, Patrick Ewing, Chris Mullin, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, and John Stockton. And Barkley, Malone, and Stockton did not make the Olympic team.

      “Back then, when it was strictly amateur, no pros, you really had to hit it right,” Alford said. “You almost had to hit the Olympics when you were a junior or senior in college. I was very fortunate I got invited.”

      He was a gym rat with a chance to play against some of the best players in the sport. That was going to be enough. Making the team was out of the question.

      Trials began April 17. They were held at the IU Fieldhouse, across the street from Assembly Hall. Players were assigned to teams on each of eight courts with a simple instruction: play. Knight watched from a scaffold as a football coach would do.

      Knight assembled a staff of nineteen college coaches to conduct three-a-day workouts and coach the games. There was a seven-player selection committee, although it was widely assumed Knight would have the final say.

      In addition to the fact Alford played without burden of expectation, he found he had two other advantages: he knew Knight’s motion offense and thus did not move tentatively, and he was in the best shape of his life. The workouts, drills, and scrimmages were as much a test of stamina as skill. He grew more confident after shooting seven of seven in his first scrimmage, and three of five in the second.

      Alford was trying to study for final exams but found himself writing down names of players he would have to beat out to make the team. Also trying to guess those making the first cut were hundreds of pro scouts and journalists.

      Alford recalled the sentimental favorite being Barkley, then a 280-pound forward out of Auburn nicknamed the “Round Mound of Rebound.” Barkley’s thunderous dunks and demonstrative fist pumps delighted onlookers but did not impress Knight. Coincidentally, Barkley was Alford’s roommate during the trials on the top floor of the Memorial Union.

      In a 1989 autobiography (written with John Garrity), Alford speculated that pairing him with Barkley was “one of Coach’s little jokes, putting me with a guy who looked as if he could eat the furniture.”

      Alford hid food from his roomie. “If I had any Cokes or candy bars, I stuffed them away in my gym bag,” Alford wrote.

      Otherwise, Barkley was delightful, playing H-O-R-S-E with ball boys after practice or wrestling Auburn teammate Chuck Person on Alford’s bed.

      Alford was mesmerized by Jordan, whose maneuvers were so unconventional that those at the trials could barely describe them. There were dunks with 360-degree spins, jump hooks, alley-oops—you name it. The one thing that Jordan did that Alford also could was wipe the soles of his shoes on a wet towel on the floor.

      Knight spotted the mimicry and yelled, “See that, Jordan? You think Alford can leap from the foul line and dunk now?”

      Alford could not. He could shoot.

      So when the cut to thirty-two players was made, and the list was announced, Alford was on it.

      Public scrimmages moved to Assembly Hall, which featured the atmosphere of college games, complete with cheerleaders and the IU pep band. Behind the scenes, Barkley was wavering on whether he wanted to play in the Olympics at all. He had already planned to leave college early, and if he went pro before Jordan, Barkley speculated he could make more money from endorsements.

      Following weekend play, another cut was made, this time to twenty. Among those not making it was Antoine Carr of Wichita State. Carr was good enough— he already had a $225,000-a-year contract with an Italian team and had played for the silver medalists at the 1982 World Basketball Championship. Carr played for sixteen years in the NBA. Yet Knight’s message had been clear: he would not be picking the twelve best players but the twelve making the best team.

      There were no leaks about who was going to

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