Dream Team: Basketball's Greatest Assembly

[00:00:00] On August 8th, 1992, arguably the greatest basketball team ever assembled won a gold medal nicknamed the Dream Team featuring 11 future Hall of Fame basketball players. In the first time NBA players were allowed to play in the Olympics in Barcelona.

[00:00:20] Hoping to grow the sport globally more than had ever been done before. Today we're going to dive into how this all happened and how this team got put together on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History, I'm Ethan Reese, your guide to a rapid deep dive into

[00:00:40] sports history every day. And today's trivia question to listen out for was, this team allowed one college player and what future Hall of Fame basketball player did Christian Leitner beat out for that spot?

[00:00:52] So before we get to the actual Dream Team, we have to go back to see why NBA players were now allowed to participate in the Olympics. Because up until then only amateurs were allowed to participate in Olympic games. So usually the US team featured only college athletes.

[00:01:10] And some of these teams did feature Hall of Famers. As the 1984 team featured Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing and Chris Mullins. All three of which would go on to be part of the Dream Team. And the 1988 team featured David Robinson, Danny Manning and Mitch Richmond.

[00:01:26] So even though often these teams did feature future NBA players before 1992 with just college athletes, it was much harder for a player to compete on these teams because not everyone got that opportunity. Because the Olympics is every four years and you're only in college every four years.

[00:01:44] So juniors and seniors usually won out on being able to participate in these teams. So often players went out without making the team, which was the case for many, of the players that actually did participate in the Dream Team. But that wasn't the only problem.

[00:01:59] Another problem was many other small professional leagues were starting across the world, including in Europe and in the Soviet Union, which meant those teams were actually having professional players actually participate on their teams. Whereas NBA, which was a professional league, did not allow the players to play.

[00:02:18] And the NBA actually didn't really want their players to play at the time. They were worried about injury risk, challenges in scheduling and what NBA players want to participate because to participate meant they weren't able to get paid while they played for it.

[00:02:34] They would just be representing their country. But in 1989, FIFA, the Federation of International Basketball Association got together and voted to allow professionals to participate in international events, including the World Cup and the Olympics. And everyone guaranteed as the vote went 56 to 13.

[00:02:52] And the Soviets actually proposed another rule where they allowed each team to have up to two NBA players, but that was rejected. So this allowed the chance for NBA players to participate. But the only question was who would want to? By the Olympic rules, you only allowed 12 players.

[00:03:08] So they needed to choose what 12 players they would want to participate. And they actually went to Michael Jordan first, who was at the time the best player in the league, just coming off of winning a championship.

[00:03:20] And they thought if they could get him, they could get anyone else. But he was unsure if he wanted to join because he didn't want to be the only one. He wanted to make sure other people joined that he would be playing with colleagues,

[00:03:31] the best of the best. So he waited. He said, let me hear who else you get. And then they went to Magic Johnson. Now Magic Johnson had actually at this time retired from the NBA due to contracting HIV.

[00:03:43] There were so many challenges that people didn't want to play with him because of his HIV, as we talked about in a previous episode. He had fought through a lot of adversity and actually participated in the 1992 All-Star

[00:03:54] game even though he wasn't a part of the LA roster throughout that year. But he agreed to it. But despite all that challenges, he still loved the game and he wanted a chance

[00:04:02] to represent his country as he wasn't able to due to the time he played in college due to the time he played in college. And his rival and one of his good friends, Larry Bird, was in the same situation, although he didn't have a disease like Magic.

[00:04:15] He was getting old and had major back problems, but Magic talked him into joining and said, hey, we're gonna have a great team. You only need to pay play like 10 minutes a game. And that's exactly so once they got Magic and Larry, everyone else wanted to join

[00:04:29] after Magic and Larry joined. They were able to get Scotty Pippen, John Stockton, Karl Malone, Patrick Ewing, Chris Mullins, David Robinson and Charles Barkley and later would add Clyde Drexler. With that announcement, Michael Jordan agreed to join in as this was his first time to

[00:04:46] get to play with every one of these players on his own team. But that was only 11 and they needed to fill the one more roster spot. And the US committee decided that they would still allow one college player to join the team.

[00:04:58] And it came down to two big men in college between Duke's Christian Leitner and LSU's Shaquille O'Neal. And at the time, Christian Leitner was the best player in college and they gave the spot to him.

[00:05:10] If Shaq would have made it, that would have meant all 12 members of the Dream Team would have been Hall of Fame basketball players. And part of the reason why these all these players wanted to join in as well, and

[00:05:22] they would all be led by Chuck Daly who led the bad boy Pistons. And another reason why the US was so motivated to win was because in the 1988 games as basketball started in the Olympics in 1936 and for the first seven Olympics, the United States won a gold medal.

[00:05:41] It wasn't until 1972 when the Soviets finally beat the US, but in 1976 they would go on to win it back and win it in 1984. But again in 1988, the Soviet Union won the gold medal as the United States didn't even finish second and won bronze.

