The best anecdote of the Dream Team

The Dream Team of USA fascinated by Barcelona both on and off the pitch, but the legend of the superstar squad that has been marveled at 1992 Olympics It has become so mythical that many books and television productions have reviewed its presence in Barcelona in detail. That left an indelible mark many anecdotes which we will examine in the following report based on the wonderful story of journalist Jack McCallum, Dream Team: The inside story of the best team to ever exist, and the Malloy Brothers documents, Dream Team, the story of a legendary team.

controversial selection process

The thorn stuck by Isiah Thomas

The Detroit Pistons guard was then considered one of the best, if not the best, in the world. Despite this, his name was not on the table after Michael Jordan, although he denied, he would have vetoed his presence on the team due to his strong confrontations during the NBA season. “Rod, I won’t play if Isiah is on the team.” This phrase is attributed to Michael Jordan, who pointed it out to Rod Thorn, a member of the USA Basketball committee and one of those in charge of developing the player list. Thorn became the GM of the Bulls and knew MJ well, so he understood that he wasn’t cheating. On the USAB committee was Jack McCloskey, GM of the Pistons, who didn’t lift a finger despite his player’s exclusion for non-sportsmanlike reasons. You can read more details of this story here.

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A manager with steel

Chuck Daly knows how to tame the stars

The coach, who is a two-time NBA champion with the Detroit Pistons, also did not comment on the absence of Isiah Thomas from the team. Despite having a constellation of stars, he knows how to motivate them and make them work hard to sweep the championship. His secret is to ignore the demands of his players on the court, giving them complete freedom from it. “The first thing I want you to learn is to… ignore,” he told one of his assistants. The coach played golf with MJ and after a hangover from his star pupil recommended that he take a double dose of ibuprofen.

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Panic in Menorca

The story that woke up the team

“Coach, we’re not going to go to that fucking Menorca,” Charles Barkley replied to Chuck Daly in the first meeting of the best basketball team in history. The men traveled to Spain thinking that Menorca was a dark and soulless place, a place with a high suicide rate, just as their coach had sold them on the Balearic island. He told them that if they lost they would go there, but if they won they would go to Mallorca, an idyllic place, a place where they would get “girlfriends and wives”. In the end, none of these things happened as hours after hanging up the gold they caught a charter flight back to the United States.

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Preparing for Monte Carlo

A pachanga of legend

In Monte Carlo, where the Dream Team prepared for the Games, the routine was as follows: two hours a day of basketball and the remaining twenty-two to play golf, gamble in casinos and gaze at tourist attractions , nude beaches and Models. . The casino employees, one day, asked Magic for a favor: pay the fifty thousand dollar loan contracted by a man. sir Jordan, according to McCallum. The most interesting non-televised game in history was also played in the small principality, a party between the stars: “In the last practice session, the Magic team swept Michael’s team (with Pippen, Mullin, Bird , and Ewing) and they started coming at him saying they would bite him if he spent his days playing golf”. Jordan got stung and started putting them in all the colors until the pachanga was traced. As Johnson later recalled it: “Larry said to me, well, it seems to be the dawn of a new era, isn’t it?”

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idols above all

Photos with rivals and referees

“It was a surreal feeling. We are here to kick their ass and they want to take pictures with us,” acknowledged Charles Barkley. Only American journalists refrained from standing and applauding during the team’s first press conference, which was cheered not only by fans but also by referees and rivals, who even posed for photos with their idols mid-game. “The referees would tell me, ‘Ask Michael if he can give me his shoe after the game,'” Scottie Pippen recalled.

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The Ambassador’s Room

The entertainment of champions

After the daily golf session, the players return to the hotel to challenge each other to ping-pong. Michael Jordan, like everyone, wants to win, but the university student Christian Laettner is the most skilled in the racket and has caused a lot of anger in his leader. All this took place on the second floor of the Ambassador, in a glass-encased room where from the outside one could see video games, pizza boxes and beer cans lying on the floor, and cigar stubs in the ashtray. They also played pool, but the ping-pong theme had a crumb and Laettner pointed out that David Stern, former NBA commissioner, was his toughest rival. That hotel room on the Ramblas, because they are the only ones away from the other athletes in the Olympic Village, the place where the players spend the most time amid extraordinary security measures, such as helicopters surrounding in the area and snipers assigned. on rooftops.

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Jordan rules

The ’23’ of the Bulls had mass

Michael Jordan agreed to travel to Barcelona under two conditions: first, Isiah Thomas, his archenemy from the Detroit Pistons, could not be there; second, MJ wanted to do it his own way, to have complete freedom to play golf whenever he wanted. This is how he explained Jordan’s ascendancy on the Magic team: “Chuck would ask us, ‘So, let’s practice tomorrow?’ Michael and I would look at each other, and if he didn’t want to, we’d say no. to Chuck. Or the coach I’d say, ‘What time do you want to start tomorrow?’ And Michael would say, ‘It’s coming soon because I want to play golf. There’s not a day he misses his appointment at Jordan Field.

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limited patience

The piques are serious

“If we go another two weeks together we’ll have enough problems. You’ll feel it. You’ll hear it. ‘Holy man, I’ve only been out on the court for 15 minutes.’ ‘Holy man, Chuck doesn’t play me long enough.’ always: ‘And who cares. We are winning the games of more than 40 points. Damn, but not you see that Michael Jordan only plays 20 minutes’. I’m glad it ended when it had to end,” said Bird about changing inside the locker room. In the team’s official photo session before the tournament, NBA feuds can be heard between them. “You can’t get too close to Michael because it’s a foul,” Bird told Magic. MJ replied with a smile but with a bullet: “These old men have arthritis and they can’t stay in the same position for long.” The Dream Team only took as long as it took to make it work.

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From the joint to the grand finale

The last game of cards

The Ambassador’s common room was packed the night before the grand finale. The best players on the planet know he’s the last of the Dream Team. That game of cards was special, a kind of ritual, a farewell before becoming rivals again in the NBA,” McCallum narrated. At half past six in the morning, everyone finally fell asleep…except Jordan. Gotta shoot star in a promotional video for the NBA, so he showered, dressed again and spent the morning of D-Day in front of the cameras. After he finished his advertising commitments, in the early afternoon, Jordan asked to be brought he at Real Club de Golf El Prat. He played 18 holes, returned to the hotel and, with no time to sleep, headed to the pavilion to win gold. The United States won all eight of its opponents by an average of 43 points difference and he added 22 in the final without breaking a sweat.

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Partying on the Ramblas

Charles Barkley in his sauce

“Okay, anybody with $500 million in the bank is hot, but if you’re a plumber, you’re not going to eat a donut,” Barkley, the most nocturnal member of the Dream Team, joked to Jordan. The Bulls legend laughed, and meanwhile, Charles went out the back door without a bodyguard and handed two $100 bills to the first Barcelonan he passed on the street: “Now you’re taking me to a party.” In the morning, during training, he sweated more alcohol than anyone else, although the truth is that he was the best player in terms of performance and character in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.