June 22, 2020 • 40 mins
The Dream Team reaches Barcelona and the circus never stops, featuring: The Charles Barkley elbow. The internecine battles between USA Basketball and USOC. The famous “Kukoc Game” in which Jordan and Scottie Pippen made life miserable for the Croatian and would-be Bull. The non-stop life force that was Jordan, and, most of all, the all-galactic level of behind-the-scenes trash talking that went on when the team got together in what the author calls “The Coolest Room in the world.” Oh, yes, the U.S. also won the gold medal and managed to stir up controversy on the podium.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is The Dream Team Tapes, a Diversion Podcasts original
series in association with I Heart Radio. This is the
story of the United States Olympic basketball team that won
gold in Barcelona, known worldwide as the Dream Team. Well
(00:28):
we all know what that is and spoiler alert. The
United States Dream Team won the gold medal in Barcelona,
but it wasn't as simple as marching to the podium,
hearing the national anthem and waving to the crowd. They
did all that, but there was a subplot in between,
and I'm going to tell you about that at the
end of this episode seven of the Dream Team Tapes,
(00:52):
which I'm calling Beva Barcelona because I Jack McCallum had
three years of high school Spanish. We've been to practices
in San Diego, to the Gaming tables and the Immortal Scrimmage,
and Monte Carlo, and now the Dream Team at long
last is in Barcelona, where the world awaits the epic
battle between the United States and Angola. Actually we do
(01:15):
remember that battle, though epicott was not for a reason
we'll get into later, and which involves, of course, Sir
Charles Barkley himself. There's much to cover in this episode
the attention given to the Dream Team, which will be
the hardest thing to describe. The so called family room
in the Ambassador Hotel, where the alpha males Jordan, Magic,
Barkley and Bird played cards all night and argued about
(01:38):
championship rings, and where Bird's young son Connor used to
roll poolballs loudly down the stairs toward the lobby. There
is a frightening intensity with which Jordan and Scottie Pippen
faced their meeting with croatious Tony ku Coach, who drew
their collective ire because Bulls general manager Jerry Krauss wanted
to pay cou Coach a lot of money, which Pippen
(01:59):
fell was being lifted from his pocket. There is a
dramatic struggle of the Lithuania team to win the bronze medal.
The Grateful Dead had helped fund their unlikely path to
the Olympics, and in the Dream Team book, I called
Lithuania the tai Died Darlings. Like many others, I still
have my Lithuania T shirt from those Barcelona games. And finally,
(02:22):
after the gold medal was secured by the Dream Team,
we had an unpleasant civil war of sorts between the
Dream teamers and USA Basketball. All that is coming so
Barcelona for reasons that escaped me. Thirty years later, David Dupree,
my closest buddy on the Dream Team, beat the Hall
of Fame writer from USA today. He and I decided
(02:44):
to drive from Monte Carlo to Barcelona. This was pre GPS, remember,
and armed only with an unreadable road map and that
elementary Spanish, David and I made the seven hour trip
in a mirror ten hours, narrowly avoiding a wrong turn
that would have taken us to the Pyrenees Mountains. Credential
check in at the airport was fairly organized, and I
(03:05):
said to David, man, this is pretty calm. So when
David I separated and I got to my hotel, I thought,
you know, maybe I'll take a stroll over to where
the Dream Team is staying, which was the newly built
Ambassador Hotel, which, by the way, much to the horror
of the U, S O C and USA Basketball, had
been a large hole in the ground only a year earlier.
(03:25):
But maybe I'll go over the Ambassador, grab a beer
with the great NBA pr men Brian McIntyre and Terry Lyons,
grab a quote or two from Charles or carl and Malone,
whoever else might be roaming around the lobby. And but
what in the hell was I thinking? Eighteen months earlier,
I had seen for the first time what happened the
crowds that form when we took that photo in Charlotte,
(03:47):
North Carolina. I had seen opposing teams stop practicing and
start taking photos when the Dream Team came out. So
why did I not anticipate the thousands of people who
surrounded the Ambassador Hotel where the Dream Team had checked
in several hours earlier. It was chaos, was bedlam, thousands
(04:09):
of fans, thousands grouped outside the hotel, dozens and dozens
of police security men in riot gear. The hotel entrance
was cordoned off, and there were barriers set up all
over the place, helicopters flying overhead. The metaphor that usually
came to mind, and the one that was written the most,
(04:30):
was the mayhem associated with the Beatles first trip to
America in nineteen I remembered I was there, well, not
there there in New York City, but I was watching
on TV. Here's Dick Eversole, then the president of NBC Sports,
the presenting network of the Olympics. On one explanation of
the phenomenon, I'm not sure the same thing would have happen.
(04:52):
Different teams has been here, and they were in Chicago,
l a New York about this was Europe, which also
had its own, had its own and had its own
lower share of basketball, and the gods of basketball and
get sented l and they never had been there before,
and this was their chance to touch him. As you
know better than me, Spain is a huge basketball haven.
(05:15):
In one respect, this level of attention that I can
only call pornographics seemed I don't know, less innocent than
the attention given the mop heads from Liverpool. We were
well into the age of terrorism. The massacre at the
two Munich Olympics was never far from the minds of
NBA security, and I learned later there were snipers with
(05:36):
oozies in nearby buildings. Two things about this scene. Number One,
it never changed. I kept waiting for the lines, the acclaim,
the yelling, the waiting, the anticipation, the longing for the
dream team. I kept waiting for it to change. It
never changed, not for two weeks of the Olympics. And
(05:57):
number two, as far as we know, there were no
terroristic threats against the Dream Team. It went off without
a dangerous hitch. The biggest worry for the security people
was Barkley's insistence that he would not be constrained from
walking around town, particularly strolling along Los Rumbles in the
midnight hours. I think of Times Square in the nineteen
(06:20):
seventies that was Lost Rumbless. Much has been written about that,
including by me, whose final week story the Olympics was
about following Barkley around on that fame stretch of Barcelona nightlife.
I know, not a tough beat, right, I'm not going
to go into it anymore. Google Barkley and Lost Rumbless
and he can probably spend the whole day reading later on.
(06:42):
I did get inside the Ambassador Hotel from time to time.
I interviewed Magic and Chuck daily. There. I saw the
players kids running around, peeked into the private players sanked them,
which in the Dream Team book I referred to as
the coolest room in the world, which I'll talk about
soon now. The night after we got to Barcelona, Dupre
and I went out to dinner with Karl Malone. I
(07:03):
was surprised the extent to which Carl was not pleased
about the Fame pickup game in Monte Carlo. He just
did not like all the jive trash talking, and he
did not like Magic kind of co opting the team
as he saw it. Yet, when David and I asked
about getting a photo of the Dream Team, the mailman
quickly said, I'll ask Magic. He's our captain. He handles
(07:26):
all that kind of stuff. I found it interesting that Malone,
no fan of Magic, so quickly acknowledged that Magic was
the boss for that kind of stuff. Now about that
photo request. On the list of people in the entire
world who, under normal circumstances would be reluctant to request
the photo with athletes, I would be second, most likely,
(07:48):
most likely would be Dave Dupree. Yet he had the idea,
and I quickly said, okay. It was an indication of
what that summer of the Dream Team was, like, how
special it was, how special we knew it would contin
you to be. We did indeed get that photo taken
under mortifying circumstances. That story to come the next day.
Two days before the Dream Team's first Olympic game on July,
(08:12):
the team members trooped in for one of the most
entertaining press conferences I've ever attended. For one thing, most
of the international journalists began applauding as soon as the
team walked in. That doesn't happen in America, though Donald
Trump would certainly like it to. Questions were all over
the place, one of them from a journalist who had
apparently never seen an NBA game and ask a question
(08:35):
that can be summarized as sometimes you make a basket
that's worth two points and sometimes it's worth three, to
which Carl Malone responded, that's just the way we do it,
my man. So many times in subsequent years, I'll answer
an unanswerable question the same way. That's just the way
we do it, my man. It was out of this
press conference that one of the most immortal Olympic lines
(08:57):
was uttered by Charles, the one you heard about Angola.
