0:00

This is The Dream Team Tapes, a

0:02

Diversion Podcasts original series

0:05

in association with I Heart Radio.

0:09

This is the story of the United States Olympic

0:11

basketball team that won gold in Barcelona,

0:15

known worldwide as the Dream

0:17

Team.

0:22

You know, I would like to play it a little bit longer, maybe

0:25

a year or two more, but there's

0:27

just no way possible I was going to be able to do that.

0:30

So today I'm retiring, and uh, I'm

0:33

still gonna be around, but not

0:35

in the capacity I once was. And

0:38

now all of a sudden, we get in a game and

0:41

he he has this scratch. It's

0:43

an open wound, but you

0:45

know it's a non bloody wound

0:47

in a control situation, and

0:51

you know, I have to dress it, and

0:54

I have these gloves in my pocket, and I look

0:56

up and all these eyes

0:58

are on the all his

1:00

teammates and the cameras on

1:02

me, and I said, I

1:04

just can't do it because it's it would

1:07

be sending a mixed message to everything.

1:10

Man. That stuff start happening almost from the moment

1:12

the Dream Team plane touched back in the United

1:14

States. The first voice

1:16

you heard was that of Larry Bird.

1:19

The second voice was that of Gary VT. The

1:22

long time, much respected trainer of

1:24

the Los Angeles Lakers. We're

1:26

going to get to that in a second, but let's

1:28

go back to Bird. The last game in

1:30

which he ever played was not against his ancient

1:33

and forever rivals, the Los Angeles Lakers,

1:35

or the seventies sixers or the Knicks. It

1:38

was against Croatia and the gold medal

1:40

game of the Olympics. Bird

1:42

hardly played. He had zero points,

1:45

zero assists, and to rebounds.

1:48

His back had given out completely. He

1:50

flew home on the team's charter plane

1:53

in a reclined position, and a couple

1:55

of days later he said goodbye, not

1:57

to basketball altogether. He became an

1:59

advisor, a team president Dave Gabbett,

2:01

and later a successful coach in execut

2:03

with the Indiana Pacers, but he did say

2:06

goodbye to his immortal playing career

2:09

now Gary Vedi, as I said,

2:11

the Lakers trainer Magic

2:13

Johnson had come triumphantly home from

2:15

Barcelona clutching a gold medal, his

2:18

HIV apparently in the rear view

2:20

mirror, but it wasn't. The

2:22

comment from Karl Malone, which we'll talk about

2:24

later, followed by this preseason

2:27

game in Charlotte and back

2:29

it came, and because of

2:31

that, Magic Johnson followed his

2:33

good friend Bird out the door. Hello

2:36

and welcome to episode eight, the final

2:38

episode of the Dream Team tapes. I'm

2:41

Jack McCallum. The story has

2:43

taken lots of twists and turns, but

2:45

in the immediate aftermath of the Barcelona

2:47

glory, this one was a pronounced

2:49

dip. Bird had decided to

2:51

retire even before he went to Barcelona,

2:54

but according to him, he hadn't even told his wife,

2:57

so his retirement press conference was sudden,

3:00

but not really shocking. It was hard

3:02

to realize how long Bird had been playing,

3:05

not in top physical shape. His

3:07

back had started to go out as long ago as

3:11

the last time his Celtics had won the title.

3:14

Remember that although Larry and Magic had

3:16

come into the league together, Bird

3:18

was more than three years older than Johnson.

3:21

We would miss him, but it was time.

3:24

So at the point when he left, there had been no Lebron,

3:27

no Kobe, no Tim Duncan, no Shack.

3:29

So where would Bird rank? Top

3:32

five? That would be a

3:34

stretch. Top ten absolutely.

3:38

Meanwhile, Magic, who had turned thirty

3:40

three dority Olympics, was still, as he saw

3:42

it, a force. He was rare to

3:44

go for the season, still

3:47

believing wrongly. I might add that

3:49

the Lakers could challenge Jordan's bulls.

