Why I Had to Pull Out the Operation Card to Get Larry Bird

that year was different. While the rest of the world, who had been learning the game from the Americans, were sending their best players, the American team, made up of all college players, struggled to an embarrassing bronze medal finish. That was the last time we sent our boys. Now it was time to send our men. Larry Berd St. Michael sure for oh John stop Chris Mullet trust her magic. Well, let's see. Patrick Johnson said it was his best memory ever.

I finally got St. Michael and Larry and also know them as men, and that that right there, for me was the best all the nine Michael Knox Days chairs. Michael Jordan used it as a scouting expedition was lightning for me because I never got to see how these better got lived. It was more of a scouting for me. I wanted to see how Madame jed game. Larry Bird said, well, good thing. It didn't go on any longer. I always say, if that team was together another two weeks, I had

a lot of problems. You could see it. And the late great David Stern, who died on New Year's Day, Wait a minute, called me a bozo. Now what people don't remember. It's like boos like you that would say this is now the dream Team of clessed memory. They forget it. Charles Elbos angle in you know, bad sportsmanship the US. This is crazy. What are we doing going? And I hope you go back and giving Why are you sending these things? This is the humiliate people. Michael

Coverage up this logo with the American plague. I mean it was a you know, now it becomes theatified. That is just a small sample of what I got during the two years it took me The right dream Team, the two thousand and twelve New York Times bestseller about what many, probably most considered the greatest team of all time. I'm Jack McCallum, and this is episode one of the Dream Team tapes. There will be eight podcast s in this series, and yes, everything that David Stern brought up,

trust me will be covered by this bozo and much more. Somehow, I had managed to preserve all of my audio tapes from those magical years leading up to the formation of the Dream Team, the games in Barcelona, and even the aftermath. All that material was captured on an old fashioned radio shack recorder. You'll hear it all the voices of all

twelve Dream teamers, companied by a few authentic scratches. I interviewed the players all over the place, at their homes, in their cars in the case of Larry Bird and Michael Jordan, in their offices. You'll hear the voice of the late Chuck Daly, the head coach of the Dream Team, and lots of material from his assistant, Mike Shaski. You'll get answers to all of those questions. How exactly was the team selected? Did Michael Jordan really want to play?

Did he keep Isaiah Thomas off the team? Was there a rivalry for leadership of the Dream Team? Hint? Yes, Why did Charles Barkley throw the most famous elbow in Olympic history at a seemingly helpless in Golden Player. Charles claims to have a good reason. Now, Magic Johnson was just a half year remove from announcing that he had HIV. How did that play out? And did the story end when the Dream Team won the gold medal? No way. If you remember some of that stuff from the book,

well okay, but there's more. This is the real stuff, none of which you've ever heard before in audio form. I feel fortunate to have been on a journey with these guys. I don't want to take you with me. Always in basketball circles, from time to time the subject of Olympic basketball comes up, and once again everyone conjures

up the greatest team of all time. In this first episode, I wanted to give you a sense of what it was like to write the book, how the interviews went down, behind the scenes stuff I'm calling it why I had to pull out the operation card to get Larry Bird to talk. And as I set out to interview these guys, one thought was in my mind, Michael, Magic, Larry. I guess that's three thoughts. But there is a hierarchy of needs every time you're gathering information, and at the top

of that hierarchy were Jordan's Magic and Bird. Now they would all present difficulties to round up Magic because he's so damn busy, Jordan because he's so damn elusive, and Bird because he's so damn moody and unpredictable. Get him talking. He's unbelievable. The key is to get him talking. I started out with Scottie Pipman. I arranged to meet him

at a hotel near his home in Florida. With the exception of Christian Latener, Pippen was probably the player I knew, least on a personal basis, which is somewhat astounding, since I had done about three thousand, four hundred and seventy eight stories on the Bulls over the years, but they

were rarely centered on Scottie. There were times I even went out to Chicago with the express purpose of doing a Pippin story, and then Jordan would go for forty nine and forty two and do something else outrageous, and Jesse Jackson would be hanging around his locker, and sure enough it would turn into another Michael Jordan's story. I even felt somewhat guilty then about my treatment of Pipping, especially since I knew I would end up asking him.