The weird thing is, for years, myself and almost everybody
thought that Charles said, I don't know nothing about Angola,
but Angola is in trouble. But he didn't. He actually
used correct English. I don't know anything about Angola, but
Angola is in trouble. I'm not sure why it was
(09:20):
so funny, but it was remained so Mike Wilbon, the
great ESPN commentator, used to call Charles up from time
to time and just leave a message, I don't know
nothing about Angola and just left it there. There was
an alternate theme going on in Barcelona before the Games,
a theme that contrasted with the devotional manner with which
(09:41):
the Dream Team was treated by adoring fans who camped
out outside of the Ambassador Hotel. It was a steam
these damn millionaires are messing up the Olympics, steam echoed
by many of the pooh bas in the U s
o C and a few IOC officials. At first, it's
entered on, hey, they're not even staying in the athletes village,
(10:04):
something that had been made clear two years earlier when
open competition was established. Everybody knew that Michael Jordan's and
Magic Johnson and Larry Bird ain't going a bunk with nobody,
and they ain't sharing a communal bathroom. Jordan could have
bought the entire Olympic Village with the money he laid
out on a casual nassau bed on the golf course.
(10:24):
Then word filtered out that most of the Dream Team
would not attend the opening ceremonies, though several of them
wanted to, it was thought to be way too chaotic.
Word got back to NBC Sports president Dick Eversol I've
referred to him before, who sprung into action and moved
heaven and earth to deliver the Dream teamers to the
Olympic gate just minutes before they had to walk in.
(10:47):
Everybody else had to get there three hours earlier, and
that was just not going to fly. It was like magic,
and magic did come, and a fact, if memory serves,
the only ones who did not were Jordan's who was
still afraid of potential mauling and who had enjoyed the
ceremonies back in, and Bird, who was thinking only of
(11:09):
his back. Now, exactly what everybody feared would happen happened.
Upon spying the Dream Team in the procession. Athletes from
all over the place broke ranks ran over to the
players to take photos, grab autographs, or just genuinely hang on.
I can still see in my mind's eye a diminutive
gymnasts from somewhere jumping up to touch Magic and David Robinson.
(11:33):
It was a splendid scene, and it spoke to this
reality as much as the dream Team drew attention away
from the other athletes. Most of them loved it. They
loved being in the same arena with these guys. It
was a kind of transfer of importance to it. The
objections came, for the most part from the executives, the bureaucrats,
because that's usually where objections come from. Okay, time to
(11:57):
play Game one, Angola. The hundreds of journalists who had
come to Portland knew what to expect about the result,
but there was still an air of anticipation before the game. Actually,
I made that up. I didn't feel anything, but then
someone made it interesting. The elbow thrown by Barkley on
an in Golden player named Herlando Coinbra was so unexpected
(12:18):
that not many people saw it, and they certainly didn't
know why it happened. And no, the officials did not
throw Barkley out. When I interviewed Charles for the book
in two thousand eleven, he still insisted that Herlando Coinbra,
the Herlando Coinbra had it coming. That bothered me that
people didn't understand what happened at night, You know what,
(12:39):
they started a full brawl like the next game against
pain Charles Police. Here's Jordan's on the subject of Charles's elbow.
The only other game that I remember that you know,
they really did, Barkley, he said, we played here in
(13:00):
total admiration about autographs before the game, and in the
first quarter he hit the Grit album. Dude, total adiration
of everything we did. We killed him that way. I
don't know. It wasn't even game even him down. You
guys had to one run. It wasn't when he hit
(13:22):
the Garedy album that was trying to take atographer beginning
to game. It's comic relief now, but there was a
certified big deal then because of this ugly American tag
that had been attached to the Dream Team in some quarters.
What happened eventually, though, is that Barkley actually became the
(13:43):
team's biggest ambassador, not just the teams, the entire United
States Olympic delegation. He was out in public, he attended events,
he worked the crowd, he shook hands with other athletes,
and most of all, as I said before, he became
a pied piper on law Rombliss well into the morning hours. Now.
(14:12):
The Dream Team or second game, which was against Croatia,
was just as memorable, but for an entirely different reason.
It became widely known as the Ku Coach Game. At
the time, Bulls general manager Jerry Krauss was so intent
on signing the young Yugoslavian star Tony ku Coach, who
was a multi talented six ft ten inch left hander,
that he had refused to extend Pippin's contract because he
(14:36):
wanted to save money to offer it to kup Coach,
whom he had selected in the draft that was not
going to fly. Pippin, with the help of Jordan's, decided
they would absolutely destroy Ku Coach, who had no idea
what was coming and was at any rate distracted by
the imminent birth of his son, which in fact did
occur a couple of days after the Ku Coach game.
(14:59):
There were two things that every single Dream Teamer mentioned
to me in the separate interviews I did for the book.
The first was the unlikely Harry and Larry relationship between
Ewing and Bird. The second was the Coup Coach game.
Now you have to understand the backdrop to an extent.
The Dream teamers were tired of non competitive basketball. Their
lifeblood was competition, and as fun as it was to
(15:23):
play together with great players. They missed the taste of
a real challenge. Strong Man though he might have been,
cou Coach represented a real challenge. Here's magic remembering Jordan
and Pippen before the Croatia game. But I'd say you,
Michael and Scott was so ready for the Crocia They
(15:43):
were like, look, I don't want no help. I'm gonna
shut them down. And we were like, wow, they are
so focused and it made us all get focused because
they really wanted to stopped telling me. And here's Jordan
himself on the Coup Coach game. We're not gonna have
to get past, you know for Craft reperies. So much
(16:06):
credibility hit you know what we've just earned in terms
of you know, championship and saying well, we don't want that,
you know, we want to hear what we you know,
not what you know what Tony two coach is going
to bring to this team. You mean, we won't without
coming all you can talk about his Tony. So he
created that enemy where they that concept and not focused
(16:26):
in the dut with Okay, and you play Croatia, you
just not You're gonna shut down. The funny thing is
Jordan and cou coach who eventually played on the Bulls,
became really good friends, much better friends in Jordan and
Piping Are. They play a lot of golf together and
even shared victory in that noted event called the Michael
(16:48):
Jordan's Celebrity Invitational. They also shared many a laugh about
the coup coach game, harassed unmercifully by both Pippen and
Jordan's Tony finished with four points and the US one
three to seventy. Now, the splendid team defense played by
Jordan and Pippen was a subject offered up by several
Dream teamers in interviews I did for the book Here's
(17:10):
Larry Bird. The amazing thing for me throughout Home Olympics
was what Michael. Every team we played, the Gardener point
guard was put the pressure on the point guard. I'm
just sitting there watching them and they would turn in
Scottie or somebody come and the kid would pay him
and he just told the ball where and we just
running and and just intercept every past you know, just
(17:30):
I mean, just the pressure this guy was put on
these kids were just unbelievable. Was there ever a better
backcourt duo on the defensive end than Jordan and Pippen,
Jerry Sloane, and Norm Van Leer back with the old Bulls.
Not quite. Will we ever be talking about Kauahi, Leonard
and Paul George in that way? I don't think so.
(17:51):
And when I talked to Pipping about it, his face
lit up. It was one of the few areas where
you could make the argument that he was almost as
good as Jordan's and I would make that argument. Now
Here's Rod Thorne, the NBA executive who was deep on
the inside of most stream team decisions, talking about how
much Coach Chuck Daily depended on the two Chicago Bulls
(18:12):
dream teamers coach system coach. As we talk about who
would start in next game, he would always say, give
me now. You can never fully divorced Jordan from offense,
of course, but the primary reason Daily felt that way
was defense. Maybe there would be one game when the
jump shots weren't falling, Maybe Magic and Bird would be
(18:33):
looking particularly old. Maybe Ewing and Robinson would get in
foul trouble. Maybe Charles had been out too late on
the rhomblists and wasn't quite in the mood that night.
But Daily knew that Jordan and Pippen would put everyone
in the defensive vice gript and it just wouldn't matter.