3:51

And then and then

3:54

there was this preseason game between

3:56

them alone and Stockton Jazz and

3:58

the New York Knicks. Magic wasn't

4:00

even involved. He wasn't there. Harvey

4:03

Araton, the Hall of Fame writer from the New York Times,

4:05

wandered over to talk to Karl Malone, and suddenly

4:08

the mailman started to talk about Magic

4:10

and what he perceived as unspoken

4:13

fears about playing against someone

4:15

with HIV. This is from

4:17

Harvey's story. Look at this, scabs

4:19

and cuts all over me, said Malone. He pressed

4:22

a finger to a small pinkish hole on his

4:24

thigh that was developing into a scab.

4:26

I get these every night, every game, he said.

4:29

They can't tell you that you're not at risk, and

4:32

you can't tell me there's one

4:34

guy in the NBA who hasn't

4:36

thought about it. Now,

4:38

where did that come from? Why did it come up

4:40

suddenly? Was he really voicing widespread

4:42

concerns years later?

4:45

It remains a mystery. I couldn't

4:47

get Malone to talk about it during our long

4:49

interview for my Dream Team book, but it

4:51

has been cleared throughout that Malone just

4:53

didn't like the showman side of

4:56

Irvin Magic Johnson, and during our

4:58

interview, Carl kept making several references

5:00

to people he thought were real. Pointedly,

5:03

Magic was not one of them. Barkley

5:06

was one of those real guys, and these

5:08

two guys were another. I've seen people

5:10

that it's kind of different when the cameras. You know,

5:12

some people when the camera's one and depend on

5:14

who it is for consaying, that's why

5:16

I thought the world and that's why Stott was saying.

5:19

Chris Mother and Conor was one of my favorite.

5:21

Magic says that he and Malone never talked about it

5:23

when they got back, never talked about

5:25

it at all over the course of now

5:28

going on twenty seven years. Only

5:30

Carl knows whether his personal resentment

5:32

of Magic was the reason he made the comment,

5:35

or was he genuinely frightened about

5:38

HIV, despite the fact that

5:40

he had spent much of the summer in Magic's

5:42

company. I just don't know, but

5:44

it's worth hearing all of what Magic said

5:47

when I asked him about it in two thousand and

5:49

eleven. We did a great job of

5:51

educating not just to play it, but the world

5:54

because the world was not educated and we

5:56

stely think about all the misinformation

5:59

that was out there. So I

6:01

had to be the person

6:03

who could now, okay, let me give you the

6:05

right information. Let me education. And

6:08

then the Olympics actually gave me the platform

6:11

to show the world that a guy

6:13

what HIV could still play play

6:15

at a high level and

6:18

he wasn't going to get HIV by playing against

6:20

me. So when carl want to come

6:22

back, and he said that, that's kind of set

6:24

what I had did, and the Olympics

6:27

said it back zones that now I got more

6:29

work to do. But the fatal blow

6:31

to Magic's return were the optics

6:33

from that night in Charlotte that Gary

6:35

VD was talking about the

6:37

pressure got to be too much for him. It

6:40

was one of those moments that you understand

6:42

the power of image. Metaphorically

6:45

speaking. The whole world was

6:47

watching Gary VD treat

6:49

Magic Johnson's cut without gloves.

6:52

Magic realized that almost right away

6:55

he saw the uproar and uncomfortable

6:58

nous it caused, and heng

7:00

it up for the second time.

7:02

Now there would be a third

7:05

after an abbreviated return, but for all

7:07

intents and purposes, Magic

7:10

went out with the man he came

7:12

in with bird. Now a word

7:14

about Gary VT, the Lakers trainer, A wonderful

7:16

man. He is in anyone's Hall of fame a trainers,

7:19

but there are others like him in the NBA. You

7:21

could hear the emotion in Gary's voice during

7:24

that radio interview. Trainers

7:26

get extremely close to players and

7:28

they carry secrets to the grave, and

7:31

I've known very few that will betray confidences.

7:34

I should know. I've tried. What

7:39

else was going on after Barcelona, Well,

7:42

let's go to Jordan's He led the Bulls

7:44

to their third straight championship and

7:46

I can still see him celebrating with his father

7:49

in the Bulls locker room in Phoenix. Five

7:52

weeks later, James R. Jordan's

7:54

Sr. Was found murdered in his

7:57

car, and a few months

7:59

after that October six, I'm

8:03

very solid with my decision of not

8:05

to play the game of basketball

8:08

name b A. The reason

8:10

being, I've heard a lot of different speculations

8:13

about my reasons for not playing, but

8:16

I've always stressed to people

8:18

that have known me and the media that has followed

8:20

me that when I lose

8:24

the sense of motivation and the sense of to

8:26

prove something as a basketball player.

