Authors: Jack McCallum
And you know what? It couldn’t have been a better scene if NBC had orchestrated the choreography of it.
But it didn’t matter to the USOC. The special accommodations, the extra security, the demand for tickets for a sport that in some years was barely on the Olympic radar—all of it angered the organization deeply. Mike Moran, the head of PR for the USOC, went after Barkley for the journal he was “writing” (it was more like a dictation with David Dupree cleaning it up) for
USA Today
, concerned that he was getting paid. The pettiness boggled the mind. Barkley was of course not getting paid, and if he had been, the sum wouldn’t have covered the amount that accidentally spilled out of his pockets on Las Ramblas every night.
The lead bureaucratic jihadist was LeRoy Walker, one of the officials who had gotten under the Dream Team’s collective skin in Portland. He was the titular head of the U.S. delegation as well as the next USOC president. Midway through the Games Walker caused a firestorm when he told a tale of stopping to watch a televised Dream Team game with a bunch of other U.S. athletes only to
hear them root against their countrymen, the presumption being that they were fed up with the Brahmin treatment given the basketball team. “I may be from the old school,” the seventy-four-year-old Walker told several news outlets, “but when I find Americans pulling against Americans, it bothers me.”
“Old school” doesn’t begin to cover it. Walker conjured up the master-of-Trinity character memorably portrayed by John Gielgud in
Chariots of Fire
, who complained that a sprinter was “playing the tradesman” for daring to use a professional coach. Walker was lost in the past, holding on to the idea that the pros should’ve stayed in the Olympic Village and that a U.S. college team could still win gold “if we choose the right ones.” He ignored the fact that other highly compensated U.S. athletes, such as track stars Carl Lewis, Mike Powell, and Jackie Joyner-Kersee and tennis player Pete Sampras, were lavishly bungalowed outside the Olympic Village also, and that American collegians would no longer have a chance in an emerging new basketball order.
There is little doubt that the USOC saw it as a larger fight, one for the very future of the organization; even the eminently reasonable Harvey Schiller bought into that idea a little bit. “There was a real concern about the NBA taking over,” Schiller, the chairman of the USOC in 1992, told me. “The NBA had already put people on the USA Basketball board, so what was to stop them from putting people on the USOC board? Some people saw this as the beginning of professional sports consuming the Olympic movement.”
So the bureaucrats did what bureaucrats do—kvetch.
At the end of the day, the USOC dug in its heels on the one issue where it seemed to hold the hammer and one that seemed substantive enough to cause a civil war—the Dream Team’s podium garb at the medal ceremony.
No governing body can control the “competitive attire” of an athlete, though what constitutes competitive attire can get tricky. In hockey, for example, a player can’t be told what stick or skates he can use, but his gloves are up for grabs. In swimming, the cap is considered “competitive attire” but trunks are not. Basketball is like
track and field—the USOC cannot dictate footwear, but it can mandate that a certain uniform be worn. There was never a whisper of complaint from anyone about the Dream Team game uniform, which was made by Champion, probably because the logo is small and Nike isn’t in the NBA uniform business anyway. But the Reebok-sponsored platform suit, which featured the company patch on the right shoulder? That was something else again.
In accepting the invitation to play on the Dream Team, Jordan and his agent, David Falk, had told the USOC, USA Basketball, and whoever else was listening that he wouldn’t wear Reebok. As much as anyone wanted to paint Nike as the bad guy—I’d be more than willing to do that if it were the truth—it wasn’t the company making the stink. Swoosh chairman Phil Knight had all but checked out on the issue, other than to offer a memorable one-liner at the expense of the USOC chairman: when he heard Schiller insist that the basketball team would not be allowed on the podium if it did not wear the Reebok suit, Knight said: “Who does Harvey Schiller think he is, Janet Reno?” (History lesson: she was attorney general at the time.) It was Jordan and Falk—mostly Jordan—who were most insistent.
The Reebok story had substantial legs in Barcelona partly because there was almost nothing to write about once the Dream Team took the court and began dismantling the opposition. The USOC’s Moran was always able to work up a nice froth when asked about the Dream Team anyway, and in this case he insisted that the players would not be able to take the medal stand unless they wore “the patriotic clothing approved by the USOC.”
