Party, cigars and poker to promote the globalization of basketball

In the summer of 1992, the residents of Calle Pintor Fortuny they were probably their most famous guests crowded into the newly opened Ambassador Hotel, now the Silken Ramblas. Two weeks passed the best basketball team in history there they are part of the history of Olympism and world sport. Not that the stars didn’t take a walk from time to time, but the helicopters flying over the area and snipers stationed on rooftops they indicate the dimension of the matter for a Barcelona that is not, even remotely, the well-known city of today.

The stars did not spend too much time in their rooms at 800 euros a night, but spent most of their time in reserved room they have for playing cards, smoking and playing ping-pong or video games. Michael Jordan he wakes up early – some, looking at his schedules, would say he’s more like a splicer – to go to play golf at El Prat. In fact, some days MJ plays on two different fields, and at night he wears shorts and sweeps the opposition. Another non-stop, on and off the pitch, is Charles Barkley. In fat He liked Barcelona, ​​​​​​​​a fantasy city for a boy from a small town in Alabama, so at night, when other classmates were playing or sleeping, he went out the back door and walked along Las Ramblas.

“I can’t just sit in my room and do nothing,” Barkley explained Jack McCallum, journalist from Sports Illustrated and author of a wonderful book Dream Team on the legendary USA team in 1992. “Of course it’s annoying to sign so many autographs, but I’d rather walk around and sign autographs than sit down. For me it’s fun to go around and meet people”. So, Barkley strolled through the mythical kiosks on the Ramblas, and as McCallum recounts, he had a few drinks on a terrace in Plaça Reial. Charles went out to party, and thanks to those escapades, he helped ease the tension that ensued VIP treatment with NBA stars formed in the Olympic Village.

The story of The last Dance focused, now for several years, on Michael’s experience Jordan in Barcelona 1992, an experience seen in an instant during the premiere of the documentary series on on the 23rd he walked the Eixample right in front of a huge Nike billboard starring himself. MJ has confessed on more than one occasion that he is in love with Barcelona, a city he has been visiting for years. In 1992, however, he saw no more than the usual Ambassador’s room, the parquet of the Olímpic and the grass of some golf courses in Catalonia. That didn’t stop the Dream Team from sweeping the track, won by an average of 43 points over their rivals in the eight games they played during the Olympics.

After training or beating their opponents, the stars meet in their unique operations center: it’s a glass room located on the second floor of the Ambassador, and you can see from outside the video games, the pizza boxes and beer cans lying around on the floor, the cigarette butts in the ashtray. There, the best basketball players challenged each other to ping-pong games. Michael Jordan, like everyone, wants to win, but the disrespectful Christian Laettner he’s number one by the way. Jordan left the room pissed off on more than one occasion, and the then-NBA commissioner also attended games, a David Stern which isn’t bad at the ball game either.

Just like on the court, where Barkley elbowed an Angolan player out of the blue, the trash talk come and go to the private room of the stars: “It’s worth it that anyone with five hundred million in the bank is attractive, but If you’re a plumber, you won’t eat a bagel.”Sir Charles joked to Jordan. Sometimes it was 4 a.m. when most of the team members were in bed, but Barkley was still slipping in and, according to McCallum, giving two $100 bills to the first Barcelonan he passed on the street. and said to him: “Now you’re taking me to a party.”

On the day of the grand final, poker bets led the squad sleep at six in the morning, and Jordan just took a shower before showing up at the reception to fulfill some publicity commitments. When he finished, at dawn, he went to play a few holes at El Prat. don’t want and He never missed a day. He then returned to the hotel, changed and went to Pavello Olímpic in Badalona. A few hours later, the Dream Team bit in Olympic gold after defeating Croatia 117-85 Drazen Petrovic, Dino Radja and Toni Kukocwho would join the Bulls later in the season and become part of the second dynasty that starred in the story of The Last Dance, main revitalizer of the fever for Chicago’s ’23’ in the 21st century.

In other words, Michael Jordan’s first experience in Barcelona was unique. He fell asleep a little and didn’t even bother: He scored 22 points in the Olympic final and flew home that same morning on a charter flight with the rest of his teammates. The following year, MJ would complete his first triplet and retire for the first time in his career to seek new challenges as a baseball player, but that’s another story.

The presence of Jordan and the rest of the stars, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and companyplaced Barcelona on the map of the world of world basketball, which after the exhibition in the United States experienced its definitive emergence as a global sport. “Barcelona was the first impulse to go until basketball arrived”reflected Mike Krzyzeswkiwas then a member of the coaching staff of chuck dalycoach of the Dream Team who defined the performance of his students in our country as of the Beatles in the United States of the sixties With bets, golf games and cigars, and despite all the anecdotes, Jordan and his teammates completely changed what we understand today by basketball.