8:29

It's time for me to move away from the game of basketball.

8:32

For whatever reason, Michael always loved to say the

8:34

game of basketball. He was like those

8:36

football coaches and commentators who feel

8:38

compelled to say football all the time.

8:41

We moved the football real well, we're a good football

8:43

team right now. We just got to become a better football

8:46

team. Jordan loved to say

8:48

the game of basketball. The Jordan's

8:50

story has been told endlessly, so I won't

8:52

tell it again in detail. Michael went

8:54

on to minor league baseball. Questions dogged

8:57

him about whether or not his gambling debts or

8:59

something else was behind his father's

9:01

murder. They continue today,

9:04

but I don't believe them. And the league

9:06

going into the season,

9:09

found itself without Michael Magic

9:11

Larry. I'm trying to think of something

9:13

comparable. Hey, let's go see the Beatles. But listen,

9:16

John, Paul and George are all out, but

9:19

Ringo will still be there on drums. And

9:21

the NBA was also without Jack

9:24

McCallum. I know the

9:26

loss wasn't quite on a par with Jordan's

9:28

Magic and Bird, but something

9:30

felt empty. How could it get

9:32

any better than covering the league during

9:34

its renaissance and that's what I

9:36

had done. The last of dr Ja,

9:39

the best of Magic and Bird, the brilliantly

9:41

tough bad boy Pistons, the creation

9:43

of All Star Weekend, and the Duncan three point

9:46

contests. Really good players

9:48

who didn't make the Dream Team, like James Worthy,

9:51

Dominique Wilkins, Isaiah Thomas.

9:54

He had the ascendancy of Jordan's and

9:56

then you had the dream Team. So

9:58

I left after the any three season,

10:00

did some editing, covered college

10:02

basketball for a year general stuff,

10:05

and did return to the NBA until early in

10:07

the two thousand's, just in time

10:09

to see Jordan's swansong with

10:11

the Washington Wizards. Now,

10:23

after this first dream team,

10:25

nobody could figure out if the term dream

10:27

team could be used again.

10:29

The US Olympic basketball

10:32

team was called in some quarters dream

10:34

team too, but in other quarters,

10:37

how about this was a nightmare.

10:40

That was Barkley who played on the team,

10:42

as did Pippin the loan, Robinson

10:44

and Stockton. But it was kind

10:46

of an f and nightmare. It had the same

10:49

unmerciful on court beatings of without

10:52

the charm and well maturity

10:54

of that first team. Now, in a way

10:56

it was inevitable. It was like when

10:58

you and your partner were young and rented a cabin

11:00

in the woods, and the weather was perfect, and the cabin was

11:03

quaint, and you cook scrambled eggs in

11:05

an old cast iron pan, and

11:07

you made love under a blanket on the couch. And

11:09

then you went back four years later and replicated

11:12

that rained every day, The cabin roof

11:14

leaked, the sex blanket was wet

11:17

and moldy, and by the end of the weekend

11:19

you're throwing the eggs at each other. By

11:22

the way, this absolutely never happened to me. More

11:24

on Dream Team too, No, I can't call it that, but more

11:27

on that in a minute. In the immediate aftermath

11:29

of the first Dream Team, the biggest

11:31

winner was probably Barkley.