Nothing else would matter as the games went on, a
(18:54):
one D eleven sixty eight win over Germany, a eighty
three romp over Brazil. No word on whether or not
Oscar Schmidt got Bird's autograph, but he did get twenty
four points. The man could shoot. The focus of the
dream teamers became more and more what was called the
family Room in the Ambassador Hotel kids play room by day,
(19:15):
family room in the evening hours, and a cigar smoking beer,
drinking balls breaking cauldron of testosterone from midnight on. Everyone
drifted in and out from time to time, but the
principles were Jordan's magic, Pippen and Barkley with memorable cameos
from bird Ewing two was part of the in crowd
on the Ultimate in Crowd team that happened largely because
(19:38):
of his long history with Jordan's. They first met as
teenage scholastic stars and they were teammates on the eighty
four gold medal winning Olympic team and his sudden new
friendship with Larry bird Ewing the Harry of Larry at
Harry talks about it. You know I grew up in Boston.
I hated itself because I hated Larry Bird in high
school and high school. I thought he's stuck. Then I
(19:58):
got to I got to the NB. I call all
my friends back in Boston. I say, look, you know this,
we were talking this mother. I love that quote. This
motherfucker is the truth. Ewing, by the way, thinks that
it was Jordan's who came up with Harry and Larry.
There's a thousand stories that came out of the room.
(20:19):
One of my favorites is little known. It involves the
wife of C. M. Newton, one of the USA basketball executives,
a lifelong college guy who started out reviling the idea
of prose taking over the Olympics, but ended up a
dream team convert. I wish I had CM's voice for
you to hear, but the tape of my interview with
him is scratchy. Anyway. He describes the afternoon that his wife, Evelyn,
(20:42):
a very proper wife of a proper man, in an
effort to improve her video game skills to play with
her grandchildren, sat down and partnered with Patrick Ewing's young nephew, Michael. Predictably,
Mrs Newton played poorly, and she apologized to Michael, that's okay.
Michael told her we'll get those motherfucker's next time. She
(21:04):
happily reported to her husband, feeling like now she was
in the in crowd. Evelyn died in and see Him
died in two thousand and eighteen. Well, they always had
the video game in Barcelona. The storylines that evolved from
the coolest room in the world ran predictably through Jordan's
his endless, boundless super human energy, his endless appetite for
(21:27):
ball busting, particularly about championships, and finally the refusal of
Magic Johnson to accept that Jordan was now king of
the hill. Here's bird. Michael was the best player in
our league before that started, I had no problem. You know,
we had our run. You know I had my run.
My run was over, and my run was over. A
couple of years before that, I think Michael ruined aimless
(21:50):
would itself very well over there. But it was up
there one night and we're talking. I just said, you
have you out of your mind if you think you
still repeat this guy, And there's no there's no way.
He's by far the best player ear league, even though
we have great players. Let it go, Man, let it go.
It was a reprise, of course, of what had started
(22:11):
with the greatest game nobody ever saw, and Magic finally
had to admit there was a new sheriff in town.
It was hard to go at the relentless Jordan. Barkley tried.
And please remember these are Barkley's words. Oh he's so
damn black, and he's not the best looking guy in
the world. And my favorite day, uh sucking women thought
(22:33):
about Michael Jordan's good looking. Michael Jordan was a fucking pama.
He wouldn't be good looking any guy I got fired
at me and don looked good. Repeat these are Barkley's words.
And here's youing on Jordan's proclivity to talk trash. You know, Michael,
he's been talking trash from the first day I met him.
We were both seventeen, visiting North Carolina and he was
(22:54):
already did he was not the first time I ever
met him, and he told he was talking trash that day.
And he is not stuff. He is not stuff. No
matter who cracked on, who about what, Jordan's always brought
it back to championships. And remember that he had only
won two at this point. Four more were to come.
Bird had three, Magic, the leader in the clubhouse, had five.
(23:18):
No one else on that team had any, and only
two other Dream teamers Drexler with the Rockets in and
David Robinson with the Spurs in n and two thousand three,
would ever get one. This is Barkley, It always thought,
cracking on these other good locker room wheel now you
can always say when you're getting out of this and Michael,
(23:42):
you know, he's such an asshole. He started cracking on Michael,
crack on the everybody else you start cracking on him.
It was that winning thing. Remember what I said, Magic,
not Jordan's, was the leader at that point so far
as Championships one, and that led Magic to repeatedly challenged
(24:05):
Jordan's primacy as the best player in the game. That
invariably drew Bird into the conversation. And here's Jordan talking
about birden Magic and who was king of the game
from a memorable night in the Coolest room in the world.
Jordan's obvious affection for Bird comes through in this clip.
The one time I fell that he stood up to
Magic saying, hey, you just shut up and just you know,
(24:28):
let's just let let's just rip into the sunset. He
had well, you know, the mostly lack of everything. I
never knew even that type of book with the type
of person, never thought he even laughed and everybody, you know,
he was pretty honest, really honest about you know how
you for saw the game and the players at that
(24:50):
time and taking itself out of you know you allowing
me and step in and say, okay, you gotta better
than we are. You know you better if you better
of defense he gave out. Those types would magic with. Now.
The one area where magic never challenged Jordan's was in
the area of energy expended. I could do an hour
(25:11):
podcast on Dream Team teammates talking about Jordan's super human
RoboCop million Dollar Man level of energy. Remember that the
Dream Team always played the late game, so on game nights,
they never got back to the hotel until well after midnight,
at which point the card game began. Well play all
the way to almost six in the morning. See, I'm
(25:33):
in it, so nobody can tell me I'm in it
with this man. He would go upstairs, stay for our
our half. He would meet you whoever he was going
to play golf with. They go out at eight o'clock. Now,
we've just left at six. He would go play they
say eighteen holes sometimes even more. Come back taking that
(25:58):
for two hours. We are we get on the but
go play the game and didn't do the same thing
Nick make And then I was telling him, Man, I'm
getting tired because I was not used to this. Right. No,
j you can't go to sleep, I was saying, Man.
(26:18):
So I said, man, you are unbelievable to be able
to and then go get twenty points in the act.
Of course, it was nothing like I was like wow.
When I'm I was speaking to groups and I tell
them these stories, they be like, wow, they can't believable.
(26:39):
The one time Jordan's hardly get any sleep at all
routine really freaked out Chuck Daily was before the Lithuania game,
the semifinal game. Daily really respected Lithuania's two best players,
r Vitas Sabonis and Sharonus Marshal Lonis, and Jordan had
gotten very little sleep and had played golf on game day. Well,
(27:00):
then again, his playing partner had been Daily, so really,
how much could the coach complain The final score that
Lithuanian game, a hundred and twenty seven to seventy six,
was probably the dream Team's most devastating performance. Daily managed
to get everyone substantial minutes. Nine Dream teamers had ten
or more points, led by Jordan's with twenty one, but
(27:24):
his scoring wasn't the main thing. At one point in
the first half, Daily told Jordan to really go after
Martial Alonis, not let him get the ball, disrupt the
Lithuania offense, and turn this thing into a route so
everybody could relax and he could put a lot of
players in the game. That's what Jordan did, and for
years later Chuck used to talk about it. I really
(27:44):
wish I had his voice saying it, but I don't.
But here's what he said. For six minutes, Michael did
not let Marcia Alonis get the ball. He couldn't even
get the damn ball. I heard that over and over
from Chuck. Every time I saw him, I would deliberately
bring up the Lithuania game. He wouldn't even let him
get the damn ball. Now, this seems like a great
(28:07):
time to talk about Lithuania, which could be the subject
of a podcast series on its own. Memo to self
look into that. Actually, Lithuania was the subject of a
great documentary called The Other Dream Team try to check
it out. In the briefest terms, the Lithuania team, like
your high school band or your local cub Scout troupe,
(28:28):
had to raise money to even qualify. The country was
ravaged by a Soviet invasion just weeks before the Lithuanian
team had to begin qualifying for the Olympics. Yes, there
were great players in the country who had formally played
for the national team, particularly Sabonis and Martialonis, but this
was another level of pluck and determination. The team was
(28:52):
coached by Donnie Nelson's son of don who we know
eternally as Nellie and Donnie never got a penny for
coaching Lithuania, and he understandably choked up by his association
with these guys. There was something going on here that
was deeper. You know. I almost felt like I really
felt like I was in this time capsule and instead
(29:14):
of you know, George Washington and Tallar Beer, and I
really felt like, you know, I grew up in Boston,
so I knew all the history, all that kind of stuff, right,
always felt like this little republic was doing the same
thing that the Moldies did or whatever year Marshallonis was
By the time of the ninety two Olympics, solidly entrenched
(29:36):
as an NBA player for the Golden State Warriors, coach
by Nellie. The Warriors beat writer at the time, the
late great George Shirk, wrote a peace about how Nellie Jr.