Now, we may raise an eyebrow about what Jordan believes to be principle, but by that time he had at least been in a protracted contractual relationship with Nike. As for the USOC’s position, there was nothing intrinsically “patriotic” about the Reebok suit, nothing red, white, and blue, only green. Reebok had paid the USOC about $2 million to be a platform sponsor. But it was easy for the USOC to play the star-spangled-banner card, painting itself as protectors of the Republic and the Dream Teamers as greedy self-promoters.
“I got two million reasons not to wear that shit,” Charles Barkley proclaimed, thereby releasing the terms of his deal with Nike.
But this wasn’t about Barkley. It was about Jordan, whose annual Nike take at the time was exponentially larger than what Barkley got. The team would follow Jordan’s lead. Players such as Malone, who had his own deal with LA Gear (“I’m an off-brand guy,” Karl used to say), weren’t crazy about always being a minor character in someone else’s play, and it would’ve been interesting had Jordan declared, “We’re not going out for the medal ceremony.” I have the feeling that Malone would’ve wrestled him to the locker room floor on that point. But the Dream Team functioned according to a hierarchy that had Jordan and Magic on top (and Bird when he cared), and the rest of the team would take its cue from Jordan.
Jordan’s loyalty to Nike sometimes reached a psychosis that went well beyond the objectionable
Republicans buy sneakers, too
. One of his good friends, Fred Whitfield, now team president with the Bobcats, remembers Jordan taking a knife to the Puma footwear that Whitfield had in his closet. One day Jordan, authentically indignant, looked at my piddling $50 New Balances and said, “What are you wearing that shit for?”
(When I interviewed Jordan in the summer of 2011, I wore loafers so he wouldn’t get a gander at my standard-issue Asics. I make no apologies for that. Jordan had that same insane loyalty about his alma mater. He once told Falk that he would fire him if the agent sent his daughter to Duke, which is where she ended up going. Falk was honestly worried for a while that Jordan would follow through, but he didn’t.)
So was it about loyalty or money? Both, really. The obvious comparison is to the Lithuanians, who wore their of-the-people-by-the-people-for-the-people Grateful Dead T-shirts out of loyalty. But, really, that had something to do with bucks, too—the Dead had written them a check.
Behind the scenes, Schiller played his trump card: the organization held all of the passports, and he told USA Basketball reps, “We won’t give them back.” Schiller knew that he wouldn’t strand
twelve of the world’s best-known athletes in a foreign land—the Spanish government would’ve waved them through customs anyway, collecting autographs and photos along the way—and it was never going to come to that. But Schiller did see this as an issue that, unlike most involving the Dream Team, could be won.
As the years rolled by, it has become increasingly difficult to deconstruct this platform episode, to find out who knew what and when they knew it. Understand first there are two threads to the story—the pin-back and the flag. Schiller says that a few days before the gold medal game he attended a luncheon that featured U.S. tennis player Mary Jo Fernandez, who had won a gold medal in doubles and a bronze in singles. “Mary Jo was wearing the award jacket and had it zipped about two-thirds up,” says Schiller. “And with the flaps opened up, it covered the Reebok logo. As soon as I left, I called Dave Gavitt, told him to get an awards jacket and zip it part of the way up, see what happens.”
Meanwhile, a couple of days before the gold medal final, some of the Dream Teamers had decided that they would wear the jacket but get something—maybe tape or a strip of cloth—to cover up the logo. They didn’t know about the pin-back idea, and Jordan swears that he believed they wouldn’t have to wear the jacket at all. What is most incredible is that situation was allowed to go on as long as it did, right up until the gold medal game against Croatia on August 8.
On that morning, Daly read a note that had been slipped under his hotel room door. It was from NBC’s Ebersol, inviting Daly to send someone to pick up a videotape of a piece the network had run the night before about the controversial U.S. defeat in the 1972 Munich Games. Daly dispatched a manager to get it, and he and P. J. Carlesimo reviewed it, agreeing that it might serve as motivation to get a tired team amped up.
The tape player wouldn’t function at the pregame get-together at the hotel about four hours before tip-off. The Prince of Pessimism did not consider this a good omen. He made sure that the video came with them to the arena, and it did work in the locker room. On
the way to the arena … another omen, though no one knew whether this was good or bad. As with Puerto Rico, the Croatian team bus was pulled over to the side so the Dream Team could pass. Bird was already on the practice court, going through his pregame retinue of shots, when the Croatian players arrived. “Laslo, what is this?” said Stojko Vrankovic, his Celtics teammate. “We cannot even be on the same road with you?” “Wasn’t up to me,” said Bird, suppressing a laugh and thinking,
I hope this doesn’t work against us
.