11:34

He went to Phoenix, won an MVP

11:36

award, carried his team to the

11:38

finals, where of course he was disposed

11:41

of by Jordan's. He talked

11:43

endlessly as to others like Pippin, David

11:45

Robinson and Chris Mullen about

11:47

how the experience had made him better, gave

11:50

him ideas about leadership the

11:52

kind showed by Magic and Michael, and

11:54

commitment the kind showed by Karl

11:57

Malone. Was during that Championship

11:59

series, of Barkley told his daughter Christiana,

12:02

Honey, no matter how good I am

12:04

and I believe I'm the second best player in the league,

12:07

there's no way I'm better than that some bitch

12:09

in Chicago. Another player

12:11

to make out well in the aftermath of the Dream

12:13

Team was David Robinson. He didn't win a championship

12:15

right away. That wouldn't come until the strike the late

12:18

season of and again

12:20

in two thousand three, and

12:22

it didn't come at all until he got Tim Duncan

12:24

as a running mate. In fact, one

12:26

of the whispers about the Admiral was that he never

12:28

would have won without Tim. But

12:30

that's another story. But in the wake of

12:32

the Dream Team, Robinson clearly became

12:34

a very impactful center, the

12:37

very ideal of the mobile, athletic,

12:40

versatile center who was still a

12:42

center, not a seven foot stretch

12:44

for but back to the basket pivot

12:46

man. On on the evening of one

12:51

of the most amazing statistical anomalies

12:54

in the history of the NBA occurred in

12:56

a late season game against the Los Angeles

12:59

Clippers. San Antonio's

13:01

David Robinson put up seventy

13:03

one points at that time,

13:06

the seventh highest single game total

13:08

in the history of the NBA, the same

13:11

point total that Elgin Baylor had

13:13

scored for the Los Angeles Lakers in nineteen

13:16

sixty five. Of the others came from Will

13:18

Chamberlain and the sixth from David Thompson.

13:21

Parenthetical alert. Twelve years

13:23

after the Admiral's explosion, the

13:25

late great Kobe Bryant, as many

13:28

of you remember, got eighty one against

13:30

the Toronto Raptors. Now,

13:32

what was going on in that Robinson came. Well,

13:35

he had been battling Shaquille O'Neil for the scoring

13:37

title. But those were long ago

13:39

days, huh, when Sentators actually scored

13:41

a lot of points, and this outburst

13:44

gave David the title. He talks about

13:46

the guidance he got that night from John Lucas,

13:49

who was in the Spurs coach. Yes,

13:52

there was a time before Gregg Popovich

13:54

coached the Spurs. I'm gonna make sure every

13:58

shot and I was like, are you crazy?

14:02

Like you know, the last thing I want to do is

14:04

go out there and try to do something like that.

14:07

Man, that's classic Robinson. I don't

14:09

want to take every shot. Coach. Remember

14:11

what Jordan's said about him. Basketball

14:14

wasn't in David's DNA. I

14:16

wonder what Robinson would have been like had

14:19

he had the mentality to get seventy one

14:21

every night. Another Dream Teamer

14:23

who made out well was Clyde Drexler, who

14:25

was traded from Portland to Houston halfway

14:27

through season and

14:30

his Rockets won the championship. As

14:32

Clyde saw it, this finally provided

14:34

a comeback line to all the crap he

14:37

took from the Dream Team in the media about

14:39

getting torched by Jordan's and

14:41

being on teams that weren't very smart. This

14:44

is Clyde talking about the comeback he used

14:47

when the alpha male antagonists primarily

14:50

Jordan and Magic, used to get on his

14:52

ass

14:52

and let's

14:55

side

14:59

of I couldn't help laughing when

15:01

I interviewed Clyde. His answer to almost

15:04

every question was some version of

15:06

how much he was disrespected. And

15:09

as far as shutting up Magic and Bird and

15:11

Jordan's real quick I doubt it. Those

15:13

guys never shut up far less quickly.

15:16

But Drexler's point was that when

15:18

he got to Euston, he had a great center in

15:21

a Chemo La Juan, and that's

15:23

what he always needed to be a champion. Another

15:26

great player now He's correct

15:28

to an extent, but even then Drexler couldn't

15:30

escape Jordan's shadow. Jordan

15:33

was off playing baseball for the season,

15:36

came back late, not

15:39

enough time to get the Bulls completely right. So

15:42

the Rockets, who won two straight titles

15:45

will never be fully appreciated. They

15:47

were the team that won when the Bulls

15:49

were without Jordan's and without being

15:52

fully Jordanized. While

15:54

on that subject, you have to remember how many fingers

15:57

and whose fingers were left ringless

15:59

by and being around the fingers

16:01

of Barkley Malone, Stockton, Ewing

16:04

Gary Payton were all directly

16:06

impacted by Jordan's particularly

16:09

those of Malone and Stockton, who lost to the Bulls

16:11

in both the finals.

