Dream Team (basketball)

Identification U.S. men’s basketball team at the 1992 Summer Olympics

Place Barcelona, Spain

After losing to the Soviets in 1988 at the Olympic Games in Seoul, the Americans assembled a “Dream Team” composed, for the first time, of professional basketball players and routed the opposition in the 1992 Olympic Games, reestablishing the United States as the home of the best basketball players in the world.

After the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) opened the Olympic competition in basketball to professionals such as players from the National Basketball Association (NBA) in 1989, the United States named Chuck Daly, coach of the Detroit Pistons (NBA champions that year), to coach the 1992 U.S. Olympic men’s basketball team. His coaching staff consisted of Lenny Wilkens, Mike Krzyzewski, and P. J. Carlesimo. Despite being the coach, Daly did not select the players for what came to be known as the Dream Team, which included NBA stars Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Karl Malone, Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing, Chris Mullin, Scottie Pippen, David Robinson, John Stockton, and Clyde Drexler, as well as college player Christian Laettner of Duke University. In preparation for the Olympics, the Dream Team scrimmaged a Developmental Team made up of outstanding college players and practiced using international, rather than NBA, rules. From June 27 to July 5, the team was in Portland, Oregon, where they played other countries in their bracket; they were undefeated against Cuba, Canada, Panama, Argentina, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela, averaging well over one hundred points per game and winning by at least forty points per game. The team then had a two-week break, spending one of the weeks in Monte Carlo, where they defeated the French team by forty points in an exhibition game.

In Barcelona, the Dream Team was assigned to Pool A of the round-robin competition, and they again dominated, winning all their games against some tough European teams such as Croatia, Germany, and Spain, and South American power Brazil. In the next round, the team defeated Puerto Rico 115-77 and, after defeating Lithuania in the semifinals 127-76, faced Croatia in the finals for the gold medal. The Dream Team only once trailed Croatia, at 25-23, but went on to win 117-85.

Impact

Winning the gold medal restored American pride and reinstated the United States as the dominant country in what many Americans considered to be their game. The games, televised worldwide to more than three billion people, also spurred new interest in basketball and raised the level of play worldwide. Some countries had an NBA player on their 1992 Olympic squads, but after 1992 the number of foreign players on NBA teams increased dramatically. Most important, despite the lopsided scores, players from other countries did not resent American success, but attempted to emulate the feats and moves of the players on the Dream Team.

Bibliography

Daly, Chuck, and Alex Sachare. America’s Dream Team: The Quest for Olympic Gold. Atlanta: Turner, 1992.

Stauth, Cameron. Golden Boys: The Unauthorized Look at the U.S. Olympic Basketball Team. New York: Pocket Books, 1992.