1992 United States men's Olympic basketball team

• 1. Introduction

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  The 1992 United States men's Olympic basketball team arrived in Barcelona as something the sports world had never seen before. Twelve players who had combined for ten NBA championships and sixteen MVP awards walked onto the court together, and their opponents already knew they had no chance. The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame would later call this group "the greatest collection of basketball talent on the planet." But how did this team come to exist at all? The United States had never sent NBA professionals to the Olympics before. A loss in 1988 helped change that. So did a rule vote in Munich. And so did a set of personal rivalries, a medical crisis, and one famously hard-nosed selection decision that left an entire franchise off the roster. What follows is the story of how the Dream Team was assembled, tested, and ultimately set loose on the world.

• 2. The Rule That Changed Everything

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  On the 7th of April 1989, at a special congress in Munich, FIBA delegates voted 56-13 to allow professional basketball players to compete in international tournaments, including the Olympics. Before that vote, the United States had been sending amateur players: college athletes and, especially in the 1950s, players from AAU leagues. Other nations had no such restriction and routinely used their top domestic professionals. The disparity caught up with the Americans at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, where they lost to the USSR and took bronze, the worst finish in the history of the U.S. program. That 1988 bronze jolted administrators. The Amateur Basketball Association of the United States voted against the FIBA change, citing opposition from college and high school constituents. A Soviet proposal to limit national teams to just two NBA players was unanimously rejected. The rule change also had a strategic side effect: it undercut the Goodwill Games, which was at the time the biggest rival to the Olympics and was itself trying to attract professional players to its basketball competition.

• 3. Building the Roster

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  USA Basketball approached the NBA about supplying players for the 1992 roster, and the league was not initially enthusiastic. An NBA official later recalled, "We didn't see it becoming the phenomenon that it became." The first ten players were announced on the 21st of September 1991: Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen from the Chicago Bulls, John Stockton and Karl Malone from the Utah Jazz, Magic Johnson from the Los Angeles Lakers, Larry Bird from the Boston Celtics, Patrick Ewing from the New York Knicks, Chris Mullin from the Golden State Warriors, David Robinson from the San Antonio Spurs, and Charles Barkley from the Philadelphia 76ers. Sports Illustrated had already christened the forthcoming roster the "Dream Team" on its cover dated the 18th of February 1991. Bird had significant back trouble but was included because of the team's historic nature. Robinson had competed for the 1988 squad and was driven to earn a gold medal. Ewing, Jordan, and Mullin had won gold together at the 1984 Los Angeles Games. Malone had not made that 1984 team, and he carried the sting of that rejection as personal motivation heading into Barcelona. Magic Johnson's situation was the most fraught. He had retired from the Lakers in November 1991 after testing positive for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. His teammates expected him to die from the illness. Johnson later described his Olympic selection as "almost like a life saver," proof that he could still live productively. The Australian Olympic delegation threatened to boycott the Games over his inclusion, fearing infection. The threats backfired; public support for Johnson grew instead. Head coach Chuck Daly suggested Jordan serve as the team's public face; Jordan declined. Bird and Johnson were named co-captains.

• 4. Isiah Thomas and the Twelfth Spot

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  Clyde Drexler of the Portland Trail Blazers was added to the roster on the 12th of May 1992, chosen over Isiah Thomas of the Detroit Pistons for the final professional spot. What followed was years of speculation about why Thomas was excluded. Thomas's Detroit Pistons teams of the late 1980s and early 1990s, nicknamed the "Bad Boys", used overtly physical tactics against Jordan in the playoffs, and Jordan was widely believed to have made Thomas a condition of his participation. In his 2012 book "Dream Team," author Jack McCallum quotes Jordan as telling selection committee member Rod Thorn, "Rod, I don't want to play if Isiah Thomas is on the team." In 2020, both Thorn and Jordan denied that Thomas was named directly. Jordan, speaking in the documentary series "The Last Dance," described a more oblique exchange: he asked Thorn who was playing, and Thorn replied that "the guy you're thinking about is not going to be playing." Johnson released a public statement supporting Thomas after the first ten players were announced, but years later, in the book "When the Game Was Ours," Johnson offered a different account. He wrote, "Isiah killed his own chances when it came to the Olympics. Nobody on that team wanted to play with him."

• 5. Laettner Over O'Neal

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  The 12th of May 1992 also brought another decision that drew attention: Christian Laettner of Duke University was selected as the team's one collegiate player, chosen over Louisiana State University's Shaquille O'Neal. The committee had considered several candidates, including Harold Miner, Jimmy Jackson, and Alonzo Mourning. O'Neal was the number-one pick in the 1992 NBA draft and a two-time Consensus NCAA First Team All-American in 1991 and 1992, but his LSU team had been eliminated in the second round of the 1992 NCAA tournament. Laettner's case was stronger by comparison. His Duke Blue Devils won consecutive national championships in 1991 and 1992. He was the Naismith College Player of the Year. He scored the game-winning basket as time expired in the 1992 NCAA Eastern Regional final. Duke's coach, Mike Krzyzewski, was also joining the Olympic staff as a first-time assistant, and his endorsement of Laettner carried real weight. The committee was also gesturing toward tradition: including one college player acknowledged the purely amateur system the team was leaving behind.