And Sharonas were going around collecting a hundred bucks. Two
hundred bucks is shot by making speeches. Now the grateful
Dead manager read it and said, yeah, man, we can
plug into this. We're like into peace and freedom. I'm
(29:58):
paraphrasing here. Now. The memories of Nellie Jr. And Marshallonus
diverge on this point as to when they actually met
the Dead. Nelly said it was in San Francisco. Sharuna
says it was at a concert in Detroit. But their
memories of the let's call it the ambiance was exactly
the same. You went to have a Dead concert in
(30:21):
To see that, you have to see the Rex Foundation guy. Yeah,
I don't know whether you could understand or not. But
Sharuna said there was an interesting smell. I'm sure there was. Now.
The Dead never gave as much money to the Lithuanian
team as was advertised, maybe a couple of grand but
(30:43):
they did give proceeds of the sales of the distinctive
TIEDI Dead Skeleton logo t shirts, and it was the
prize souvenir from the ninety two Olympics. I think I
mentioned this earlier. I still have mine. The Lithuanians war
it on their warm ups, coolest warmups ever. Several hours
(31:05):
before the US played for the gold medal against Croatia,
the absolute best game of the basketball tournament took place
Lithuania's bronze medal game against the Unified team, which was
basically the Russian national team. Lithuania playing against the representative
of a country that had sent tanks into its streets
(31:26):
a year earlier. It was incredible, as was the game
Lithuania eight Serunus and Sabonis were monsters with twenty nine
and twenty seven points respectively. Nobody that I ever saw
played harder than those two played in that game. And
I will never forget something Marciallonis told me when I
(31:47):
interviewed him for the Dream Team book in two thousand
and eleven. I wish I had his voice on tape
for it, but I don't. He said that he remembers
showering after the game and not really being able to
enjoy the moment. Here's my pression of what he said.
The thought that we could have lost that game was
stronger than the thrill that we had won it. Wow.
(32:08):
The United States never had those kind of stakes when
they went into a basketball game. Okay, at last, the
gold medal game for the Dream Team Croatia. It wasn't
another coup coach game. To be quite honest, it wasn't
(32:30):
much of anything, none of the usual gold medal tension.
The US was gonna win. There was only one bit
of suspense. It had nothing to do with the game.
But before we go there, remember I told you about
this photo request that had been made through Karl Malone.
David and I had heard nothing about it and it
was all but forgotten, which was fine with me. But suddenly,
(32:50):
before the damn gold medal game, NBA photographer Andy Bernstein
approaches Dupre and me and says, Hey, we're gonna take
a phoe to of you guys when they come out. Now,
both Dupri and I say, so we get these special passes.
Hurriedly go back meet the Dream Team as they're coming
out for the gold medal game. The shout, so let's
go let's get it done. When all of a sudden,
(33:12):
Magic says, hold up, guys, and nobody knows what the
hell is going on, and Dave and I creep into
place and Aye aimess camera, and from the back row
I hear Bird make an X rated joking comment, good God,
and then they move on. Just another night, with another
photo with another couple of shlubs. I still have the picture,
(33:36):
along with an embarrassed grin. I'm wearing shorts and some
kind of Hawaiian print shirt and look like I'm heading
for a barbecue where they're gonna be playing Jimmy Buffett
all night. The photo isn't much, but I still have
birds joking comment ringing in my ears. And I used
the line early in the Dream Team book. Years later
I brought it up to him and he says he
doesn't remember saying it, Just another well aimed insult in
(33:58):
a long line of them. The USB Croatia for the
gold one s Jordan was great, but no greater than
draz And Petrovich, the Croatian guard who finished with a
game high twenty four points. Petrovich, he was the Magic
Johnson of Yugoslavia, possibly the Magic Johnson of all of Europe.
(34:19):
He was great. It was fun to watch. He was combative,
he was cocky. I loved him. And on June seven,
about ten months after he won silver for Croatia in
the Barcelona Olympics, he was dead. Petrovisch was a front
seat passenger in a car driven by his girlfriend when
it plowed into the back of a truck on a
(34:40):
rain drent section of the auto Bahn in Bavaria. He
was killed instantly. He was twenty eight. One hundred thousand
people attended his funeral in Zagreb. One hundred thousand. Now
it was never ever a podium ceremony like the one
for basketball in bar Salona. In It wasn't as iconic,
(35:04):
and it really wasn't as important as the one in
Mexico City in n when Tommy Smith and John Carlos
held up black glove fist to signify their protests against
racism in America. But it was strange. First out came
the Lithuanians wearing their tie dyed warmups in clear violation
(35:24):
of Olympic podium rules. They were told no tide eyes,
only official podium where to which marsh Loanas, the captain,
basically said fu or however, you say that in Lithuanian
the dead believed in us when we were nobody. He said,
the friend of the devil is a friend of mine.
Man you thought would get out of here without a
(35:45):
dead lyric Croatia came out overjoyed with the silver medal.
And then it was the Dream Team, three of whom
came out with American flags draped around their shoulder the
TV commentator's notice, but on a sleep. I'm not sure
how many in the crowd did. This had been brewing
for a while. Were the Dream teamers affiliated with Nike
(36:08):
going to wear the U s o C mandated Reebok
podium jackets. Incredibly, the issue had not been settled, even
though it had been talked about for days and days.
Here's Jordan's look. You know, I don't want to be
a partis to Rebok experiences. I have all business. I've
been tied and is it disrespected? Might be? They said,
(36:28):
don't worry about it. You figured that out time. And
then it comes win a gold mel and they come
in and says, you guys got ready uniforms. If you
don't wear the uniforms you came podium, I'm saying that's
not because no, I don't know. I'm saying that the podium.
You know, I'm just in America, you know, because I
(36:51):
see business bigger than the experience of being he was
staying up there and win the gold medal, which is
I never wanted to be put in that position, which
is one of the reasons why I initially said to
you to day Gavid into the rock, into all the
guys that you know, this is not gonna work because
of the business of this, cot into this and I
don't only disrespect up and he got what's happening with,
(37:12):
you know, with the U s o C. They assured
me that that was not going to be an issue.
At least three different people tell me it was their
idea to get flags to drape over the shoulders of
the players to hide the Reebok logo. Jordan's said it
was his. He asked Tom McGrath, the USA basketball official,
to get a few flags from the stands. Tom did.
(37:34):
Whose idea was it, I don't know, and who cares anymore.
The disagreement was petty and the players took some crap
for it, but really was the U s o C.
Any Less to blame. The Reebok warm up jacket was
a business transaction for them, just as Jordan's loyally to Nike,
which had been ongoing for eight years by then, was
a business transaction. There were no virgins in a fair podium,
(37:58):
But who came out looking to those who even noticed
Jordan's Magic and Barkley, who were the three players who
wore the flags? Why look how patriotic these guys are.
They're wearing the American flag. There were some moments I
remember about the podium. The national anthem, a tear coming
from the eye of Chuck Daly, who always always stayed
(38:21):
in the background, Harry and Larry ewing and Bird exchanging
high fives, Barkley blowing kisses, Malone putting his arm around
Clyde Drexler, Jordan and Clyde mortal enemies under normal circumstances,
chatting and pointing into the crowd. And Magic Johnson, a
man who was supposed to be dead, pumping his right fist,
then his left fist, then taking Barkley in his arms,
(38:45):
and then it was over. The Dream teamers want to
plane back home within ninety minutes of winning goal. As
I wrote in Dream Team the lights dimmed, the Palo
Municipal emptied workers picked up trash, and it was like
the day after your birthday, when the world seemed a
little less bright. The fine edges of joy scrub flat.
(39:05):
But it wasn't the end of the story, not by
any means. Reverberations about the Dream Team continued back in America,
and to an extent they continue today. I'll talk about
that in the eighth and final episode of The Dream
Team Tapes. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed The Dream
Team Tapes, please follow, rate, and review wherever you get
(39:29):
your podcasts. The Dream Team Tapes is written and hosted
by Jack McCallum. Executive producers Mark Francis and Scott Waxman,
Executive producer for I Heart Media. Is shown to tone.
