This is the Dream Team Tapes, a diversion podcast's original series in association with IHeart Radio.

This is the story of the United States Olympic basketball team that won gold in Barcelona in 1992,

known worldwide as the Dream Team.

You know, I would like to play a little bit longer, maybe a year or two more,

but there's just no way possible I was going to be able to do that.

So today I'm retiring and I'm still going to be around, but not in the capacity I once was.

And now all of a sudden we get in a game and he has this scratch.

It's an open wound, but, you know, it's a non-bloody wound in a control situation.

And, you know, I have to dress it.

And I have these gloves in my pocket.

And I look up and all these eyes are on me, all his teammates.

And the camera's on me.

And I just can't do it.

Because it would be sending a mixed message to everyone. Man, that's stuff started happening almost from the moment the Dream Team plane touched back

in the United States.

The first voice you heard was that of Larry Bird.

The second voice was that of Gary Vitti, the longtime, much respected trainer of the Los Angeles

Lakers.

We're going to get to that in a second, but let's go back

to Byrd. The last game in which he ever played was not against this ancient and forever rivals,

the Los Angeles Lakers, or the 76ers, or the Knicks. It was against Croatia in the gold medal

game of the 92 Olympics. Bird hardly played. He had zero points, zero assists,

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