Even in this interview about Jordan's and I did, and he was great and very honest. A sample. Michael is huge. He's getting hit last week, and most of the time it's good for him because he may score forty points, he may score thirty five points, and he's always going to have a spinoff that Michael it is but t is, you know. So you know we had to go to lows as a mean and as players you have to sure that and you have to read it. But you

still gotta keep pushing bowl. You know. You think Michael ever admitted that he needed some behavior modificing that he needed the change whenever admit that. I walked away from that interview thinking, man, if I can get stuff like that from everybody, I'll be in good shape. And I'll always be grateful to Scotty for getting me off to a good start. When I went to visit Karl Malone at his home in Ruston, Louisiana, he said to me, be prepared, Jack. I noticed, ain't your thing. I walked

in and I was in a wildlife museum. Hanging from the ceiling and walls were about one mounted animals big game that Malone had shot from Canada to Alaska and apparently according to what he said, they included the Grand Slam of sheep. Here is a Grand Slam of sheet right here in the honey world, those four sheet there would be the Super Bowl, NBA Championship, and all in the hunting world. She don't ask me what it is.

This isn't wild Kingdom. Look it up. I could never figure out why Malone and I got along so well. I never fired a gun, never had the slightest interest in driving gargantuan tractor trailers, another Malone passion that I had written about. And I'm positive that I never wanted to get into a political discussion with him. But I always enjoyed his company, and he mined, presumably, and I

guess it had something to do with his honesty. Anyway, if there were two players on the Dream Team who were not sympotico, it was Magic Johnson and Carl Malone. I'll tell you about that in future episodes. From Alone, I went to Stockton, I know it should have been the other way around, Stockton to Malone. The majority of John's fifteen thousand, eight hundred and six assists, most in

NBA history, went to Carl. The interview, which took place in his hometown of Spokane was so impossibly Stockton I in first, he expressed horror when I pulled out my tape recorder. John, I didn't fly three thousand miles to Spokane not to take notes, Okay, he said reluctantly. Then, like a dutiful tour guide, he showed me around his hometown. Now we're looking down at Gonzaga's Niagara Falls. We had the World's Fair here in See. That's where the main

hall was. We saw John's junior high. We saw Jack and Dan's, the bar that used to be owned by John's father and was a staple of every John Stockton story ever written. We walked around the campus of Gonzaga, where he really started on his unlikely road to superstardom. John also told me about his boyhood encounter with Isaiah Thomas, whose entry onto the Dream Team and his continued place on it after an injury is deeply connected to Isaiah.

More on that later, but here is Stockton on meeting Isaiah at an a AU tournament when John was fifteen years old. We were driving through spoke hand by the way, so the quality is not that great. The game goes on at the inter corner. What it looked like to me, decided that he wasn't going to do a coach said anymore and break the press his way. He was just gonna trouble to it, so he drop through it, dunking. I could pay somebody to be that here now, Patrick Ewing.

I never succeeded in getting much out of Patrick over the years. I liked him a lot and knew him back before he went to Georgetown. After he became a nick Patrick always agreed to talk, but he usually scheduled the interview after practice when he was getting post practice medical treatment, which meant I had about half his attention. But when I saw Patrick down in Orlando, he was in an assistant magic coach and is now the headman at Georgetown, his alma matter. He was loose and charming.

He told me a funny story about Jordan from the nineteen four Olympics. We were horsing the run and he hit me in the headlock, and you know, I'm trying to get out of that. Pick him up and I'm trying to get out of it. I will. I wake up the next morning and I can't move my neck, I can't move my head. I'm trying to move my head. I could not move it. So what going to Bobby at the coach, I can't practice it and he's like, why because I got a quick at my neck I

couldn't move. He got so pissed, though, but he got on meeting, you know, Michael. Obviously much more on Jordan to come. I really had no background with Christian Latener at all. I remember introducing myself to him after the Dream Team was picked and he basically looked through me as if to say, why should I care who you are? After that, I didn't even bother with him. But he was in a tough situation with the Dream Team. So many people thought he didn't belong and how the hell

was he going to contribute much in any case? And here's what he said about that. If I'm not at that oppression around level, then I just a good kid with a good personality who knows his place. And if my place is very low on the totem pole. Because Magic, Chatson and Bird and Michael on the team, it was an easy transition. I'm very good at that role. I don't mind that role. It's a lot of fun. I caught up the Laatener during Bob Hurley senior's charity golf

tournament in Montclair, New Jersey. It was a miserable day, and I wrote around with Christian in a golf cart. He didn't feel much like answering questions. He was having much publicized money problems at the time. But he was game, and he even offered me an extra umbrella out on the course. You know, it struck me how different Latener's experiences were from all the other players. So he was inside the team, he was almost an outsider, his perceptions more like those of a fan than one of the guys.