The Dream Team Tapes is a Diversion Podcasts original series
in association with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from
(39:53):
my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
This is The Dream Team Tapes, a Diversion Podcasts original
series in association with I Heart Radio. This is the
story of the United States Olympic basketball team that won
gold in Barcelona, known worldwide as the Dream Team. Well
(00:28):
we all know what that is and spoiler alert. The
United States Dream Team won the gold medal in Barcelona,
but it wasn't as simple as marching to the podium,
hearing the national anthem and waving to the crowd. They
did all that, but there was a subplot in between,
and I'm going to tell you about that at the
end of this episode seven of the Dream Team Tapes,
(00:52):
which I'm calling Beva Barcelona because I Jack McCallum had
three years of high school Spanish. We've been to practices
in San Diego, to the Gaming tables and the Immortal Scrimmage,
and Monte Carlo, and now the Dream Team at long
last is in Barcelona, where the world awaits the epic
battle between the United States and Angola. Actually we do
(01:15):
remember that battle, though epicott was not for a reason
we'll get into later, and which involves, of course, Sir
Charles Barkley himself. There's much to cover in this episode
the attention given to the Dream Team, which will be
the hardest thing to describe. The so called family room
in the Ambassador Hotel, where the alpha males Jordan, Magic,
Barkley and Bird played cards all night and argued about
(01:38):
championship rings, and where Bird's young son Connor used to
roll poolballs loudly down the stairs toward the lobby. There
is a frightening intensity with which Jordan and Scottie Pippen
faced their meeting with croatious Tony ku Coach, who drew
their collective ire because Bulls general manager Jerry Krauss wanted
to pay cou Coach a lot of money, which Pippen
(01:59):
fell was being lifted from his pocket. There is a
dramatic struggle of the Lithuania team to win the bronze medal.
The Grateful Dead had helped fund their unlikely path to
the Olympics, and in the Dream Team book, I called
Lithuania the tai Died Darlings. Like many others, I still
have my Lithuania T shirt from those Barcelona games. And finally,
(02:22):
after the gold medal was secured by the Dream Team,
we had an unpleasant civil war of sorts between the
Dream teamers and USA Basketball. All that is coming so
Barcelona for reasons that escaped me. Thirty years later, David Dupree,
my closest buddy on the Dream Team, beat the Hall
of Fame writer from USA today. He and I decided
(02:44):
to drive from Monte Carlo to Barcelona. This was pre GPS, remember,
and armed only with an unreadable road map and that
elementary Spanish, David and I made the seven hour trip
in a mirror ten hours, narrowly avoiding a wrong turn
that would have taken us to the Pyrenees Mountains. Credential
check in at the airport was fairly organized, and I
(03:05):
said to David, man, this is pretty calm. So when
David I separated and I got to my hotel, I thought,
you know, maybe I'll take a stroll over to where
the Dream Team is staying, which was the newly built
Ambassador Hotel, which, by the way, much to the horror
of the U, S O C and USA Basketball, had
been a large hole in the ground only a year earlier.
(03:25):
But maybe I'll go over the Ambassador, grab a beer
with the great NBA pr men Brian McIntyre and Terry Lyons,
grab a quote or two from Charles or carl and Malone,
whoever else might be roaming around the lobby. And but
what in the hell was I thinking? Eighteen months earlier,
I had seen for the first time what happened the
crowds that form when we took that photo in Charlotte,
(03:47):
North Carolina. I had seen opposing teams stop practicing and
start taking photos when the Dream Team came out. So
why did I not anticipate the thousands of people who
surrounded the Ambassador Hotel where the Dream Team had checked
in several hours earlier. It was chaos, was bedlam, thousands
(04:09):
of fans, thousands grouped outside the hotel, dozens and dozens
of police security men in riot gear. The hotel entrance
was cordoned off, and there were barriers set up all
over the place, helicopters flying overhead. The metaphor that usually
came to mind, and the one that was written the most,
(04:30):
was the mayhem associated with the Beatles first trip to
America in nineteen I remembered I was there, well, not
there there in New York City, but I was watching
on TV. Here's Dick Eversole, then the president of NBC Sports,
the presenting network of the Olympics. On one explanation of
the phenomenon, I'm not sure the same thing would have happen.
(04:52):
Different teams has been here, and they were in Chicago,
l a New York about this was Europe, which also
had its own, had its own and had its own
lower share of basketball, and the gods of basketball and
get sented l and they never had been there before,
and this was their chance to touch him. As you
know better than me, Spain is a huge basketball haven.
(05:15):
In one respect, this level of attention that I can
only call pornographics seemed I don't know, less innocent than
the attention given the mop heads from Liverpool. We were
well into the age of terrorism. The massacre at the
two Munich Olympics was never far from the minds of
NBA security, and I learned later there were snipers with
(05:36):
oozies in nearby buildings. Two things about this scene. Number One,
it never changed. I kept waiting for the lines, the acclaim,
the yelling, the waiting, the anticipation, the longing for the
dream team. I kept waiting for it to change. It
never changed, not for two weeks of the Olympics. And
(05:57):
number two, as far as we know, there were no
terroristic threats against the Dream Team. It went off without
a dangerous hitch. The biggest worry for the security people
was Barkley's insistence that he would not be constrained from
walking around town, particularly strolling along Los Rumbles in the
midnight hours. I think of Times Square in the nineteen
(06:20):
seventies that was Lost Rumbless. Much has been written about that,
including by me, whose final week story the Olympics was
about following Barkley around on that fame stretch of Barcelona nightlife.
I know, not a tough beat, right, I'm not going
to go into it anymore. Google Barkley and Lost Rumbless
and he can probably spend the whole day reading later on.
(06:42):
I did get inside the Ambassador Hotel from time to time.
I interviewed Magic and Chuck daily. There. I saw the
players kids running around, peeked into the private players sanked them,
which in the Dream Team book I referred to as
the coolest room in the world, which I'll talk about
soon now. The night after we got to Barcelona, Dupre
and I went out to dinner with Karl Malone. I
(07:03):
was surprised the extent to which Carl was not pleased
about the Fame pickup game in Monte Carlo. He just
did not like all the jive trash talking, and he
did not like Magic kind of co opting the team
as he saw it. Yet, when David and I asked
about getting a photo of the Dream Team, the mailman
quickly said, I'll ask Magic. He's our captain. He handles
(07:26):
all that kind of stuff. I found it interesting that Malone,
no fan of Magic, so quickly acknowledged that Magic was
the boss for that kind of stuff. Now about that
photo request. On the list of people in the entire
world who, under normal circumstances would be reluctant to request
the photo with athletes, I would be second, most likely,
(07:48):
most likely would be Dave Dupree. Yet he had the idea,
and I quickly said, okay. It was an indication of
what that summer of the Dream Team was, like, how
special it was, how special we knew it would contin
you to be. We did indeed get that photo taken
under mortifying circumstances. That story to come the next day.
Two days before the Dream Team's first Olympic game on July,
(08:12):
the team members trooped in for one of the most
entertaining press conferences I've ever attended. For one thing, most
of the international journalists began applauding as soon as the
team walked in. That doesn't happen in America, though Donald
Trump would certainly like it to. Questions were all over
the place, one of them from a journalist who had
apparently never seen an NBA game and ask a question
(08:35):
that can be summarized as sometimes you make a basket
that's worth two points and sometimes it's worth three, to
which Carl Malone responded, that's just the way we do it,
my man. So many times in subsequent years, I'll answer
an unanswerable question the same way. That's just the way
we do it, my man. It was out of this
press conference that one of the most immortal Olympic lines
(08:57):
was uttered by Charles, the one you heard about Angola.