16:15

And So back to the Olympics

16:17

in Atlanta, the one that followed

16:19

the original Dream team, the US

16:21

again rolled through. Their closest game was

16:23

predictably against Lithuania, and they won

16:25

that by twenty two points. But

16:27

but almost nobody cared. There

16:30

just wasn't much. Buzz I

16:33

wasn't covering basketball that Olympics, but I

16:35

was free to go anywhere, and I rarely

16:37

even went to watch basketball. I

16:40

went to the semifinal against Australia, saw

16:42

Barkley and he said, jack get

16:44

me the funk out of here. But

16:47

that team was in a tough position. Remember

16:50

the right stuff. Immortal movie adapted

16:52

from Tom Wolfe's Immortal nonfiction book.

16:55

When Alan Shepard, the first man into

16:57

space, returns after his fifth

17:00

teen minute suborbital successful

17:02

mission, he's greeted with national

17:05

acclaim JFK Jackie

17:07

the whole bit. Less than

17:09

three months later, Gus Grissom

17:12

goes up on a similar mission and almost

17:14

nobody cares. And when the capsule's

17:16

hatch blows open prematurely and

17:19

Grissom is blamed, the nation

17:21

went out of its way to ignore the fact

17:23

that somebody had squeezed himself into

17:25

what amounts to a hole in the wall, risk

17:28

his life by flying into space and

17:31

crashing into a cold ocean. In

17:33

the movie, Grissom's wife

17:35

is offended and she should be by the lack

17:38

of attention. Where's Jackie

17:40

this time? She wants to know did

17:43

anyone ever get more screwed than Gus Grissom? By

17:45

the way, six years after this Mercury

17:47

mission, he along with two other astronauts,

17:50

dies in a fire during the testing for the

17:52

Apollo missions. Forgotten

17:54

Hero So the second dream

17:56

team in the third which won the gold in Australian

17:58

two thousand, just couldn't win even though

18:00

they want. There wasn't the glamour,

18:03

the glitz, the excitement and

18:05

most of all the preternatural novelty

18:08

of seeing all these guys together. And

18:10

the two thousand team almost didn't win. It

18:12

beat Lithuania by only nine points, then

18:15

beat them again by only two points in the semifinals.

18:19

Lithuania muster three pointer at the buzzer that

18:21

would have given them the win, and Dream

18:23

Team three. By now nobody was calling

18:25

them that only won the gold medal

18:27

game against France by ten points. That

18:30

USA team was composed of solid players

18:32

Jason Kidd, Ray Allen Vince Carter, Alonso,

18:35

Morning Gary Peyton, Kevin

18:37

Garnett. But they

18:40

weren't the dream team. That's

18:42

the burden they carry.

18:45

They weren't the dream team.

18:47

And by two thousand and four Athens,

18:50

even with NBA players, they won the bronze

18:53

medal. Coming back, if you could

18:55

call at that after an opening

18:58

to seventy three lost to Puerto Rico. Let

19:01

me repeat that, after a seventy

19:04

three loss to Puerto Rico. So

19:06

the pressure of living up to the first Dream Team.

19:08

The only dream Team wasn't the primary

19:10

reason that US primacy

19:13

began to evaporate. The

19:15

world had gotten better. See,

19:18

there had already been a foundational cast

19:20

of international players in the NBA by

19:22

the turn of the century, a La Joan ric

19:24

Smits, Bloody divach To Kembe

19:26

Matumbo and earlier my friend

19:28

Shrunus Marshalonis and

19:31

the late great Drazen Petrovitch who

19:33

died in a car accident the year after the Barcelona

19:36

Games. But the Dream

19:38

Team's arrival in Barcelona, and that

19:41

was the key, that was the explosion.