He told me three things stuck out for him. First, the transitional speed of the game, that is, how fast things moved on changes of possessions. Even the so called quote slow players maybe Stockton and Chris Mullen, were much faster than the highest levels of the college game. Three steps faster at least number two. How passes were thrown the moment you got open, he just held out your hand in the ball arrived as the way Latner put it.

And later, his favorite moment came in a practice session when two of his college teammates, Grant Hill and Bobby Hurley, had just arrived. They were part of a college all star team that would scrimmage the Dreamers, and they saw Charles Barkley go down the baseline against Karl Malone. Here is Latner describing it. So I'm playing and I see Bobby and Graham walked in and like a minute later, part be done down Malone and they're all like that. Well, let's move to Clyde Drexler O m G. As the

kids say. Clyde and I had always gotten along pretty well. At times. I know he considered me one of those Jordan Canoe no wrong, and why aren't I recognized more writers? But he liked me, and I liked him. We did the interview at Clyde's house. He made me a delicious chicken salad sandwich. We talked about how our respective fathers had been butchers. We talked about how we had played golf together with Barkley and writer Jan Hubbard and Monte Carlo.

But then he started in on a Jordan's tangent, claiming that did I think Jordan was better than me? No way? And here's a little bit of what he said. I'll clarify in a second more. He said he was bigger, faster, stronger, and the only thing Jordan could do better than him was shoot more Clyde Clyde. Clyde Clyde was damn good, as he says, but no, he was not better than

Michael Jordan's. One of my all time favorite quotes, now maybe he had to be there, was offered by Rod Thorne, who drafted Jordan's when he was general manager of the Bulls and later became a much respected NBA executive. You'll be hearing from Rod later. Anyway, Rod had always enjoyed kidding Steve Snapper Jones, who was the Trailblazers announcer, a

great guy himself. Snapper died a few years ago. Snapper would always claim that Drexler was just as good as Jordan's, and one day Rod said in his West Virginia drawl, Steve, y'all got t vs out there in Portland. If Clyde really wants to get Piste off, by the way, he can ponder this sound bite that I got from Jordan's. Man, that's taking speaking about yourself in the third person to a whole new level. One of my most enjoyable interviews

was with Chris Mullen. I had found out he was going to be spending some time at his place in the Hampton's, so I said I would meet him there. My wife came with me the meals. They are a great bring money. Mullin was always the most unassuming, a prose a guy who jim ratted himself all the way to the Hall of Fame, overcoming a stay in alcohol

rehab along the way. Chris was one of the few players to whom I showed a few minutes of what I called the greatest game nobody ever saw, the famed inter Squad Scrimmage and Monte Carlo and the subject of podcast number six in this series. Hey Liz came here, Chris shouted to his wife when I showed him a couple of seconds of Bird making a steal and converting a layup during the scrimmage. Watch Larry on this play.

That spoke to the almost what I would call deification of Bird that took place among several members of the team. It came about because of Bird's quiet, unassuming leadership, his willingness to stay behind the scenes despite his iconic place in the game. It was obvious where I would go to interview David Robinson to the Carver School in San Antonio, a school for disadvantaged youth that he had at after he retired. David had always talked about doing it, and

that's exactly what he did. Interestingly, whenever any of the other Dream teamers talked about David, they talked, of course about his athleticism and his intelligence, but also about how of all of them, Robinson was the least competitive. Here's what Jordan's said about Robinson and David. Robson loved music, he day basketball because he he said, sed, he is passionate, the same as a guy who oh me, he's wow.