The weird thing is, for years, myself and almost everybody
thought that Charles said, I don't know nothing about Angola,
but Angola is in trouble. But he didn't. He actually
used correct English. I don't know anything about Angola, but
Angola is in trouble. I'm not sure why it was
(09:20):
so funny, but it was remained so Mike Wilbon, the
great ESPN commentator, used to call Charles up from time
to time and just leave a message, I don't know
nothing about Angola and just left it there. There was
an alternate theme going on in Barcelona before the Games,
a theme that contrasted with the devotional manner with which
(09:41):
the Dream Team was treated by adoring fans who camped
out outside of the Ambassador Hotel. It was a steam
these damn millionaires are messing up the Olympics, steam echoed
by many of the pooh bas in the U s
o C and a few IOC officials. At first, it's
entered on, hey, they're not even staying in the athletes village,
(10:04):
something that had been made clear two years earlier when
open competition was established. Everybody knew that Michael Jordan's and
Magic Johnson and Larry Bird ain't going a bunk with nobody,
and they ain't sharing a communal bathroom. Jordan could have
bought the entire Olympic Village with the money he laid
out on a casual nassau bed on the golf course.
(10:24):
Then word filtered out that most of the Dream Team
would not attend the opening ceremonies, though several of them
wanted to, it was thought to be way too chaotic.
Word got back to NBC Sports president Dick Eversol I've
referred to him before, who sprung into action and moved
heaven and earth to deliver the Dream teamers to the
Olympic gate just minutes before they had to walk in.
(10:47):
Everybody else had to get there three hours earlier, and
that was just not going to fly. It was like magic,
and magic did come, and a fact, if memory serves,
the only ones who did not were Jordan's who was
still afraid of potential mauling and who had enjoyed the
ceremonies back in, and Bird, who was thinking only of
(11:09):
his back. Now, exactly what everybody feared would happen happened.
Upon spying the Dream Team in the procession. Athletes from
all over the place broke ranks ran over to the
players to take photos, grab autographs, or just genuinely hang on.
I can still see in my mind's eye a diminutive
gymnasts from somewhere jumping up to touch Magic and David Robinson.
(11:33):
It was a splendid scene, and it spoke to this
reality as much as the dream Team drew attention away
from the other athletes. Most of them loved it. They
loved being in the same arena with these guys. It
was a kind of transfer of importance to it. The
objections came, for the most part from the executives, the bureaucrats,
because that's usually where objections come from. Okay, time to
(11:57):
play Game one, Angola. The hundreds of journalists who had
come to Portland knew what to expect about the result,
but there was still an air of anticipation before the game. Actually,
I made that up. I didn't feel anything, but then
someone made it interesting. The elbow thrown by Barkley on
an in Golden player named Herlando Coinbra was so unexpected
(12:18):
that not many people saw it, and they certainly didn't
know why it happened. And no, the officials did not
throw Barkley out. When I interviewed Charles for the book
in two thousand eleven, he still insisted that Herlando Coinbra,
the Herlando Coinbra had it coming. That bothered me that
people didn't understand what happened at night, You know what,
(12:39):
they started a full brawl like the next game against
pain Charles Police. Here's Jordan's on the subject of Charles's elbow.
The only other game that I remember that you know,
they really did, Barkley, he said, we played here in
(13:00):
total admiration about autographs before the game, and in the
first quarter he hit the Grit album. Dude, total adiration
of everything we did. We killed him that way. I
don't know. It wasn't even game even him down. You
guys had to one run. It wasn't when he hit
(13:22):
the Garedy album that was trying to take atographer beginning
to game. It's comic relief now, but there was a
certified big deal then because of this ugly American tag
that had been attached to the Dream Team in some quarters.
What happened eventually, though, is that Barkley actually became the
(13:43):
team's biggest ambassador, not just the teams, the entire United
States Olympic delegation. He was out in public, he attended events,
he worked the crowd, he shook hands with other athletes,
and most of all, as I said before, he became
a pied piper on law Rombliss well into the morning hours. Now.
(14:12):
The Dream Team or second game, which was against Croatia,
was just as memorable, but for an entirely different reason.
It became widely known as the Ku Coach Game. At
the time, Bulls general manager Jerry Krauss was so intent
on signing the young Yugoslavian star Tony ku Coach, who
was a multi talented six ft ten inch left hander,
that he had refused to extend Pippin's contract because he
(14:36):
wanted to save money to offer it to kup Coach,
whom he had selected in the draft that was not
going to fly. Pippin, with the help of Jordan's, decided
they would absolutely destroy Ku Coach, who had no idea
what was coming and was at any rate distracted by
the imminent birth of his son, which in fact did
occur a couple of days after the Ku Coach game.
(14:59):
There were two things that every single Dream Teamer mentioned
to me in the separate interviews I did for the book.
The first was the unlikely Harry and Larry relationship between
Ewing and Bird. The second was the Coup Coach game.
Now you have to understand the backdrop to an extent.
The Dream teamers were tired of non competitive basketball. Their
lifeblood was competition, and as fun as it was to
(15:23):
play together with great players. They missed the taste of
a real challenge. Strong Man though he might have been,
cou Coach represented a real challenge. Here's magic remembering Jordan
and Pippen before the Croatia game. But I'd say you,
Michael and Scott was so ready for the Crocia They
(15:43):
were like, look, I don't want no help. I'm gonna
shut them down. And we were like, wow, they are
so focused and it made us all get focused because
they really wanted to stopped telling me. And here's Jordan
himself on the Coup Coach game. We're not gonna have
to get past, you know for Craft reperies. So much
(16:06):
credibility hit you know what we've just earned in terms
of you know, championship and saying well, we don't want that,
you know, we want to hear what we you know,
not what you know what Tony two coach is going
to bring to this team. You mean, we won't without
coming all you can talk about his Tony. So he
created that enemy where they that concept and not focused
(16:26):
in the dut with Okay, and you play Croatia, you
just not You're gonna shut down. The funny thing is
Jordan and cou coach who eventually played on the Bulls,
became really good friends, much better friends in Jordan and
Piping Are. They play a lot of golf together and
even shared victory in that noted event called the Michael
(16:48):
Jordan's Celebrity Invitational. They also shared many a laugh about
the coup coach game, harassed unmercifully by both Pippen and
Jordan's Tony finished with four points and the US one
three to seventy. Now, the splendid team defense played by
Jordan and Pippen was a subject offered up by several
Dream teamers in interviews I did for the book Here's
(17:10):
Larry Bird. The amazing thing for me throughout Home Olympics
was what Michael. Every team we played, the Gardener point
guard was put the pressure on the point guard. I'm
just sitting there watching them and they would turn in
Scottie or somebody come and the kid would pay him
and he just told the ball where and we just
running and and just intercept every past you know, just
(17:30):
I mean, just the pressure this guy was put on
these kids were just unbelievable. Was there ever a better
backcourt duo on the defensive end than Jordan and Pippen,
Jerry Sloane, and Norm Van Leer back with the old Bulls.
Not quite. Will we ever be talking about Kauahi, Leonard
and Paul George in that way? I don't think so.
(17:51):
And when I talked to Pipping about it, his face
lit up. It was one of the few areas where
you could make the argument that he was almost as
good as Jordan's and I would make that argument. Now
Here's Rod Thorne, the NBA executive who was deep on
the inside of most stream team decisions, talking about how
much Coach Chuck Daily depended on the two Chicago Bulls
(18:12):
dream teamers coach system coach. As we talk about who
would start in next game, he would always say, give
me now. You can never fully divorced Jordan from offense,
of course, but the primary reason Daily felt that way
was defense. Maybe there would be one game when the
jump shots weren't falling, Maybe Magic and Bird would be
(18:33):
looking particularly old. Maybe Ewing and Robinson would get in
foul trouble. Maybe Charles had been out too late on
the rhomblists and wasn't quite in the mood that night.
But Daily knew that Jordan and Pippen would put everyone
in the defensive vice gript and it just wouldn't matter.
Nothing else would matter as the games went on, a
(18:54):
one D eleven sixty eight win over Germany, a eighty
three romp over Brazil. No word on whether or not
Oscar Schmidt got Bird's autograph, but he did get twenty
four points. The man could shoot. The focus of the
dream teamers became more and more what was called the
family Room in the Ambassador Hotel kids play room by day,
(19:15):
family room in the evening hours, and a cigar smoking beer,
drinking balls breaking cauldron of testosterone from midnight on. Everyone
drifted in and out from time to time, but the
principles were Jordan's magic, Pippen and Barkley with memorable cameos
from bird Ewing two was part of the in crowd
on the Ultimate in Crowd team that happened largely because
(19:38):
of his long history with Jordan's. They first met as
teenage scholastic stars and they were teammates on the eighty
four gold medal winning Olympic team and his sudden new
friendship with Larry bird Ewing the Harry of Larry at
Harry talks about it. You know I grew up in Boston.
