by Larry Bird
Yet the most glaring omission was Isiah Thomas, the point guard of the Pistons' back-to-back championships in 1988 and 1989. Thomas was an eleven-time All-Star and three-time first-team All-NBA selection, and his coach, Chuck Daly, had been tabbed to coach the Dream Team.
Bird was startled that Thomas didn't make the cut. He shouldn't have been. Jordan had made it clear that he wanted no part of playing alongside Thomas in the backcourt. Michael had not forgotten the All-Star freeze-out in 1985 or the 1991 Eastern Conference Finals, when the Bulls supplanted the Pistons in the East and Isiah, Bill Laimbeer, and Mark Aguirre walked off the court with four seconds left on the game clock rather than congratulate the Bulls. It was a blatant sign of disrespect that was roundly condemned throughout the league.
Magic, still wounded by Thomas's reaction to his HIV diagnosis, did not hear from him during the Dream Team selection process. Pistons public relations director Matt Dobek called Magic on Isiah's behalf, but Magic refused to advocate for him.
"Our relationship was really strained at that point," Magic explained. "We didn't speak for years, and Isiah knew why. He questioned me when I got my HIV diagnosis. How can a so-called friend question your sexuality like that? I know why he did it, because we used to kiss before games, and now if people were wondering about me, that meant they were wondering about him too.
"I was so upset by that. When I started working for NBC, [New York Post reporter] Peter Vecsey tried to get us together. He was telling me, 'Isiah is hurting, you guys need to talk.' But I wasn't interested. I told him, 'Forget it.'
"Isiah killed his own chances when it came to the Olympics. Nobody on that team wanted to play with him.
"Isiah's problem was he always felt he had to fight for everything. Even when he finally got among the elite, he couldn't stop fighting.
"The comments about Larry being overrated [in the 1987 Conference Finals] were out of pure frustration. He was jealous. He felt Larry was getting too much attention and he wasn't getting his.
"He always wanted to be in that conversation when people talked about the great players. Michael, Larry, and I were always in that discussion. He could have been if he had handled things differently. But because of the petty decisions he's made, no one gives him his due.
"I'm sad for Isiah. He has alienated so many people in his life, and he still doesn't get it. He doesn't understand why he wasn't chosen for that Olympic team, and that's really too bad. You should be aware when you have ticked off more than half of the NBA.
"If you went strictly on terms of ability, then Isiah should have been chosen for the Dream Team. But Michael didn't want to play with him. Scottie wanted no part of him. Bird wasn't pushing for him. Karl Malone didn't want him. Who was saying, 'We need this guy'? Nobody.
"Michael got singled out as the guy that kept Isiah off, but that really isn't fair. It was everybody. We all understood the camaraderie wouldn't be the same.
"What happened with Isiah has been the biggest personal disappointment of my life. Nothing else is even close. Here's a guy I trained with, I vacationed with, who I counseled, and he counseled me. And he threw it all away out of jealousy.
"When I see him now, we're cordial. That's about it. When the Knicks were looking for someone to run their team, [Madison Square Garden Sports president] Steve Mills, who is a good friend of mine, called me asking what I thought. I told him, 'Hey, you should talk to Isiah.'
"I can separate the personal from the professional. In spite of what happened between us, I still respect his knowledge of the game.
"But even with the Knicks situation, he had to be stubborn. When things went bad there, he kept fighting and fighting instead of saying, 'Okay, I better give up something here.' If he was willing to compromise, he might have saved himself a lot of trouble. But he couldn't. He doesn't know how.
"I don't wish anything bad on him. We will never be the same, and I will never trust him again, but I hope he finds peace with himself.
"In the meantime, I've moved on."
***
Once the Dream Team roster was finalized, the players hunkered down in La Jolla, California, at the Sheraton Grande Torre Pines Resort and went about the process of evolving from rivals into united teammates. The transition, Bird and Magic noted, was remarkably smooth, with the prospect of a gold medal outweighing any lingering disagreements from the NBA season.
It quickly became apparent to Daly that, if there was going to be a problem with the squad, it was their tendency to pass the ball too much. The players, often in competition to outdo each other on the court, delighted in making the dificult play.
