Basketball at the Olympic Games

basketball slam dunk Basketball was admitted as an Olympic sport for the first time in 1936 in Berlin.

Trivia

In 1936, the first ever final was played on a dirt court in the rain, which made dribbling impossible. The United States team beat Canada 19 to 8.
In 1972, the U.S. basketball team lost a game for the first time, defeated by the Soviet Union. However, the US team refused to accept the silver medal, claiming that the clock had been improperly restarted in the final moments.

In 1988, the last American basketball team playing without NBA players won the bronze medal.
In 1992, with the door open to professional athletes, the U.S. sent a 'Dream Team' including Charles Barkley, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, and Karl Malone. As expected, they went undefeated throughout the tournament.
The best all-time performing Basketball athlete at the Olympic Games is US female player Teresa Edwards who won 4 golds between 1984 and 2000. See more on the Greatest Basketball Players at the Olympics.
In London 2012, Australian basketballer Liz Cambage became the first woman in Olympic history to dunk the basketball when she slammed one over the top of her Russian opponents during the Opals 70-66 win over Russia.