I hated itself because I hated Larry Bird in high
school and high school. I thought he's stuck. Then I
(19:58):
got to I got to the NB. I call all
my friends back in Boston. I say, look, you know this,
we were talking this mother. I love that quote. This
motherfucker is the truth. Ewing, by the way, thinks that
it was Jordan's who came up with Harry and Larry.
There's a thousand stories that came out of the room.
(20:19):
One of my favorites is little known. It involves the
wife of C. M. Newton, one of the USA basketball executives,
a lifelong college guy who started out reviling the idea
of prose taking over the Olympics, but ended up a
dream team convert. I wish I had CM's voice for
you to hear, but the tape of my interview with
him is scratchy. Anyway. He describes the afternoon that his wife, Evelyn,
(20:42):
a very proper wife of a proper man, in an
effort to improve her video game skills to play with
her grandchildren, sat down and partnered with Patrick Ewing's young nephew, Michael. Predictably,
Mrs Newton played poorly, and she apologized to Michael, that's okay.
Michael told her we'll get those motherfucker's next time. She
(21:04):
happily reported to her husband, feeling like now she was
in the in crowd. Evelyn died in and see Him
died in two thousand and eighteen. Well, they always had
the video game in Barcelona. The storylines that evolved from
the coolest room in the world ran predictably through Jordan's
his endless, boundless super human energy, his endless appetite for
(21:27):
ball busting, particularly about championships, and finally the refusal of
Magic Johnson to accept that Jordan was now king of
the hill. Here's bird. Michael was the best player in
our league before that started, I had no problem. You know,
we had our run. You know I had my run.
My run was over, and my run was over. A
couple of years before that, I think Michael ruined aimless
(21:50):
would itself very well over there. But it was up
there one night and we're talking. I just said, you
have you out of your mind if you think you
still repeat this guy, And there's no there's no way.
He's by far the best player ear league, even though
we have great players. Let it go, Man, let it go.
It was a reprise, of course, of what had started
(22:11):
with the greatest game nobody ever saw, and Magic finally
had to admit there was a new sheriff in town.
It was hard to go at the relentless Jordan. Barkley tried.
And please remember these are Barkley's words. Oh he's so
damn black, and he's not the best looking guy in
the world. And my favorite day, uh sucking women thought
(22:33):
about Michael Jordan's good looking. Michael Jordan was a fucking pama.
He wouldn't be good looking any guy I got fired
at me and don looked good. Repeat these are Barkley's words.
And here's youing on Jordan's proclivity to talk trash. You know, Michael,
he's been talking trash from the first day I met him.
We were both seventeen, visiting North Carolina and he was
(22:54):
already did he was not the first time I ever
met him, and he told he was talking trash that day.
And he is not stuff. He is not stuff. No
matter who cracked on, who about what, Jordan's always brought
it back to championships. And remember that he had only
won two at this point. Four more were to come.
Bird had three, Magic, the leader in the clubhouse, had five.
(23:18):
No one else on that team had any, and only
two other Dream teamers Drexler with the Rockets in and
David Robinson with the Spurs in n and two thousand three,
would ever get one. This is Barkley, It always thought,
cracking on these other good locker room wheel now you
can always say when you're getting out of this and Michael,
(23:42):
you know, he's such an asshole. He started cracking on Michael,
crack on the everybody else you start cracking on him.
It was that winning thing. Remember what I said, Magic,
not Jordan's, was the leader at that point so far
as Championships one, and that led Magic to repeatedly challenged
(24:05):
Jordan's primacy as the best player in the game. That
invariably drew Bird into the conversation. And here's Jordan talking
about birden Magic and who was king of the game
from a memorable night in the Coolest room in the world.
Jordan's obvious affection for Bird comes through in this clip.
The one time I fell that he stood up to
Magic saying, hey, you just shut up and just you know,
(24:28):
let's just let let's just rip into the sunset. He
had well, you know, the mostly lack of everything. I
never knew even that type of book with the type
of person, never thought he even laughed and everybody, you know,
he was pretty honest, really honest about you know how
you for saw the game and the players at that
(24:50):
time and taking itself out of you know you allowing
me and step in and say, okay, you gotta better
than we are. You know you better if you better
of defense he gave out. Those types would magic with. Now.
The one area where magic never challenged Jordan's was in
the area of energy expended. I could do an hour
(25:11):
podcast on Dream Team teammates talking about Jordan's super human
RoboCop million Dollar Man level of energy. Remember that the
Dream Team always played the late game, so on game nights,
they never got back to the hotel until well after midnight,
at which point the card game began. Well play all
the way to almost six in the morning. See, I'm
(25:33):
in it, so nobody can tell me I'm in it
with this man. He would go upstairs, stay for our
our half. He would meet you whoever he was going
to play golf with. They go out at eight o'clock. Now,
we've just left at six. He would go play they
say eighteen holes sometimes even more. Come back taking that
(25:58):
for two hours. We are we get on the but
go play the game and didn't do the same thing
Nick make And then I was telling him, Man, I'm
getting tired because I was not used to this. Right. No,
j you can't go to sleep, I was saying, Man.
(26:18):
So I said, man, you are unbelievable to be able
to and then go get twenty points in the act.
Of course, it was nothing like I was like wow.
When I'm I was speaking to groups and I tell
them these stories, they be like, wow, they can't believable.
(26:39):
The one time Jordan's hardly get any sleep at all
routine really freaked out Chuck Daily was before the Lithuania game,
the semifinal game. Daily really respected Lithuania's two best players,
r Vitas Sabonis and Sharonus Marshal Lonis, and Jordan had
gotten very little sleep and had played golf on game day. Well,
(27:00):
then again, his playing partner had been Daily, so really,
how much could the coach complain The final score that
Lithuanian game, a hundred and twenty seven to seventy six,
was probably the dream Team's most devastating performance. Daily managed
to get everyone substantial minutes. Nine Dream teamers had ten
or more points, led by Jordan's with twenty one, but
(27:24):
his scoring wasn't the main thing. At one point in
the first half, Daily told Jordan to really go after
Martial Alonis, not let him get the ball, disrupt the
Lithuania offense, and turn this thing into a route so
everybody could relax and he could put a lot of
players in the game. That's what Jordan did, and for
years later Chuck used to talk about it. I really
(27:44):
wish I had his voice saying it, but I don't.
But here's what he said. For six minutes, Michael did
not let Marcia Alonis get the ball. He couldn't even
get the damn ball. I heard that over and over
from Chuck. Every time I saw him, I would deliberately
bring up the Lithuania game. He wouldn't even let him
get the damn ball. Now, this seems like a great
(28:07):
time to talk about Lithuania, which could be the subject
of a podcast series on its own. Memo to self
look into that. Actually, Lithuania was the subject of a
great documentary called The Other Dream Team try to check
it out. In the briefest terms, the Lithuania team, like
your high school band or your local cub Scout troupe,
(28:28):
had to raise money to even qualify. The country was
ravaged by a Soviet invasion just weeks before the Lithuanian
team had to begin qualifying for the Olympics. Yes, there
were great players in the country who had formally played
for the national team, particularly Sabonis and Martialonis, but this
was another level of pluck and determination. The team was
(28:52):
coached by Donnie Nelson's son of don who we know
eternally as Nellie and Donnie never got a penny for
coaching Lithuania, and he understandably choked up by his association
with these guys. There was something going on here that
was deeper. You know. I almost felt like I really
felt like I was in this time capsule and instead
(29:14):
of you know, George Washington and Tallar Beer, and I
really felt like, you know, I grew up in Boston,
so I knew all the history, all that kind of stuff, right,
always felt like this little republic was doing the same
thing that the Moldies did or whatever year Marshallonis was
By the time of the ninety two Olympics, solidly entrenched
(29:36):
as an NBA player for the Golden State Warriors, coach
by Nellie. The Warriors beat writer at the time, the
late great George Shirk, wrote a peace about how Nellie Jr.