• 6. The Scrimmage Nobody Saw

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  Before Barcelona, USA Basketball assembled a squad of the country's best college players to prepare the Dream Team for European-style opponents. That select group included Bobby Hurley, Grant Hill, Penny Hardaway, Allan Houston, Chris Webber, and Eric Montross. The Dream Team first gathered in La Jolla, California, in late June 1992. On the 24th of June, the collegians won 62-54, stunning the NBA stars. Daly had intentionally limited Jordan's playing time and made non-optimal substitutions. Assistant coach Krzyzewski later said the head coach "threw the game" to remind the professionals they could be beaten. The two teams played again the following day, with the Dream Team winning decisively. Afterward, some of the college players visited Jordan's hotel room and asked for personal items as souvenirs. The team then traveled to Monaco for six days of Olympic preparation, training two hours a day and playing exhibition games. Daly announced there would be no curfew, noting that the noted Monte Carlo nightclub Jimmy'z "doesn't open until midnight." A scrimmage in Monaco divided the squad into Blue (Johnson, Barkley, Robinson, Mullin, and Laettner) and White (Jordan, Malone, Ewing, Pippen, and Bird), with Drexler and Stockton sitting out injured. White won 40-36. Jordan called it "the best game I was ever in." Sports Illustrated later named it "the Greatest Game Nobody Ever Saw."

• 7. Barcelona

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  The Dream Team made its international debut on the 28th of June 1992 at the Tournament of the Americas in Portland, Oregon, defeating Cuba 136-57. Cuban coach Miguel Calderón Gómez assessed the gap plainly: "You can't cover the sun with your finger." The team won the tournament on the 5th of July with a 127-80 victory over Venezuela. In Barcelona, the team did not stay in the Olympic Village. Security concerns and the problem of beds too short for tall players led USA Basketball to book 80 of the 98 rooms at the Hotel Ambassador. Fans gathered outside without being allowed in. Daly compared the atmosphere to "Elvis and the Beatles put together." Opposing athletes repeatedly asked for photographs rather than treating the games as competitive events. Charles Barkley recalled receiving death threats but walked through the city alone; when asked about bodyguards, he held up his fists and said, "This is my security." Only Jordan studied the opposition's game tapes with any rigor. Opponents lost by an average of 43.8 points per game during the Olympic tournament, the second-largest margin in Olympic basketball history, surpassed only by the 1956 U.S. team's 53.5 average. In the first game against Angola, Barkley elbowed Angolan player Herlander Coimbra in the chest during a 46-1 American run and was unapologetic afterward, claiming he was hit first. The intentional foul was assessed, and Coimbra's resulting free throw was the only point Angola scored during that run. Jordan said afterward that the incident "created mixed feelings" and that there were "already some negative feelings about us." Barkley led the team in scoring during the Olympics, averaging 18.0 points per game, despite earlier concerns from selectors that he would not represent the country well. The gold-medal game against Croatia ended 117-85. Croatia had briefly led 25-23 in the first half, making it the closest contest of the tournament, a 32-point margin. Jordan and Pippen had specifically targeted Toni Kukoč, who had signed with the Bulls for more money than Pippen, whose own contract negotiations had been stalled. Stockton, up late, agreed to a Croatian player's request not to shoot. International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch declared that "the most important aspect of the Barcelona Games has been the resounding success of the basketball tournament."

• 8. What Followed

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  The Dream Team was collectively inducted into the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Hall of Fame in 2009, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2010, and the FIBA Hall of Fame in 2017. As of 2014, eleven of the twelve players and three of the four coaches had been individually inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame; only Laettner and assistant coach P.J. Carlesimo had not. Sports Illustrated compared the team to "Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, the Allman Brothers at the Fillmore East, Santana at Woodstock." The players' reflections on the experience were consistently superlative. Johnson called it "the greatest moment of my life in terms of basketball, bar none." Bird called the medal ceremony and the playing of "The Star-Spangled Banner" "the ultimate experience." Barkley said, "I don't think anything in my life can come close to that." Jordan took something more tactical from Barcelona: he said the biggest personal benefit was learning the weaknesses of his future opponents. His Chicago Bulls later defeated teams led by Barkley, Malone, and Stockton in three separate NBA Finals. The basketball world changed measurably in the decade after 1992. On opening day of the 1991-92 NBA season, rosters included 23 international players from 18 countries. By the start of the 2011-12 season, that number had grown to 74 players from 35 countries.