Dream Team special

PARIS (George Eddy's International Show) - Since the invention of basketball by James Naismith there have been a lot of major events and turning points that have left their indelible mark on the history of the game.

In chronological order from my subjective point of view: the creation of the Harlem Globetrotters in 1927, the first Olympic participation in 1936, the creation of the NBA in the late 40's, the arrival to the NBA of black players and the 24-second clock in the 50's, the Russsell-Chamberlain rivalry and rule changes in the 60's, the ABA with it's three-point shot and dunk contests. The Magic-Bird era which relaunched the NBA, the arrival of the first non-american players into the NBA in the 80's, the taking off of Air Jordan and the biggest turning point of them all, the Dream Team in Barcelona in 1992.

I will use the example of my experience in France which is similar to what happened elsewhere around the world when the NBA stars were finally permitted to play in the Olympics, a real stroke of genius orchestrated by Borislav Stankovic and David Stern, two visionaries who ran FIBA and the NBA at the time. In France, the NBA games were shown on pay TV with yours truly running the show.

The Dream Team was the opportunity for the 90 percent of the French population which didn't subscribe to pay TV to see in the flesh the NBA stars that their kids were gluing to their bedroom walls through posters found in popular basketball magazines.

All the Dream Team games were shown simultaneously on three major channels which proved the impact and popularity that basketball had never experienced before at the Olympics.

As an insider, I saw this coming when Michael Jordan came to Paris in the summer of 1990 for a modest exhibition with some local players. His shoe partner rented a small gym which seated 1,500 people and when 10,000 showed up!

My job was to get on top of a bus and tell most of them they had to go home but also convince Jordan to go on with the exhibition despite his own fears of being eaten alive.

Michael's major media locomotive, went on to win two NBA titles and then lead the Dream Team to glory in Barcelona. The Dream Team was the biggest factor towards the internationalisation of the sport and the 90's was the golden era for basketball in general.

Playgrounds starting popping up all over France and kids were preferring basketball to soccer in some important French surveys. Adversaries went from asking for autographs and photos with the Dream Teamers to realizing they could play with them and probably one day improve to the point where they could beat them, which was the case in Indianapolis and Tokyo at the World Championships and in Athens at the Olympics after USA survived a scare vs. Lithuania in Sydney.

The progression was constant as Croatia stayed with the Dream Team for a quarter in the Barcelona Final, then Yugoslavia hung around for a half in Atlanta before the scare in Sydney etc.

A perfect example is Toni Kukoc,who went from young European star looking like a Bambi with headlights in his eyes,victim of Jordan and Scottie Pippen's jealousy and monster defence in Barcelona, to triple NBA champ as a teammate of the two aforementionned superstars in Chicago.

In 1992, teenagers like Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili and Dirk Nowitzki chose basketball over soccer after being astonished and seduced by the Dream Team's capacity to share the ball and produce beautiful basketball despite all those Hall of Fame egos on the roster.

The Dream Teamers played team ball, were obviously happy 'Magic Johnson's smile' to be together to participate in something historic and  were at the crossroads of several glorious generations.

The players respected the game, the opponents and the fans and were fabulous, enthusiastic ambassadors for the sport so it's fitting that their twentieth anniversary be celebrated through books, articles and documentaries because their legacy as the greatest TEAM of all time in ANY sport lives on.

Their image, aura and charisma go far above and beyond any stats about winning margins or whatever. I was very fortunate to be able to follow them each step of the way, from Portland to Monaco to Barcelona.

The link over these last twenty years is coach Mike Krzyzewski who was an assistant to Chuck Daly in Barcelona and has been the architect for the resurgent supremacy of Team USA in international competitions since 2008.

In fact, I'm already salivating at the idea of a rematch of the greatest game of all time, the Bejing Olympic Final between USA and Spain.

It will be small ball vs. tall ball between a wagonload of NBA and international stars in a London Olympic Final where all knowledgeable observers will keep in the back of their minds to what extent the Dream Team of '92 permitted all of this to happen!

George Eddy

FIBA

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