THEY are the greatest basketball team there ever was, or ever will be.

But there’s a game most have forgotten in which the Dream Team, gold medallists at the Barcelona 1992 Olympics 25 years ago this week, were destroyed.

The game was a 20-minute scrimmage, June 1992, in San Diego. The shock victors were a star-studded college line-up. The reported margin was eight points – perhaps 62-54, though head coach Chuck Daly ordered that the score be removed from the board before media were allowed in.

“I was on the college team that beat the Dream Team, and so we practiced with them in La Jolla,” declared Grant Hill, the future NBA great, to ‘Boomer and Carton’ in 2015.

“Me (Duke), Chris Webber (Michigan), Penny Hardaway (Memphis), Allan Houston (Tennessee), Bobby Hurley (Duke), Eric Montross (North Carolina), Jamal Mashburn (Kentucky), Rodney Rogers (Wake Forest). The first day we practiced against them, we beat them by 20.

“Houston hit 10 threes in the scrimmage. They couldn’t do anything with Webber. I’m telling you, Webber was killing these guys. We all had our moments. Bobby Hurley though, they couldn’t keep him out of the paint.”
Grant Hill, then of Duke Blue Devils.Source: Getty Images
Webber was unstoppable – he and Rogers both dunked over Charles Barkley, who went on to lead Olympic scoring for the Dream Team and was NBA Most Valuable Player the following year.

“Our purpose is to help them get ready to win the gold medal and to improve our own game,” Webber said. “But we’re not going to back down.

“I’m not even nervous out here playing with these guys. I’m out here talking trash just like I always do. They’re doing the same thing. They talk a lot more trash.”

Michael Jordan gave a frank account to the Los Angeles Times afterwards.

“We got killed today,” he said. “They beat us and they played well. We’re so out of sync and so unsure about things that we feel comfortable with in normal situations. We don’t have any continuity at all.

“If they were in the Olympics, they’d win the silver medal.”
College Chris Webber: Monster. Credit: Duane Burleson /AllsportSource: Getty Images
Jordan’s Chicago Bulls teammate Scottie Pippen concurred.

“These young kids were killing us,” Pippen said in a later documentary, NBA TV’s The Dream Team, per the New York Times. “We didn’t know how to play with each other,”

Yet the staggering result may not have been all it seemed. Team coaches later claimed the fix was in, to keep the megastars humble before the Olympics.

“He threw the game,” assistant coach Mike Krzyzewski claimed in the documentary, apparently told by Daly during the scrimmage: “We’re all right.”

“If you look at how much Jordan played and how he subbed the guys in, not picking up, not making any adjustments; he knew what he was doing.”

Yet Daly did not tell his assistants of the plan and Hill isn’t having it.

“Coach K said they threw it,” Hill said. “I love coach K, but I’m not buying it.”
Chris Webber vs Dream Team member Christian Laettner. Credit: Jonathan Daniel /AllsportSource: Getty Images
But the college kids couldn’t dispute the next day’s result. They were slaughtered, with Jordan playing a lot more.

“The next day, we couldn’t get the ball over half-court,” Hill said.

That same month, through to early July, the Dream Team played the Tournament of the Americas and routed all before them. They beat Venezuela 127-80 in the gold medal game, winning six games in all by an average 51.5 points, on 121.2 ppg scoring.

The Dream Team then went on to play another extraordinary scrimmage, a better-known outing branded ‘The Greatest Game Nobody Ever Saw’.

“Man, everybody asks me about that game,” Jordan said in Jack McCallum’s ‘Dream Team’. “It was the most fun I ever had on a basketball court.”

The setting was Monte Carlo. Jordan and Magic Johnson were the captains. It ended Jordan’s White Team 40, Johnson’s Blue Team 36, in a ferocious contest that has become part of urban legend.

Then came the part the whole world saw. An 8-0 Olympic campaign that claimed the gold medal, with a 117-85 rout of an excellent Croatia team in the final.

The Dream Team, Barcelona 1992 Olympics.Source: Getty Images
US DREAM TEAM, BARCELONA 1992 FACT FILE

– The full squad was Michael Jordan (Chicago Bulls), Magic Johnson (free agent, ex-Los Angeles Lakers), Larry Bird (Boston Celtics), Charles Barkley (Phoenix Suns), Scottie Pippen (Chicago Bulls), Karl Malone (Utah Jazz), Patrick Ewing (New York Knicks), David Robinson (San Antonio Spurs), John Stockton (Utah Jazz), Chris Mullin (Golden State Warriors), Clyde Drexler (Portland Trail Blazers) and Christian Laettner (Duke Blue Devils); plus coaches Chuck Daly (head), Lenny Wilkens, PJ Carlesimo and Mike Krzyzewski.

– There were two major selection controversies. Drexler won the final pro roster spot over Isiah Thomas, largely because players like Jordan and Magic did not want to play with the Detroit Pistons ‘Bad Boys’ ringleader. Laettner also beat the likes of Shaquille O’Neal and Alonzo Mourning to the lone college roster spot; reasonable based on their relative college hoops achievements but bizarre with the hindsight of how their NBA careers transpired.

– August 8, 1992, was the date that the Dream Team won Olympic gold, with a starting line-up of Johnson, Jordan, Pippen, Malone, Ewing.

– They won their games by an average of 43.8 points, against Angola (116-48), Croatia (103-70), Germany (111-68), Brazil (127-83), Spain (122-81), Puerto Rico (QF, 115-77), Lithuania (SF, 127-76) and Croatia (F, 117-85).

– They scored more than 100 points every game and averaged 117.3 ppg, an Olympic record.

– Jordan was the only player to start all eight games.
Larry Bird, Magic) Johnson, Karl Malone and Michael Jordan at Barcelona 1992.Source: Getty Images
– Barkley was the team’s leading scorer, averaging 18 ppg, against Jordan’s 14.9 ppg. Ewing and Malone were the top rebounders (5.3 pg), while Pippen topped the assists (5.9 pg).

– Malone scored the first points of the campaign and also hit the last field goal.

– Coach Daly did not call a timeout for the entire Olympics.

– Bird and Johnson were the team’s co-captains.

– Bird (35) was the oldest player. He retired 10 days after winning the gold medal.

– Laettner (22) was the team’s youngest player, four years younger than Pippen and Robinson.

– Robinson was the lone survivor from the 1988 Olympics, which only reaped a bronze medal.

– Jordan had to wear No.9 as jerseys were numbered only 1-15.

– Stockton was the only player to wear his NBA number, No.12. Due to injury, he was also the only player to miss games (four) and along with Laettner, was the only player not to start a game.

– Ewing adopted his Dream Team number, No.6, when he played for the Orlando Magic in 2002.

– The Dream Team did not stay in the athletes’ Olympic village – they instead stayed in a luxury hotel, the Ambassador Hotel in Barcelona. It was for security reasons as Barkley explained: “In our hotel, you had to have a picture ID to get in there, and we went to the pool on the roof of the hotel, there was like 10 guys standing around with Uzis. So it was kind of funny, it was like: Girl in bikini; dude with an Uzi; girl in bikini; guy with Uzi. People thought we didn’t want to stay in the Olympic Village because we wanted to be big shots but it was because we were getting death threats. They had told us this would be considered great by one of these terrorist groups if they could take out the Dream Team.”

– The Dream Team was inducted basketball’s Hall of Fame in 2010. Every player except Laettner has also been inducted as an individual, as well as three of the four coaches (Daly, Wilkens and Krzyzewski).