This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

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.

Welcome to episode five of the Dream Team tapes. I'm Jack McCallum. We have moved from San Diego,

where the Dream Team completed a week of practice and on to Portland, Oregon, for something called the Tournament of the Americas,

where the U.S. team had to qualify for the Olympics.

Portland was the capital of the basketball world in the summer of 92.

Their beloved Blazers took the Jordan Bulls to six games,

the NBA draft that produced Shaquille O'Neal and Christian Leitner, the two college

stars who were the only players considered to join the Dream Team from college, was held there

10 days after the finals ended, and then the Dream Team arrived for their first official public

demonstration of, well, worldwide dominance. I would venture to say that all of us who were

around for the weeks of action in Portland had a great time in that great city. It was an excellent

series. It included the famous Jordan Shrug game in Chicago when he hit six first half three-pointers,

the majority of them on Clyde Drexler, and at one point

just shrugged to Magic Johnson, who was courtside on the broadcast team, as if to say, hell,

I can't explain it either. The draft was pretty interesting, too. After the Minnesota Timberwolves

selected Leightner at number three, There was a chorus of booze which prompted

Leitner's mother, Bonnie, a sometimes outspoken woman who, like so many moms, loved her son

...