Daly's private wish was to go through the entire Olympic process without ever having to call a time-out. Known as a player's coach for his ability to juggle egos and personalities, Daly was pleased at how self-motivated his players were in practice. Ewing would dominate play in the middle with jump hooks and turnarounds, then Robinson would counter with rainbow jumpers and fast-break jams. Barkley would post up Malone, declare his supremacy, then steel himself for Malone's response, which often involved a forearm in the back and a brute physical move around the basket. At stake were bragging rights to being the best power forward in the world that day. Yet all those battles paled in comparison to the verbal (and physical) skirmishes involving Magic and Michael.
In their mano-a-mano battles, the stakes were high: basketball legacies and superstar bragging rights.
"C'mon, Magic, keep up," Jordan would tease Johnson after blowing past him in the open court.
"Michael, you've got to see the whole floor," Magic would chastise him, after firing one of his pinpoint no-look passes into the hands of a startled teammate.
On June 23, USA Basketball assembled eight of its top college players to scrimmage against Daly's studs: Michigan forward Chris Webber, Memphis State guard Anfernee "Penny" Hardaway, Duke star Grant Hill, North Carolina center Eric Montross, Kentucky forward Jamal Mashburn, Tennessee sniper Allan Houston, Wake Forest scorer Rodney Rogers, and Duke point guard Bobby Hurley.
Daly instructed coach George Raveling to encourage his college team to push tempo and shoot three-pointers. The kids buried 10 treys and outscored the Dream Team 62–54 in a 20-minute scrimmage.
"They beat the hell out of us," Bird said. "I was pretty ticked off. Allan Houston murdered us with the threes, and Bobby Hurley was absolutely killing us with his quickness. Nobody wanted to guard him because nobody could stay with him.
"Those kids embarrassed us. And they did us a favor. Our attitude changed after that. No fooling around."
The next day the Dream Team demanded a full-game rematch and beat the kids by 50. All eight of the college All-Stars graduated to the NBA and enjoyed lengthy careers, save Hurley, who was injured in a serious car accident and was never the same player.
The Dream Team migrated from La Jolla to Portland for the Tournament of the Americas, where four of the ten teams advanced from the zone qualifier to the Olympic Games. Months earlier, Rosen had fielded a call from USA Basketball asking him what number Magic wanted.
"How high do the numbers go?" Rosen asked.
"To 15," the official answered.
"Earvin will take 15," Rosen said.
That way, Magic's agent figured, his client would be introduced last.
The Americans pummeled Cuba 136–57 in the first game, with Bird and Magic re-creating the on-court chemistry they had demonstrated 14 years earlier at the World Invitational Tournament.
Magic repeatedly pushed tempo, penetrated the lane, then kicked it back out to Bird on the perimeter. Each time Larry buried the shot on a feed from Magic, the fans celebrated as if the gold medal had just been won. Seconds before halftime, Johnson drove all the way to the hoop, with Bird trailing on the wing. Magic was about to lay in the ball when he turned and fired a no-look bullet to Bird, who stopped and drained the three as the buzzer sounded.
It was precisely the play Magic had envisioned when he coaxed Bird onto the roster.
"I'll remember that basket for the rest of my life," Magic said.
"To this day," Bird said, "I have no idea how he saw me."
Bird was buoyed to have played without pain and to find that, even with all his downtime, his shooting stroke was intact. He went to his designated cubicle for his postgame interviews and regaled the press with pithy one-liners. But when Bird shifted slightly in his seat halfway through the session, he felt that familiar jolt of pain traveling down his leg. The pain was so sudden and so severe that Bird, nauseous from the burning sensation, began sweating profusely. He abruptly ended his interview, hobbled back to the hotel, and laid himself out on the floor.
That is where his brother Mark discovered him when he burst into Bird's room exclaiming, "That was awesome! Let's go celebrate!"
"I'm done," Bird said quietly. "It's over for me."
"What do you mean?" his brother asked.
"I mean, this is it," Bird said. "I can't keep going on like this."
