K-State Basketball Great Rolando Blackman Recalls Experience During 1980 Olympics
Rolando Blackman had a Hall of Fame career at Kansas State, played 13 years in the NBA and is a successful executive for the Dallas Mavericks.
Storybook stuff for any basketball player with hoop dreams.
Still, 44 years later, a pain lingers from his days when he was an amateur basketball player. Back before there were Dream Teams, a collection of NBA All-Stars to represent the United States in the Olympics, the top college basketball players filled that role.
Blackman, who is currently the vice-president of corporate relations for the Dallas Mavericks, made the Olympic team in 1980. It was a logical choice for a player who was Big Eight Player of the Year in 1980 and also earned First Team All-American as a senior in the 1980-81 season.
Sadly, politics got in the way of Blackman representing the U.S. in the 1980 Olympics in the Soviet Union. Because the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, then-President Jimmy Carter felt it was best for the U.S. to boycott the Olympics.
Blackman not only made the Olympic team, but he earned a starting spot as the shooting guard.
“I’m still highly disappointed in the decisions that were made to use us to do something to fight a political battle,” Blackman told Mavs.com. “Of course I’m disappointed in that, because you get up there and you liked to have been inside of the competition, because we had a great team.”
Blackman went into much more detail about that time in his life in the story on the Dallas Mavericks website.
“Every time the Olympics are coming you go through the opening ceremonies and all that kind of stuff, when you talk about the word ‘bittersweet,’ it’s true to the form,” Blackman said. “It was the other way around. It was sweet, but then it was bitter at the end.
When the Summer Olympics come around every four years, Blackman still looks forward to it.
“It’s just a great, great time and I’m going to look at it in a proud, proud way of being a part of something so very special and in the fabric of USA Basketball and having a chance to be on that team, and you just get removed by a political scene. I would have loved to have gone out there with them and to have tried to go get that gold medal. That’s what life is.”
David Boyce is a contributing writer to K-State On SI. He can be reached at davidboyce95@gmail.com.
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DAVID BOYCE