Basketball at the 1960 Summer Olympics

The 1960 Olympic basketball tournament took place at the Palazzo dello Sport and the Palazzetto dello Sport, or the Sports Palace and the Small Sports Palace. The Palazzo dello Sport was built in 1958-59 specifically for the Roma Olympics and still exists. For many years it was the home court for Virtus Roma, but is now used as a general sports and entertainment complex. As of 2014 it is known as the PalaLottomatica, although it has also been known as PalaSport and PalaEUR. Palazzetto dello Sport was also specially constructed for the 1960 Olympics, also still exists as a sports entertainment venue, and also hosted Virtus Roma in the years they did not play at Palazzo dello Sport. It has also been known as the PalaTiziano or PalaFlaminio.

There were 16 teams entered. Qualification was now necessary in the basketball tournament. Italy was in as the host nation, and the top eight teams from the 1956 Olympics qualified (United States, Soviet Union, Uruguay, France, Bulgaria, Brazil, the Philippines, Japan [replacing Chile]), along with the top two teams from the 1959 Pan American Games, not otherwise qualified – Mexico and Puerto Rico. Five other teams – Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Spain, and Yugoslavia – qualified in a Pre-Olympic Tournament.

The teams were separated into four groups, which played round-robin formats to advance two teams from each into semi-final groups, the lower two teams in each group going into classifications groups. The semi-final groups advanced the top two teams into the final group via round-robins, where they again played round-robins, although the results from the semi-final groups were carried over.

As in 1952 and 1956 the United States won the gold medal and the Soviet Union the silver. There was no final game, and those two did not meet in the final group, as the US had defeated the USSR in their semi-final group, 81-57. This was the fifth of seven consecutive gold medals for the United States in men’s Olympic basketball.