Michael used, enthralled. Now that isn't quite fair to David, who always claimed he was much more competitive than he was given credit for. But we had a long and fascinating conversation about how he always felt trapped between two worlds, between the student and the athlete, and the black world and the white world. I guess every kid says it's difficult. I mean I I thought it was. I thought it was difficult because I didn't been in really either world

pretty much most of the time. Felt uncomfortable because you know what I mean, if I was in my classes and I was with you, you know, at the white boat. Everyone was nice to you up to a certain point, you know, but then you know you're still the different one and social glass shielding a little bit. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, So you know, they would invite me to the little party and then you know, they play spending the bottle or something and they'd be like weak, you could be

the referee, you know. So you know, it's that kind

of stuff. So so you know, you you felt like, yeah, you know, they're cool up to a certain point, but then you know, you go out into you know, I would go, you know, play ball or go hang out somewhere with you know, with with the other kids and black kids, and I'd be you know, it was fun up to a certain point, but then you know that we might be talking trash, something going on, you know, and I'd be like, if you speak a certain way or if you act a certain way, you know, sometimes

they'll they'll call your uncle Tom or something like that. You know. Let's say, man, you know you're just you're not lacking up. And then on the other side, you're not white enough. So I think it's just it was probably a little bit of both those things, because you know, there are certain things I didn't feel comfortable. You know, people people who talk trash and they say stuff, and I didn't. I wasn't good at that game, you know, I don't. I don't like when people to say, you know,

say something negative. Well, I want to a man who never seemed to have much trouble figuring out who he is, getting ahold of Charles Barkley and having him sit still for a couple of hours isn't easy. He'll return maybe one of my ten phone calls. So I made a call to the bullpen for Julie Five, the long time public relations person for the Phoenix Suns, who had kept Charles out of innumerable scrapes during his years as a son.

One tool for a journalist. If you can't get somebody yourself very easily, you got to know who to go to. We talked about the usual stuff, including Charles elbowing the and Golden Player, which he did in the Dream Team's

first game in Barcelona. Will get back to that. But considering Charles was only a little while removed from his celebrated d u I, during which he spent a weekend in jail in Arizona, it was hard to avoid the subject of drinking, even my drinking, and our conversation begins with Charles telling me he took a cab to dinner the background noises because we're in a restaurant in Phoenix. I was having this conversation with a cab drive on the way over here. That's how funny it is. He

didn't drive over here. I can't drive. Were you in jail a long weekend? Already? Do to make money here? So there was Charles being all chased and careful watching my alcohol intake. And when we had finished with the interview, he asked me to drive him home because he had, you know, taken a cab to dinner. And I said sure, and we started home. In a few miles into the journey, Charles said, Jack, pull over here there was a bar. He invited me to join him. I declined. He assured

me he could get at home. I didn't doubt that for a moment. We exchanged goodbyes, and I thought, as I always did when I was around him, the world would be a lot less interesting place without Charles Barkley in it. So Michael Magic Larry still had to get them. Negotiations were ongoing. He had a shot with Magic because he has a guy, a guy I've known for a long time, Lan Rosen. I kept calling Lawn finally caught up the magic at the two thousand eleven finals where

he was doing commentary for ABC. We talked about a lot of things, including of course HIV. As man, you say, okay, let me just educate this guy. And I think that the commissioner Starn and the NBA did a wonderful job of educating the players. I did my part on educating the players, and then uh so I retired again after I was going to come back. Then we did a great job of educate not just a it but the world because the world was uh not educated in Welsh.

So when you think about all the misinformation that was out there, so I had to be the person who could now, okay, let me give you the right information. Let me education. And then the Olympics actually gave me the platform to show the world a guy with HIV could deal play play at a high level and he wasn't going to get HIV by playing against me. More

on that subject. Obviously, Jordan required some negotiation. You don't go through the team, meaning the Charlotte Hornets to get Michael you go through st Portnoy, Michael's long time and quite formidable gatekeeper. Besides Jordan's natural reticence, I had one other thing going against me, Jordan's long standing war with Sports Illustrated, which came about because of what Jordan considered

an insulting cover we wrote about his baseball career. I've talked about it so often I feel like it's written on my forehead. I didn't have anything to do with that story, and Jordan didn't hold it against me. But in my request to Estey, I made sure to mention that Dream Team had nothing to do with Sports Illustrated. Okay, she finally wrote back, Michael will give you fifteen minutes, and the only subject to be discussed is the Dream Team. Now. A tip to young journalist, if you want to hear it.

