Dream Team: How Michael, Magic, Larry, Charles, and the Greatest Team of All Time Conquered the World and Changed the Game of Basketball Forever by Jack McCallum
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I was 11 years old during the 1992 Olympics with the infamous Dream Tream - old enough to be enthralled with watching the best of the NBA overwhelm the competition, but young enough to not be aware of any of the political struggle between the NBA and the US Olympic Committee, the sometimes animosity among players during the formation of the Dream Team, as well as the cultural impact of Magic Johnson playing after recently announcing he had HIV.
My first reaction upon finishing the book is that there is no way all this could have happened in today's society - with 24 hour news cycle, social media, where almost every story is overblown and, in sports, hot takes abound. I can't imagine what the sports talk shows would have done with knowledge of Barkley's night trips into Barcelona, Jordan's obsessive golf playing (sometimes playing 36 holes in the afternoon before a night game), and on and on and on. The author, McCallum, talks about how it was a bit of a struggle to find things to write about while covering the team because there was nothing interesting on the court - no game was ever really close. Today, that wouldn't have been an issue - all the other stuff would have been more than enough fodder for our present news cycle.
The book was interesting for me, as a sports fan, just to get glimpses of how these megastars of the 1980s/1990s basketball interacted with each other, and what they thought of each other. There is a rare, unvarnished honesty that comes across in the book that makes it enjoyable and interesting to read. McCallum did ask for, but was never able to get an interview with Isiah Thomas - who was left off the Dream Team due to personal acrimony with Michael Jordan. It would have been interesting to have that story more developed in here, but such is of course not the fault of the McCallum.
Regardless, an enoyable, quick read for sports fan, about one of the seminal events in sports over the last 40 years.
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