Mark Bird hurried out to find the Dream Team (and Boston Celtics) trainer Ed Lacerte. Lacerte tried to alleviate the burning sensation of the compressed nerves by manipulating Bird's muscles, but his back was rock-hard, like an impenetrable brick wall.
"I'm sorry, Larry," Lacerte said. "I'm not sure what else I can do."
Bird had played his first and last game in the Tournament of the Americas—and quite possibly the final game of his career. He was relegated to the sidelines for the remainder of the pre-Olympic competition.
He had company. Patrick Ewing had cut and dislocated his finger on the rim during the team workouts in La Jolla and missed the win over Cuba. He was held out of practice for a few days, and in the interest of preserving his conditioning, he jumped on an exercise bike on the sidelines while the team went through their drills. Bird did the same. It made for an awkward scene: two tall, proud men who had been heated adversaries for years sitting side by side, pedaling furiously, going nowhere and having nothing to say about it.
Although he wasn't playing, Bird still offered some caustic commentary from his perch on the bike. When Barkley muscled Malone in the post, Bird kidded Utah's chiseled forward, "Charles owns you, Karl. Get used to it. You're a backup on this team."
Ewing eventually joined the verbal fray. When David Robinson jammed home an alley-oop pass, Ewing shouted, "Enjoy it now, David. When I get back out there, you'll be eating that." Bird chuckled. The two men got to talking.
They recounted their playing days against one another, when Bird would lure Ewing out to the wing and inform him, "You're no center. You're a glorified power forward. And there's no way you can stop me out here."
Bird usually punctuated his point with a jumper. Then it would be Ewing's turn to jog back and inform Boston's forward, "I'm going to take you into the post and kick your ass."
At the time, the acrimony was real. Years later, pedaling side by side, their past bravado seemed contrived. When Magic glanced over and caught Ewing and Bird guffawing over the misadventures of Clyde Drexler, who had been pickpocketed by Jordan on back-to-back possessions, he shook his head.
"I wasn't expecting that," Magic said. "Two of the quietest guys, and suddenly they were best friends."
Bird bestowed the nickname "Harry" on Ewing. Most of the guys thought it was after the big but lovable character in the movie Harry and the Hendersons, but Bird was harkening back to his junior season of college, when he played alongside Harry Morgan at Indiana State.
"Just call us Harry and Larry," he announced.
Lacerte printed up T-shirts that read THE HARRY AND LARRY SHOW ... TO BE CONTINUED IN BARCELONA—a takeoff on a Reebok Olympic advertising campaign that featured American decathletes Dan (Johnson) and Dave (O'Brien).
It was an unlikely friendship. Ewing grew up in Boston resenting the way the public fawned over Larry Legend. He saw Bird as another overhyped white guy and used to scoff with his friends, "Oh, please. He's not that good. He can't run, and he can't jump."
But Ewing changed his mind when he arrived in the NBA and bore witness to Bird's considerable skills.
"I take it back," Ewing told his Cambridge friends. "This guy is incredible. He can shoot, rebound, pass ... he's the greatest competitor I've ever seen."
In the 1990 playoffs, Ewing traded elbows and insults with Bird as the Celtics took a 2–0 lead in the best-of-five first-round series. Everyone in Boston was certain the Knicks were done, but Ewing anchored a New York comeback that culminated in a Game 5 win over the Celtics on the Garden parquet. It was a shocking development that forced Bird to examine Ewing in a new light. He had always recognized the big man's skills, but now he grudgingly acknowledged Ewing's mental resolve, the quality Bird always felt separated the great players from the good ones.
Ewing was able to return to action after a few days of the Tournament of the Americas, but John Stockton fractured his right fibula midway through the Dream Team's win over Canada, and Clyde Drexler was forced to sit out the victory over Argentina with a bruised right knee.
Stockton was clearly going to be sidelined for a few weeks, which initiated a discussion of whether to add another player. Isiah's name came up in a conference call, but again he was rejected by his peers.
Even without a full complement of players, the Dream Team lived up to its weighty name. Magic, Barkley, and Jordan dominated, and their opponents literally applauded them for it, sometimes in the middle of the game. When they played Argentina, Magic guarded a player on the block who refused to make a move to the basket.
"What are you doing?" Magic asked him.