When somebody's representative gives you a time limitation and a subject restriction, just agree to it, particularly if he or she is repping somebody famous. Don't waste your time arguing with it. But when the time comes, simply ignore the mandate and keep going for as long as you can. Chances are, if you have the subject talking, he will just keep on talking half the time, the subject doesn't even know what was agreed upon or really doesn't care

all that much. So we definitely veered far off the Dream Team script. Here's a little from Michael talking about one of the dark periods in his life after his proclivity for gambling was connected to his first retirement from the game, which happened after season. The league was they allowed all that to happen. You know, they knew I never had a gambon issue. They knew I had no connection with any kind of creaty. You know, Bob Field. You know I'm I'm tired of this game. I want

to get away. That was just a taste. Jordan was beyond great. When I finished my interview with him, I thought books over, man, I got Jordan's He told me some great stuff. Let's move on. Except except Bird. Bird was then running the Indiana Pacers, and he had proven elusive. First he said he didn't want to do it. Now michaelane doing it. He told me, Michael's doing it. I said.

Then we missed connections on a meeting. Then they went out to Indianapolis on Draft Day two thousand and eleven and Bird got tied up and we missed connections again, and he wouldn't return my phone calls. In the days turned into weeks, and the weeks in the months, and I had to write the book. And the only damn player I hadn't talked to was one who was really important, and one with whom I had enjoyed a good relationship over twenty five years. Now, there was a lot about

Bird in the book I had written so far. People talked about him, I had old interviews. I could have even faked it, but it just bothered the hell out of me. So I threw a hail Mary. I called his secretary, who by this time had heard from me half a dozen times. Hey, listen, tell Larry I'm going in for a prostate cancer operation next Tuesday, I told her. And if I die on the operating table, my last thought was that Larry Bird blew me off for this book.

See the thing is that was true, every bit of it. So Bird gets on the phone and says, Okay, what do you want. I can talk now, Larry Man can't do it this way. I gotta come see you in person. I've seen everybody in person. I'll be there on Monday, okay, And he said, Okay. Another tip for young journalists always see someone in person if possible. You can't feel the interview over a phone. It's easier for a subject to

cut you off when you're not live. There's a certain flow to the conversation, and Bird was great talking about what he got out of the Dream Team, and in typical honest Bird fashion, talking about how some of it would have turned sour had it gone on any longer. So I left the Bird interview ecstatic, except for the fact, of course, that I was facing cancer surgery. But that's another story. But I felt great about the interview, all of the interviews. But the question was where to put

the Bird stuff. I had finished the book by then. It was already in proof form, what editors called galleys, and when something is in galleys, they don't want you making a lot of changes. Well, I had a lot of changes after my conversation with Bird, But I had an idea. I told my editor I would make the chapter about Bird the final chapter of the book. Yeah. I would have to make a few other tweaks to

the manuscript, but basically I would just be adding on material. See, Bird had told me two things that really stuck with me. One was about his father, I'll tell you about it later. And this was the other one, and it was about when he had decided to retire, a decision he had made though few knew it after the Celtics had lost in the playoffs to the Cleveland Cavaliers. When I walked off the floor in Cleveland playoffs, when I was walked off the court, I said, this is it and I

loved that building. The second game I played an NBA regular season with restfield, were pulled up there, and I clearly believe it pulled up and you see it, said back, I don't. Oh my god, that's what I always dreamed of, freaking U basketball building in a corn field. That just to me just that. So when I last there, said, when I walked off that court that day, I said, what a what a great great ening an arena that rose out of a cornfield. That seems so magical, so bird,

but also so at the essence of what sports is. Anyway, that is just the beginning of the Dream Team journey, and the next episode we'll be hearing about how all this came to be and why after over fifty years of Olympic competition, during which no NBA players suited up for the United States. There suddenly occurred this cosmic moment when it all came together. If you enjoyed The Dream Team Tapes, please follow, rate, and review wherever you get

your podcasts. The Dream Team Tapes is written and hosted by Jack McCallum. Executive producers Mark Francis and Scott Waxman, Executive producer for I Heart Media is shown to Turne. The Dream Team Tapes is a Diversion Podcasts original series in association with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.