Once in the locker room, the Dream Teamers watched the 1972 tape attentively, fascinated by the appalling compound of double-dealing and bureaucracy that enabled the Soviets to get three chances to win the game. None of the Dream Teamers believed that they could get themselves in a position to lose by referee incompetence; that only happens to teams that can’t build a double-digit lead. But it was a wise move for the Prince of Pessimism.
Still, there was an anticlimactic feeling to the evening that was helped along by Croatia’s coach, Petar Skansi. After his team had beaten the Unified Team to reach the final, he had declared, “This was our final today.” The Dream Teamers were tired of Barcelona by then—even Barkley had stopped going to Las Ramblas—and thinking only of resting their weary bodies before NBA training camps began eight weeks hence. They came storming out of their locker room, stopped to take a pathetic snapshot (see the
prologue
), struggled for a few uneasy minutes (Croatia actually led 25–23), then continued on their merry, inexorable way, dispatching Croatia 117–85. Petrovic (24 points) was his usual defiant self, and Kukoc was a lot better (16 points) than he was in the first meeting. “I got my greatest respect for Toni Kukoc the second time we played them,” Jordan told me. (Let’s be clear that he said this in 2011; that’s not the way he acted in 1992.)
That left only the suspense of what the U.S. team, having defeated their eight opponents by the absurd average of 43.8 points, would wear to the medal ceremony.
Plans had been made at the pregame meal, according to USA Basketball’s Tom McGrath, to pin back the lapels of the Reebok suit on the players so that the logo wouldn’t show; this was the Schiller
plan. I have no doubt that McGrath’s memory is correct because dozens of safety pins had to be gathered, and they were indeed there for the players after the game. But either the pin-back idea never caught on with the players, it wasn’t communicated clearly enough, or the players simply tuned it out.
“There kept being no solution and no solution and finally we’re at the gold medal game,” says Jordan, still able to work up a fire-eyed fury about the issue twenty years later. “So I thought we were just going to wear our game uniform, which I thought would be great. But then we were told, ‘You can’t go out there unless you wear Reebok.’ ”
Jordan stood up and said, “I feel like I’m dissing America, that we’re making business bigger than that America on our jersey.” If that sounds hypocritical since his fear was of showing disloyalty to his own business interests, well, that’s how he felt.
I ask him if he ever considered not going out for the medal ceremony.
“Of course not,” he says. “I wouldn’t have done that to my teammates. And they knew that. They had me in a corner.”
Then Jordan had another idea. “Can you find some American flags?” he asked McGrath.
Out came the tie-dyed Lithuanians, hungover and happy, Sabonis-less, looking for all the world like a gloriously pie-eyed band of pot smokers who had beaten Alpha Tau Omega in the intramural championship final. They were followed by the U.S. team. Magic Johnson, wearing a wide smile, was in the lead, an American flag draped over his right shoulder, his left hand holding it in place. Barkley was next, a flag around both of his shoulders. Mullin, Stockton, Malone, and Drexler followed. None of them wore flags, but all had their jackets zipped so that the Reebok logo was hidden. Jordan, blowing a bubble, was next, a flag on his right shoulder, clearly covering the Reebok logo. Pippen, Bird, Ewing, Robinson, and Laettner followed. (Only three flags had been procured from spectators.)
From his seat near midcourt, NBA commissioner David Stern watched with mixed emotions. He was proud (in general) of the
way the NBA players had comported themselves, proud that they never seemed to rub it in (Barkley’s elbow notwithstanding), proud that eight grind-the-other-guys-into-dust routs had been accomplished without an international incident. But he was also a businessman, schooled in the art of the deal, and was disappointed in the flags and the artfully zipped jackets.
“In retrospect, I would’ve been much more forceful with our players for their sake,” Stern told me years later. “But unfortunately, as was our style in Barcelona, we [the NBA] deferred, and it tainted our players a little bit. We would’ve told Reebok and Nike, ‘Okay, fellas, let’s be above this.’ But we let USA Basketball handle it.”