Excitement was at a fever pitch among fans when Team USA decided to send a roster full of NBA players for the first time to the Olympics in 1992. Their eagerness to catch a glimpse of the world’s finest basketball players left Charles Barkley astonished.
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During an appearance on Podcast P with Paul George, the Hall of Famer shared some stories from his time in Barcelona with the Dream Team in 1992. When asked what was the wildest moment he witnessed, Barkley said,
“It was so crazy. When we were going to practice or going to a game… Probably 20 or 30 feet from the hotel, there were 5000 people out there for practice, for games, just screaming every time we left the hotel.”
He revealed that fans were particularly desperate to catch sight of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird. The two-time Olympic gold medalist added that the large gatherings everywhere the Dream Team went prompted organizers to beef up security around them. When fans couldn’t get close to them, they came up with an ingenious plan to get the players’ attention. Barkley said,
“Anytime we’d travel, we had two motorcycle guys on the side with machine guns. Had a guy in the front with a motorcycle with a guy in the back with a machine gun. Had two police cars in the front and the back and then we had a helicopter above the bus… Man, on the highway, there were hundreds of people holding up signs. It was crazy, like, woah.”
The Dream Team cruised to the gold medal and became the most revered international team ever assembled. However, their impact goes beyond that. In an interview with Graham Bensinger, the 11-time All-Star revealed that several European NBA stars credited the 1992 roster for sparking their interest in basketball. Barkley said,
“I think [The Dream Team] changed the world. Because some of these guys, I talk to them today, whether it’s Ginobili, Dirk Nowitzki, or Tony Parker. Guys like that, they said it made them play basketball. It was huge.”
The Dream Team’s cultural impact is irrefutable. Their sheer dominance and style of play turned basketball into a global sensation. They were among the marquee attractions at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and lived up to the hype.
Without the Dream Team, we likely wouldn’t have had an NBA dominated by European stars, like it is today, and a league full of stars from all across the globe.