19:44

It was almost like a door to a different world

19:46

had been blown open. Why

19:50

well, fifteen

19:52

year old Manu Ginobili was watching the games

19:55

from Argentina. Fourteen

19:57

year old Dirk now Whiskey, already heading

19:59

towards seven tall with a sweet jump shot,

20:01

was watching from Germany. Another

20:04

growing boy, Pau Gasoul, was

20:06

twelve, watching from Spain, and

20:08

he had a younger brother named Mark who

20:11

was also watching. Hato

20:13

Turkulo was twelve. He was watching

20:15

from Turkey. Two eleven

20:18

year olds were watching from different parts of the

20:20

world. Andre Carolinko was cheering

20:22

on the unified team from Russia, and

20:24

Yao Ming was watching from China. A

20:26

giant eight year old named Andrew

20:29

Bogatt was watching from Australia,

20:31

and Australia was already pretty good. A

20:34

lightning fast ten year old named Tony Parker

20:37

was watching from France. And

20:39

seven years after the Barcelona games,

20:42

the Spurs got Genoble with the fifty

20:44

seven pick of the draft, and two

20:46

years later they got Parker with the final

20:48

pick of the first round. They

20:51

helped the Spurs become the team

20:53

of the first decade of this century.

20:55

You see, so many of us saw

20:58

the lopsided results of the Dream Team

21:00

games and saw only slaughters,

21:03

mismatches, one team so

21:05

far ahead of the other that standard metrics

21:07

of comparison didn't even apply.

21:10

But the players in these other countries, the real

21:12

players at least, saw something

21:14

else. They saw a game that was

21:17

demystified. Hey,

21:20

the Dream Team isn't gods. They're not ten ft

21:22

tall, they don't have the speed of Mercury. They passed

21:24

the screen away, they find the open man,

21:26

they go back door. When it's there, they

21:28

box out. Okay, Barkley never did, but he got

21:30

the rebound anyway. They play the game

21:33

the same way we do, only

21:35

a hundred times better. That's

21:37

the difference we can get there. One

21:41

game, one world. And now

21:43

there were a hundred and eight international

21:45

players a hundred and eight on

21:48

NBA rosters at the beginning of

21:50

the two thousand, nineteen twenty season.

21:53

There have been as many as a hundred and thirteen,

21:56

with forty two countries represented

21:58

forty two. It was once

22:00

a novelty. Now it's just standard

22:02

operating procedure, and they're

22:05

not marginal players. They

22:07

include some of the best players in the game. The Greek

22:09

freak in Milwaukee, Janis andez Copo.

22:12

That's how he says to pronounce it, Luka

22:14

don Chick and Christaps Porcingis in Dallas,

22:17

Nicolo Jokich in Denver, Joel

22:19

Embiad in Philadelphia, Pascal

22:21

Siakim in Toronto, Taco

22:24

Fall in Boston, and Demontus

22:26

Sabonis in Indiana. He is, by

22:28

the way, the son of the great Arvidas Sabonis, who

22:30

played for Lithuania in the nine two

22:33

Olympics, a great Samonas

22:35

story. By the way, he was not present for the podium

22:37

ceremony. The reason was widely

22:39

believed to be too much

22:41

vodka. That was Sabonis.

22:44

So the great irony of the Dream Team

22:47

was that it started out as a celebration of

22:49

American basketball and ended

22:51

up as a launch pad for basketball around

22:54

the world. And remember who

22:56

was telling us that over thirty years ago, the

22:58

inspector of Beat Good Old Boris

23:01

Stankovic. The only way

23:03

we grow the game is if everybody

23:06

plays against each other. That

23:18

was my pleasure to take you on this journey, and that's what

23:21

it felt like. Remember that Mad Men

23:23

episode when Don Draper creates a campaign

23:25

for the slide Projector and he

23:27

talks about being a time machine that makes

23:29

you ache with nostalgia and etcetera,

23:32

etcetera. Well, this wasn't that. I

23:35

don't feel nostalgic about the Dream Team.

23:37

I don't want to go back there. But

23:39

what the podcast has given me the opportunity

23:42

to do, though, is remember from time

23:44

to time how lucky it was to

23:46

be on the journey. There was a place

23:48

in a Dream Team book when I conjured up the idea

23:50

of concentrated greatness being

23:53

in one place at one time. There's

23:55

a legendary photo taken in by

23:58

Art Kane of a group of jazz musicians

24:01

in Harlem. The names are Staggering,

24:03

Count Basie, are Blaky, Dizzy Gillespie,

24:06

Coleman, Hawk and Steen, Cruper, Charlie

24:08

Mingus, the Loneous Monk, Jerry

24:10

Mulligan, Sonny Rollins. Where

24:13

the hell Miles Davis is I don't know, but

24:16

he was around at that time too. I

24:18

also brought up a photo that was in Ronald W.

