The basketball competition was held at the Forum, home of the Los Angeles Lakers with all of their history, championship banners and rivalry with the Boston Celtics hanging like a fog in the rafters. What a great place to hold the Olympic Games basketball competition.
   This was one of the times when we had great seats. We were about in the middle between the two goal posts, only a few rows back. We realized just how good the seats were when the few rows in front of us were filled only with officials (referees) who had a section reserved for them to watch games that they were not actively refereeing.
   We were fortunate to see one of the semi-final games, this one between Canada and Yugoslavia. It is hard today to imagine that what was then one nation, Yugoslavia, has been so torn by war and divided into so many diverse countries unable to get along. How is it that these warring factions were able to coalesce into athletic teams and function together so recently as 1984 and now cannot even live as neighbors without killing one another?
   Canada and Yugoslavia were evenly matched teams, but in the end Yugoslavia proved the more powerful. At the end, two fans behind us proudly held up Yugoslavian flags that they had gotten the Yugoslavia team to sign. The expressions on the faces of the Yugoslavian team members at the end tells who won without even looking at the scoreboard.