NBA TV’s documentary about the USA’s 1992 Gold Medal Men’s Olympic Basketball team received no shortage of attention this week, but amongst the few uninterested in checking it out was the New York Post’s Peter Vecsey, who says of the so-called Dream Team, “I am proud to say I have never seen that supercilious squadron play a single minute.”
The hypocrisy of so many people involved in its assembly and, more to the cutthroat point, the ostracizing of Isiah Thomas, is both wretched and retching.
This may be the dirtiest a sports figure has ever been treated. Let us count the outrages:
The most egregious is committee members with sway giving Jordan the right to banish Thomas from the team. The two had a long-standing beef that covered a multitude of real and imagined transgressions. So, when Jordan let it be known through agent David Falk he refused to be teammates with Thomas, the powers that be folded along the dotted lines.
The NBA was in the early stages of a $3 million (money, marketing … and money) global initiative. Hence, Russ Granik, at the time deputy commissioner and liaison to USA Basketball, and Rod Thorn, who drafted His Airness as Bulls general manager and a league fixture in one capacity or another now for 50 years, weren’t about to tell Jordan to stay home.
And management wonders where players got the idea they should be consulted about player personnel decisions and why they have no compunction about undermining coaches.