An easing of the cold war tensions between the
USA and the USSR at the beginning of the
seventies rid the event of most of the political
problems and the competition began to be
treated as a major international competition
which put an end to most of the infrastructure
problems. Starting from the 1970 edition in
Yugoslavia the only flaw was the lack of interest
shown by the USA, they took the Olympics very
seriously but turned their backs on the World
Championships. This was the era of Yugoslavia
with their legendary stars Slavnic, Cosic,
Kikanovic etc, and the USSR with the Belov
brothers, Paulauskas, Tkachenko and company
alternated the title between them, with Brazil in
third place given the lack of US interest.
The World Championships emerged unscathed
from the Olympic boycotts of 1980 and 1984, a
fact which reinforced the standing of the
competition and persuaded the USA to start
sending higher quality teams, as they did to
Colombia in 1982 despite losing in the final to
the Soviet Union, and Spain in 1986 where the
won the title with a young team composed of
future NBA talent such as David Robinson and
Tyrone Brogues. This 1986 edition with 24
teams marked a