[00:05:59] After their worst showing ever in the Olympics, the US wanted to show that they were the top country in basketball in the world. And they continued to do that except for in 2004 when they again got bronze.

[00:06:12] But the reason why there's been more of a challenge for the US recently in the Olympics is because of this 1992 Dream Team as it grew the popularity of basketball throughout the world. And one notable guy that was left off of this roster was Isaiah Thomas.

[00:06:30] So now that the team was assembled, they needed to get together to practice before they could go play as you can't just put together a team and not practice. And so they put together a squad of college players to scrimmage against.

[00:06:43] This featured future championship winning coach Bobby Hurley and Grant Hill, Penny Hardway, Alan Houston and Chris Webber. So they were going against a great group of future NBA players and all stars. And the crazy thing is this team going against the Dream Team would beat them

[00:07:00] in the first game the Dream Team played together. With a final score of 62 to 54. Reports are that Bobby Hurley was just cutting through the defense like it was butter. But later we find out that the coach Chuck Daly may have been throwing the game as

[00:07:16] he kept Jordan out of the game most of the time and wouldn't really change or do any kind of coaching. He would just have the players play in hopes that they would lose which meant after

[00:07:27] this happened, he could say see you guys can be beat by anyone on any day. He was humbling them and bringing them actually together and they would go on to face that same team the next day and destroy them as they were playing unselfish playing together

[00:07:41] playing as a team which really got them ready for the chance to qualify and win the gold. So in June 1992, the Dream Team needed to qualify for the Olympics so they went to the Tournament of the Americas which is now known as AmeriCup where all the

[00:07:56] countries in North and South America face off for the chance to make the Olympics. And in the first game they faced Cuba who were just happy to be playing against all these NBA players and the Dream Team went on to win 106-57 and they would go on to

[00:08:12] easily win the Tournament of Americas and make it to the Olympics and qualify for the Olympics. And when they made it to the Olympics, they were so popular that they actually didn't stay in the Olympic Village which is a location for Olympic athletes where they

[00:08:25] could house, where they can eat, sleep and get ready for competitions. But they were so popular they needed their own location to keep them safe as everyone wanted to meet the Dream Team. And on July 26, 1992, they got played their first Olympic game together facing

[00:08:41] Angola defeating them 106-48 and they were in their group. They faced Angola, Croatia, Germany, Brazil and Spain and they made it out of their group to get into the knockout round where they defeated Puerto Rico and in the Sinema finals defeated Lithuania and they headed into face Croatia

[00:09:01] for their gold medal match. Now, they'd already beat Croatia before and Croatia actually featured two future NBA players, Antoni Kukoc who would go on to join Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan in their second three-peat and Dazarian Petrovic who

[00:09:16] would become an All-Star with the New Jersey Nets before his untimely death after just playing in the NBA for a few seasons. So they had great talent and coming into the game, actually Charles Barkley was the leading scorer for the US team.

[00:09:31] But this game was dominated by Jordan as he wanted to make sure they got the gold medal as he scored 22 points with six other members of the team being in double figures at halftime. They only led by 14 but they would continue their strong showing dominating

[00:09:48] down in the paint and scoring at will finishing the game 117-85. The closest competition they had their entire time together as a team besides their scrimmage game against the college kids, bringing pride back to the US team and making basketball center stage in America once again.

[00:10:09] Now following this, NBA players have consistently played in the NBA and the Olympics every four years. And in 1996 they had the Dream Team 2 which featured multiple Hall of Famers and it also featured five Dream Team players in Barkley, Malone, Pippen, Robinson and Stockton.

[00:10:26] But what this really did was give credibility to the Olympics. It meant the best players in the world were playing in the Olympics. So you got to see the best competition. And even though the United States dominated for a stretch up until 2004

[00:10:40] when Argentina actually won the gold, what this didn't, this didn't show that the United States was any weaker as a team. What it actually showed was that the international competition has gotten way better, as in even if you look in the NBA, three of the last

[00:10:56] MVPs are foreign born players, which means the best players in the NBA aren't only playing for the United States. They're playing for other countries as well. And this allows the game to grow even more globally. And it has grown even in other professional leagues as there's

[00:11:13] professional leagues in Europe, China, Australia, which promote great leagues. And we've seen players come from those leagues to play in the NBA and have success as well. So the game is growing. And this was one reason why, because it allowed everyone the chance to see

[00:11:29] to see the best players play at the Olympics and maybe one chance, maybe the player and as players watch, they thought maybe I get to play against them even if I only play for my country, which was a good opportunity.

[00:11:42] And I hope you were happy to be part of our experience today is great. And if you want us to cover a topic that you love, please leave us a review wherever you're listening and tell us the topic you want us to

[00:11:52] cover and your name and we'll get that done just for you and come back tomorrow for more daily sports history. And did you catch the answer to the trivia question today? The final spot for the dream team was given to a collegiate player.

[00:12:06] And what hall of famer did Christian Leitner beat out for that final spot? That was future NBA legend Shaquille O'Neal.