Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
Perhaps the greatest basketball game ever played was in a closed-door scrimmage on July 22, 1992. The “Dream Team” the United States Men’s Olympic Basketball team practiced a final time before the Olympics began a few days later in Barcelona, Spain.
The scrimmage featured team captains Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson against each other with Karl Malone and Charles Barkley squaring off at power forward.
Jordan’s team won on a last-second shot.
It was the only close game this team ever played as they rolled through the Olympic competition with their closest game a 33-point win over Puerto Rico.
The roster was incredible, aside from Johnson, Jordan, Barkley and Malone. Larry Bird, Clyde Drexler, Patrick Ewing, Chris Mullin, Scottie Pippen, John Stockton, and David Robinson filled out the roster from the NBA ranks. Christian Laettner, a back-to-back national champion at Duke was the only college player.
It’s easy to get lost in all the hype generated since this team took the floor three decades ago. Bird and Johnson were in the final days of their careers, and Jordan was just entering greatness after winning his first two titles. Those are the big names, but every one of these guys is a big name.
No one could pass the ball like Stockton, Malone was a beast, Mullins, perhaps the greatest shooter to ever play the game, with Pippen and Drexler smooth as silk and able to play every position.
Robinson, along with former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley, an Olympic gold medal winner in 1964 and a Hall of Fame NBA player with the New York Knicks, was perhaps the most intelligent NBA player of all time.
Ewing could score, rebound, block shots, and intimidate at an unbelievable level.
Throw in Detroit Pistons head coach Chuck Daly, the first NBA coach to lead an Olympic team, and the rest of the world spent every pre-game warmup getting autographs before they were walloped.
This level of skill and competitiveness generated surprisingly few problems.
Jordan famously called Bird and Magic to let them know there was a “New sheriff in town.” The aging duo acknowledged the rise of Jordan.
The most interesting thing I found in reading “Dream Team” by Jack McCallum was the relationship between Ewing and Bird.
Bird was an accomplished “trash talker” one of the best to ever play the game, and Ewing resented him for it. He also resented losing 17 of 21 regular season games between his Knicks and Bird’s Celtics and five of nine playoff games.
When they came together to practice, something strange happened. Bird and Ewing became close friends. They sat on the bus together, shared a suite, and most famously sat in the back of the bus smoking cigars after each win.
Legend has it that they picked on Charles Barkley unmercifully, even making him carry their bags off the bus and into the hotel. Barkley ended up going to Coach Daly asking him to get them off his back.
It’s hard to imagine the gregarious, “Round Mound of Rebound” reacting that way, but Bird and Ewing lived not only on incredible skill, but tough, competitive reputations.
Before 1992, America’s Olympic teams were amateurs. Most of the players went on to stellar NBA careers but they were just 20 to 22-year-old kids.
The formula worked well with the United States winning every game in seven straight Olympics from Berlin in 1936 to Mexico City in 1968. The USA never lost a single game in Olympic competition until the politically charged 1972 games in Munich.
Palestinian terrorists murdered 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team at the Munich games. They killed two outright, took nine hostages, and then executed the hostages as West German Police attacked and killed five of the eight members of the “Black September” terrorists who were aided by German neo-Nazis.
It was the darkest day in Olympic history.
In the Gold Medal game, the USA faced the Soviet Union. In those days, the Cold War was very much evident whenever Americans and Soviets lined up to compete.
The Americans were true amateurs while the Soviets had played together for nearly a decade as “soldiers” in competition across the world.
With just three seconds left in the game, Doug Collins was hammered to the floor and hit a pair of free throws to give the USA a 50-49 lead.
The following three seconds took almost five minutes to play as the Soviets failed to score on two inbound plays with the clock being reset to three seconds after each failed play. On the third inbound play, with yet another three seconds added to the clock, and the player throwing the ball into play clearing standing on the end line, the Soviets were able to score and ended America’s 63-game win streak.
The US team refused to accept the silver medal in the awards ceremony, leaving the second-place stage empty.
America came back to win the 1976 under head coach Dean Smith of North Carolina and in 1984 with Indiana’s fiery Bobby Knight. Knight and Smith were college coaches, working with college players. Georgetown’s John Thompson took third in Seoul, South Korea in 1988 with the Soviets winning the gold. It was the final US team made up of college players.
That led to the creation of the “Dream Team.”
Despite playing professional athletes, the world has caught up to America’s game with the US taking bronze in 2004 and 2016 with pros on the floor.
There will never be a team like the 1992 squad, there probably wouldn’t have been one in earlier years either with professional players, although I’d have loved to see Wilt, Karem, Dr. J, Jerry West, Pistol Pete, Nate Archibald, Walt Frazier, Bill Russell, and Hondo Havlicek all on the same team. (and yes, I know they’re not all from the same era…)
The level of play and competition from those years, when the rules were still enforced, traveling was called, and team play, dedication and tradition trumped the almighty dollar was magic.
We’re not likely to see that again.