Let’s interrupt the inspirational, awe-inspiring Olympic programming for what you least expect: a dream-crashing muse and a quick reality check that not every dream comes true.

Don’t get me wrong—I wanted this to be an Olympic-worthy story. I was the kid picked last in gym class, so I’m in awe of athletes like my Dad, who could put a spin on a basketball and make you think it was not a layup at all, just a mere magical, creative act.

He was an All-American at UNC-Chapel Hill and the Sixers’ No. 1 draft pick, but what about scoring an Olympic gold?

So, I eagerly asked him if he had ever wanted to be in the Olympics.

Now I have you right where I need you to enjoy this story. It’s an Olympic story like none you could ever expect, but it will make you smile. Because even when our dreams don’t come true exactly the way we envisioned them, they always come out even better.

So strap on those exceptionally short shorts they used to wear, and come with me to the Olympic Games tryouts during spring break in 1964.

To play by the rules, you weren’t allowed to participate in the Olympics if you played for the NBA.

Dad was a junior in Carolina, and since he dreamed of making it in the NBA, he had one shot to get to the Olympics.

Another possibility was to be sponsored by a blue-chip company (like US Steel, Good Year, and Phillips Oil), which trained and employed American Athletic Union (AAU) players. These players got paid to work, not to play ball, so they didn’t have to choose between dreams of playing for the NBA or the Olympics.

The NBA paid little in 1964, and players still had to get summer jobs. And the Olympics weren’t all that hyped-up, either. Dad said there weren’t many televisions, and if you had one, come time for the Olympics, you’d rather watch track and field and swimming.

Even still, Dad dreamed of competing in the Olympics with preliminary scrimmages in Kentucky among eight teams vying to go to Queens, NY, for the final tryouts.

Kentucky is where Dad’s dream began (and ended).

“I got in at 11; it was an early flight. I was hungry, so I went to get something to eat. I sat in the booth. I was close enough to a coach talking to a player. They were making his travel arrangements to the Olympics.”

Although the preliminary games and final tryouts had yet to begin, those with clout had already decided on their choices for the Olympic team.

Those choices superseded Willis Reed, Rick Barry, and Dad (all later named to the NBA’s Top 50 and 75 teams), who didn’t make that Olympic team.

So it didn’t matter when the college All-Stars played an AAU team, “supposedly the best group of players’ as Dad remembers, “We beat them by 20.”

Dad said it was comical, “An Olympic prospect would be playing and say, “Oops, that’s my hamstring” and get out of the game.”

Another prospective player, a guard, played so poorly that everyone had to yell at the coach, “Do you want to win? Get him out!”

Yet Wali Jones was also there at tryouts. Dad didn’t know him yet, but he remembers Wali being “excluded,” too. Other exceptional players, Earl Monroe and Walt Frazier, were also “not invited” to play in the Olympics.

After tryouts, Dad said, “I took a couple of players who didn’t make it home to Brooklyn to see Mom and Dad.”

Though Dad now laughs over who the powers-that-be invited and excluded that year, that’s one gold medal that never materialized for Dad. “Of all the things I missed in pro basketball, that’s the highest (price to pay)–not playing for the Olympics and winning a gold medal.”

With or without Dad and many other basketball legends, the US team won the gold medal that year in Tokyo against the USSR, though they lost half of the pre-games leading up to it, according to the papers.

But hindsight and memories said it all when Dad reacted to some players who achieved their dream-come-true by being on that 1964 team roster.

Take Jim Barnes, after the Olympics, “He played in the NBA. He jumped around the league because he was big and strong. When he played for the Chicago Bulls, the coach told him to foul out Wilt.

Wilt overheard and said to Barnes, ‘If you foul me, I’ll hit you.’

So Barnes said to the coach, ‘I can’t do it. He told me he was going to hit me.'”

Dick Davies came from the AAU; Pete McCaffrey must have been, too, because Dad couldn’t remember him, and George Wilson, Dad, played with him for a bit, but Dad quipped. “He shouldn’t have made it.”

When I mentioned Jerry Shipp, the leading scorer on that Olympic team, He said, “He couldn’t make it in the NBA; I don’t know if he tried to.”

Then Dad got quiet as if he was finding his words to say something profound: “I’m trying to think if any of those players ever won an NBA championship sitting at the end of the bench.”

Ouch!

As my Dad has seen, basketball comes in many shapes and sizes. There are his college and NBA playing days, CBS Sports commentating, Sixers coaching days, and starting and owning the Miami Heat franchise, but only Dad could have an Olympic story like none I’ve heard before.

He’s not precisely the disgruntled kid picked over in gym class, yet he’d do it differently if he had to live in 1964 all over again.

“It was spring break or the Olympics, and I chose basketball and made a mistake.”

It wasn’t the feel-good story I expected, so I said that, and Dad said, “Do you want me to tell you a different one?”

I laughed because I got so caught up in the glory of the Olympics that I wanted an Olympic-size story to accompany the grandeur. And all I got was a college kid who chose Olympic tryouts over Spring Break, and if he had to do it over again, he’d pick Spring Break.

If we all had that opportunity in the way Dad had it, wouldn’t we all?