"I'm waiting," the player replied.
Johnson, clearly flummoxed, finally knocked the ball out of his hands—but only after a player on the Argentina bench had successfully snapped a Polaroid of Magic guarding his friend.
As he ran back down the court, Magic noticed the player was weeping.
"Mr. Johnson, I cannot believe it's you," he said. "I used to watch you late at night. This is the thrill of my life."
When the United States played Puerto Rico, Bird remained flat on his stomach on the court in his warm-ups, too injured to play. One of the game officials ran past the U.S. bench and begged Bird to check in, if only for a second, so he could tell his family he had refereed a game in which the great Bird competed.
The referee left disappointed. He wasn't the only one. Brazilian star Oscar Schmidt, whose silky smooth shooting stroke was the pride of his nation, idolized Bird as a child and had anxiously awaited the opportunity to test his skills against his hero. He had to settle for an autographed copy of Bird's autobiography Drive.
"Sorry, Oscar," Bird told him before the U.S. game against Brazil. "I'd love to drop 50 on you, but I can't move right now." The United States cruised to another lopsided win, after which the Brazilian coach touted the Americans as "a team from another planet."
The U.S. team proved to be an undefeated juggernaut in the Tournament of the Americas, overpowering clubs by an average of 51.5 points. Magic led the team in assists and minutes played and was chosen to carry the U.S. flag in the closing ceremonies.
When Bird stopped to consider Magic's prognosis during a quiet moment, it left him pensive, even melancholy. Magic Johnson would be dead soon. Based on the scant information the Dream Team had about an HIV diagnosis, his teammates were certain of that. And yet this exuberant man, who thrived in Barcelona as the unofficial U.S. basketball ambassador, seemed more vibrant than all of them.
By contrast, Bird's physical struggles had become increasingly transparent. He was forced to wear his fiberglass body brace around the clock. It had become part of him, like buttoning up his shirt each day, but it felt like a piece of concrete around his waist and was so tight that his breathing was labored when he sat down. He wore it to bed but could only lie on his back or his stomach because, when he tried to sleep on his side, the fiberglass dug into his skin, leaving welts and cuts.
When the team broke camp 15 days before reconvening in Monte Carlo, Bird went b
ack to Boston and showed up at Massachusetts General Hospital unannounced. He found Dan Dyrek, his physical therapist, and begged him to accompany him to Barcelona.
"I don't think I can make it without your help," Bird said.
Dyrek opened his daybook. He was teaching a graduate school course and had a full calendar of commitments. But he wasn't about to be the person who prevented Larry Bird from realizing his Olympic dream. Dyrek hopped aboard the Dream Team caravan and before long was treating many of Bird's teammates as well, including Ewing and his chronically sore knees.
By that point, "Harry" and Larry were inseparable. When the team flew to Monte Carlo for their final pre-Olympic training, Ewing sat poolside with Larry, Dinah, and their friend Quinn Buckner, wearing dark glasses and trying not to stare at the topless women. He ordered a round of draft beer for Bird and his friends, unfazed by the $8 price tag.
Bird was incredulous each time his new friend ordered another round.
"Do you know how much those beers cost?" Bird asked Ewing.
"Nah, I don't drink," Ewing replied.
"They are $8 each!" Bird exclaimed. "I would never pay that for a beer!"
In his rookie season, the first time Bird went to New York with the Celtics, he and Rick Robey popped into a bar to have a brew. When he saw the prices on the tavern's menu, Larry abruptly stood up and walked out. Years later, while dining with his teammates in a trendy New York eatery, the players began collecting money for the bill. Told they were going to give the waiter a 20 percent tip, Bird said, "What for? All he did was deliver the food."
He stood up, grabbed the tip money, and strode unannounced into the kitchen. He handed the astonished cook a fistful of bills, then walked out.
While Larry rang up the bar tab in Monte Carlo, Magic hung with Jordan at the casino and tried to bring him luck at the blackjack table. When the clock struck midnight, Johnson, Jordan, Barkley, and Pippen flocked to Jimmy Z's, an exclusive Monte Carlo nightclub with a retractable roof and a maze of dance floors.