24:20

Clark's biography Einstein The Life

24:22

and Times. There at one

24:24

time was a physics symposium

24:26

attended by most of the great minds of the

24:29

time, Einstein, Madame

24:31

Marie Curie, Andre Lorenz,

24:33

Max Planck, and the famous French

24:35

mathematician on the three point Kari, whom

24:38

Einstein considered his loan intellectual

24:40

equal. I used to stare at it, fascinated

24:43

that all those visionary thinkers were

24:45

gathered together at one time, a

24:48

fortuitous accident of history.

24:51

No basketball inc jazz, well, to a certain extent,

24:53

it is, but it certainly ain't physics.

24:55

But it was still all that concentration

24:57

of greatness, a delicious acts

25:00

of timing. That was a dream team.

25:02

I'll leave you with two sound bites. The

25:04

first is from John Stockton. I can't

25:07

think of anyone less likely to talk about

25:09

basketball, heaven and poetry

25:11

and stock Well, that's

25:14

why I mean, all the way up to drinking

25:16

the way of absolutely immediately

25:19

upon the body language of him cutting

25:21

to the slot, the other guys were making

25:24

reciprocal moves or coordinating

25:26

news and it was. He

25:29

was a no nonsense, straight ahead thinker

25:31

who never got dewy eyed about anything

25:33

anything I saw at least, But this

25:35

is what playing on his team meant to him.

25:37

These guys, you see, formed their basketball

25:40

character before the age of height. They

25:42

were hooped children of the sixties and seventies,

25:45

not the nineties and the aughts, when

25:47

you could make a king's ransom for being mediocre,

25:50

largely because of what the Dream Team created. Sure,

25:53

richest endorsements, fame glory

25:55

followed the Dream Team, but that is

25:58

not what was in their DNA. I'm

26:00

not saying they were the last generation to come up

26:02

that way, though Barkley says it, and

26:04

they weren't the last players to play for the love

26:06

of the game, but basketball

26:08

basketball only playing

26:10

the game the right way, that was what

26:13

made them. The final bite is from Bird,

26:15

and you heard it much earlier in the podcast,

26:17

but it's worth repeating Larry Bird,

26:19

Grandpa Larry, the oldest player

26:22

on the Dream Team, whose hoop chops

26:24

were formed in a kind of darkness

26:26

on the edge of town atmosphere. As

26:28

a lower class kid from a berg that

26:31

quite literally sounds like it conjures up

26:33

hard times French lique.

26:36

Bird's last regular season game was at Richfield

26:38

Coliseum in suburban Cleveland.

26:40

Bird describes why he loved to play there.

26:43

The second game I played an NBA,

26:45

we played Ritchfield. We pulled up there and

26:48

I couldn't believe See It's

26:50

what I always dreamed, freaking

26:54

basketball building into color Field. Bird

26:56

would have been happy playing anywhere. It just turned

26:59

out that his final game was in Barcelona, Spain,

27:01

on the biggest stage in the world, on the

27:03

best team ever put together. This

27:06

has been great for me and I hope you've enjoyed it too.

27:08

Dream Team the book is still available. I'm

27:11

Jack McCallum, and thanks for listening. If

27:22

you enjoyed The Dream Team Tapes, please

27:24

follow, rate, and review wherever

27:26

you get your podcasts. The

27:29

Dream Team Tapes is written and hosted

27:31

by Jack McCallum. Executive

27:34

producers Mark Francis and

27:36

Scott Waxman. Executive

27:38

producer for I heart Media, is shown

27:40

to tone. The Dream

27:43

Team Tapes is a Diversion Podcasts

27:45

original series in association

27:47

with I heart Radio. For

27:50

more podcasts from my heart Radio,

27:52

visit the i heart Radio app, Apple

27:54

Podcasts, or wherever you

27:57

listen to your favorite shows.