And Sharonas were going around collecting a hundred bucks. Two
hundred bucks is shot by making speeches. Now the grateful
Dead manager read it and said, yeah, man, we can
plug into this. We're like into peace and freedom. I'm
(29:58):
paraphrasing here. Now. The memories of Nellie Jr. And Marshallonus
diverge on this point as to when they actually met
the Dead. Nelly said it was in San Francisco. Sharuna
says it was at a concert in Detroit. But their
memories of the let's call it the ambiance was exactly
the same. You went to have a Dead concert in
(30:21):
To see that, you have to see the Rex Foundation guy. Yeah,
I don't know whether you could understand or not. But
Sharuna said there was an interesting smell. I'm sure there was. Now.
The Dead never gave as much money to the Lithuanian
team as was advertised, maybe a couple of grand but
(30:43):
they did give proceeds of the sales of the distinctive
TIEDI Dead Skeleton logo t shirts, and it was the
prize souvenir from the ninety two Olympics. I think I
mentioned this earlier. I still have mine. The Lithuanians war
it on their warm ups, coolest warmups ever. Several hours
(31:05):
before the US played for the gold medal against Croatia,
the absolute best game of the basketball tournament took place
Lithuania's bronze medal game against the Unified team, which was
basically the Russian national team. Lithuania playing against the representative
of a country that had sent tanks into its streets
(31:26):
a year earlier. It was incredible, as was the game
Lithuania eight Serunus and Sabonis were monsters with twenty nine
and twenty seven points respectively. Nobody that I ever saw
played harder than those two played in that game. And
I will never forget something Marciallonis told me when I
(31:47):
interviewed him for the Dream Team book in two thousand
and eleven. I wish I had his voice on tape
for it, but I don't. He said that he remembers
showering after the game and not really being able to
enjoy the moment. Here's my pression of what he said.
The thought that we could have lost that game was
stronger than the thrill that we had won it. Wow.
(32:08):
The United States never had those kind of stakes when
they went into a basketball game. Okay, at last, the
gold medal game for the Dream Team Croatia. It wasn't
another coup coach game. To be quite honest, it wasn't
(32:30):
much of anything, none of the usual gold medal tension.
The US was gonna win. There was only one bit
of suspense. It had nothing to do with the game.
But before we go there, remember I told you about
this photo request that had been made through Karl Malone.
David and I had heard nothing about it and it
was all but forgotten, which was fine with me. But suddenly,
(32:50):
before the damn gold medal game, NBA photographer Andy Bernstein
approaches Dupre and me and says, Hey, we're gonna take
a phoe to of you guys when they come out. Now,
both Dupri and I say, so we get these special passes.
Hurriedly go back meet the Dream Team as they're coming
out for the gold medal game. The shout, so let's
go let's get it done. When all of a sudden,
(33:12):
Magic says, hold up, guys, and nobody knows what the
hell is going on, and Dave and I creep into
place and Aye aimess camera, and from the back row
I hear Bird make an X rated joking comment, good God,
and then they move on. Just another night, with another
photo with another couple of shlubs. I still have the picture,
(33:36):
along with an embarrassed grin. I'm wearing shorts and some
kind of Hawaiian print shirt and look like I'm heading
for a barbecue where they're gonna be playing Jimmy Buffett
all night. The photo isn't much, but I still have
birds joking comment ringing in my ears. And I used
the line early in the Dream Team book. Years later
I brought it up to him and he says he
doesn't remember saying it, Just another well aimed insult in
(33:58):
a long line of them. The USB Croatia for the
gold one s Jordan was great, but no greater than
draz And Petrovich, the Croatian guard who finished with a
game high twenty four points. Petrovich, he was the Magic
Johnson of Yugoslavia, possibly the Magic Johnson of all of Europe.
(34:19):
He was great. It was fun to watch. He was combative,
he was cocky. I loved him. And on June seven,
about ten months after he won silver for Croatia in
the Barcelona Olympics, he was dead. Petrovisch was a front
seat passenger in a car driven by his girlfriend when
it plowed into the back of a truck on a
(34:40):
rain drent section of the auto Bahn in Bavaria. He
was killed instantly. He was twenty eight. One hundred thousand
people attended his funeral in Zagreb. One hundred thousand. Now
it was never ever a podium ceremony like the one
for basketball in bar Salona. In It wasn't as iconic,
(35:04):
and it really wasn't as important as the one in
Mexico City in n when Tommy Smith and John Carlos
held up black glove fist to signify their protests against
racism in America. But it was strange. First out came
the Lithuanians wearing their tie dyed warmups in clear violation
(35:24):
of Olympic podium rules. They were told no tide eyes,
only official podium where to which marsh Loanas, the captain,
basically said fu or however, you say that in Lithuanian
the dead believed in us when we were nobody. He said,
the friend of the devil is a friend of mine.
Man you thought would get out of here without a
(35:45):
dead lyric Croatia came out overjoyed with the silver medal.
And then it was the Dream Team, three of whom
came out with American flags draped around their shoulder the
TV commentator's notice, but on a sleep. I'm not sure
how many in the crowd did. This had been brewing
for a while. Were the Dream teamers affiliated with Nike
(36:08):
going to wear the U s o C mandated Reebok
podium jackets. Incredibly, the issue had not been settled, even
though it had been talked about for days and days.
Here's Jordan's look. You know, I don't want to be
a partis to Rebok experiences. I have all business. I've
been tied and is it disrespected? Might be? They said,
(36:28):
don't worry about it. You figured that out time. And
then it comes win a gold mel and they come
in and says, you guys got ready uniforms. If you
don't wear the uniforms you came podium, I'm saying that's
not because no, I don't know. I'm saying that the podium.
You know, I'm just in America, you know, because I
(36:51):
see business bigger than the experience of being he was
staying up there and win the gold medal, which is
I never wanted to be put in that position, which
is one of the reasons why I initially said to
you to day Gavid into the rock, into all the
guys that you know, this is not gonna work because
of the business of this, cot into this and I
don't only disrespect up and he got what's happening with,
(37:12):
you know, with the U s o C. They assured
me that that was not going to be an issue.
At least three different people tell me it was their
idea to get flags to drape over the shoulders of
the players to hide the Reebok logo. Jordan's said it
was his. He asked Tom McGrath, the USA basketball official,
to get a few flags from the stands. Tom did.
(37:34):
Whose idea was it, I don't know, and who cares anymore.
The disagreement was petty and the players took some crap
for it, but really was the U s o C.
Any Less to blame. The Reebok warm up jacket was
a business transaction for them, just as Jordan's loyally to Nike,
which had been ongoing for eight years by then, was
a business transaction. There were no virgins in a fair podium,
(37:58):
But who came out looking to those who even noticed
Jordan's Magic and Barkley, who were the three players who
wore the flags? Why look how patriotic these guys are.
They're wearing the American flag. There were some moments I
remember about the podium. The national anthem, a tear coming
from the eye of Chuck Daly, who always always stayed
(38:21):
in the background, Harry and Larry ewing and Bird exchanging
high fives, Barkley blowing kisses, Malone putting his arm around
Clyde Drexler, Jordan and Clyde mortal enemies under normal circumstances,
chatting and pointing into the crowd. And Magic Johnson, a
man who was supposed to be dead, pumping his right fist,
then his left fist, then taking Barkley in his arms,
(38:45):
and then it was over. The Dream teamers want to
plane back home within ninety minutes of winning goal. As
I wrote in Dream Team the lights dimmed, the Palo
Municipal emptied workers picked up trash, and it was like
the day after your birthday, when the world seemed a
little less bright. The fine edges of joy scrub flat.
(39:05):
But it wasn't the end of the story, not by
any means. Reverberations about the Dream Team continued back in America,
and to an extent they continue today. I'll talk about
that in the eighth and final episode of The Dream
Team Tapes. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed The Dream
Team Tapes, please follow, rate, and review wherever you get
(39:29):
your podcasts. The Dream Team Tapes is written and hosted
by Jack McCallum. Executive producers Mark Francis and Scott Waxman,
Executive producer for I Heart Media. Is shown to tone.
The Dream Team Tapes is a Diversion Podcasts original series
in association with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from
(39:53):
my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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