In an appearance on Jorge Sedano’s ESPN Los Angeles radio show on Tuesday, Hall of Fame inductee Charles Barkley reminisced on the surreal experience of being part of the star-studded Dream Team at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, adding new details about what it took just for the team to travel from place to place.
Charles Barkley joined me on the show.
We discussed his thoughts on:
Fans in the stands
Importance of sports now
Card games
Dream Team practice intensity & competition amongst teammates
Biggest regret from 93 Finals
Relationship w/ DraymondSubscribe to pod for full interview pic.twitter.com/APJv4X6983
— Jorge Sedano (@Sedano) May 5, 2020
The celebrity status of Michael Jordan enveloped all members of the team, as the walk between the hotel and the bus was a circus.
“To leave the hotel and get on the bus was probably about 20 feet, and there was probably 5,000 to 10,000 people out there every single day just screaming when guys would walk to get on the bus,” Barkley said.
Then the team needed a full-blown motorcade just to get through the city, flush with machine gun-using men barreling down the street alongside the team bus.
“Wherever we were going, there was a helicopter above the bus, a police escort in front and in back, and on each side of the bus, there was two guys on motorcycles and each one of them had a machine gun.”
Though fans rarely could get very close to the players, they would line up along the highway to get a look at the squad’s biggest stars, saying that “there was people standing along the highway holding up signs for, obviously Magic [Johnson], Larry [Bird], and Michael got most of the signs, but it was flat-out amazing.”
