“It was like traveling with 12 rock stars. Or like bringing Elvis and the Beatles together,” recalled Chuck Daly, US men’s basketball coach during the unforgettable Barcelona Olympics (1992), of the media impact of the crowd at his disposal. Daly, as clearly as few, was always aware that he didn’t just have a basketball team on his hands.
These two weeks, between late July and early August, would serve as a turning point for the sport of basketball, which mesmerized the planet – embracing globalization – hand in hand with a perfect cocktail between the divine and the human. Between astonishment and the tangible. Barcelona would enjoy the American team’s sci-fi, but the whole world was entranced by its symbolism.
The Dream Team, as Sports Illustrated magazine prophetically dubbed them in February 1991, took undisputed gold, winning all eight games with a 43.8 point average. He never won by fewer than 32 points and surpassed 117 goals scored per game. In fact, Daly has not requested a single time-out throughout the championship. The sufficiency was absolute, and yet it revealed only the visible part of the iceberg. Because this was indeed not just a basketball team. It wasn’t just a machine for crushing rivals and entertaining entertainment-hungry fans. In sports and affection they were unbeatable. But there was more.
The NBA premiere
His mission was first and foremost to use a privileged environment to reclaim his position of power and dominance in his sport and, secondarily, to convince these fans – practically the whole world – that they could never live again without that adrenaline. The NBA’s seductive tentacles were here to stay.
For the first time in the history of the Olympic event, the United States entered the basketball tournament with professional players from its major league. It was no coincidence, the kings of old Europe had drawn the colors of the inventors of the game. His varsity sides had just failed in the semifinals at the two previous major tournaments (against the USSR at the Seoul 1988 games and against Yugoslavia at the World Cup two years later), a reflection of a changing reality clinically recognized even then by coach Mike Krzyzewski , Daly’s assistant in Barcelona. “Our young people are no longer enough. There are men’s teams ahead of us,” explained Krzyzewski.
Borislav Stankovic, FIBA Secretary General, had been hunting the United States to compete on full terms since the mid-1980s. And he found in David Stern, commissioner of the NBA, the perfect ally to carry out an idea that, after a prior vote, came to fruition in April 1989. The doors to a new world have been opened.
Stern then had enough to do internally with a competition fleeing under his command, but his amazing business nose led him to join Stankovic in that initiative. The reason was simple: it was a big market opportunity for the NBA.
And that was largely because it had three incomparable protagonists: Michael Jordan, Earvin Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird. They represented to perfection what could dazzle more and better. The great treasure to be unveiled. Jordan, unanimously the best player alive and having the cutest moment of his career, was the closest thing to an alien the game had to offer. And at the same time a commercial icon of maximum dimension.
HIV positive
Magic and Bird, though far from their sporting fullness (the first had retired the previous year after testing positive for HIV, and the second, with a bad back, would quit basketball after the Olympic event), added – as if that wasn’t enough – an irresistible emotional component. Both symbolized the glory of the Lakers and Celtics dynasties, the rivalry that had already captured part of their generation, along with an intriguing style that took technique and intelligence to the nth degree.
In fact, the fact that Magic wore the number 15—the last one presented in each game—wasn’t arbitrary: Americans saved the man with the smile for last, which evoked the most natural sympathy among fans. Incidentally, it was also Magic itself who convinced Bird – then 36 years old – to join the team, through a sick phone call, journalist Jack McCallum revealed in his fantastic work Dream Team (2012). His stubbornness was justified: this team – not exempt from controversy in its inception, notably by Jordan’s veto of Detroit Bad Boys star Isiah Thomas, due to the unfinished business between the two – would manage to transcend their own era.
In the field, these men were gods. Athletes about good and evil. Chosen even outside of the Olympic Village, staying at the newly opened Ambassador Hotel and protected there by a legion of professionals at your service. Off the track, however, with some exceptions due to their condition — such as Jordan’s constant trips to play golf at El Prat Club — they seemed like mortals on foot.
Watching John Stockton walk down Las Ramblas, camera in hand, with total normality and without being recognized, portrayed the perfect paradox of this mix. That of a team so unreachable that it is forever etched in the retinas of millions of people, but at the same time so accessible that one can internalize that one can meet these idols at any time without notice. Everything seemed possible with the Dream Team and under this power, that of the subconscious, they built an eternal reign.
Follow EL PAÍS Deportes on Facebook and Twitteror sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
reduced by 50 percent
Subscribe to continue reading
read limitless