About this item
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Acclaimed sports journalist Jack McCallum delivers the untold story of the greatest team ever assembled: the 1992 U.S. Olympic Men's Basketball Team. As a writer for Sports Illustrated, McCallum enjoyed a courtside seat for the most exciting basketball spectacle on earth, covering the Dream Team from its inception to the gold medal ceremony in Barcelona. Drawing on fresh interviews with the players, McCallum provides the definitive account of the Dream Team phenomenon. He offers a behind-the-scenes look at the controversial selection process. He takes us inside the team's Olympic suites for late-night card games and bull sessions where superstars like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird debated the finer points of basketball. And he narrates a riveting account of the legendary intrasquad scrimmage that pitted the Dream Teamers against one another in what may have been the greatest pickup game in history. In the twenty years since the Dream Team first captivated the world, its mystique has only grown. Dream Team vividly re-creates the moment when a once-in-a-millennium group of athletes came together and changed the future of sports - one perfectly executed fast break at a time. With a new Afterword by the author. "The absolute definitive work on the subject, a perfectly wonderful once-you-pick-it-up-you-won't-be-able-to-put-it-down book." - The Boston Globe "An Olympic hoops dream." - Newsday "What makes this volume a must-read for nostalgic hoopsters are the robust portraits of the outsize personalities of the participants, all of whom were remarkably open with McCallum, both then and now." - BOOKLIST (starred review)
About the Author
--My podcast, THE DREAM TEAM TAPES, got 2.5 million downloads. You can Google it and hear it. Have a couple other podcast ideas, also.--My book, GOLDEN DAYS, was about the Jerry West-Wilt Chamberlain Lakers who won 33 straight games and the modern Golden State Warriors, the standard for contemporary excellence.--Our family used to have two waverunners that I drove too wildly and served as a poor example for my sons, who also drove too wildly. We don't have them anymore.--My wife is smarter than I. One of my sons (Chris) is a Spanish translator and the other (Jamie) is a professor of sociology and both are also smarter than I. Jamie's book, "Worked Over," is now available.--I'm not sure what else I would've done if I weren't a journalist. I always dreamed about having a TastyKake route at the Jersey shore. I am at the shore much of the summer but have no route, though I do enjoy Tastykakes.--I played a lot of pickup basketball until I tore my Achilles. Just had a knee replacement, too. But other than that I'm the Rock. Possible exaggeration.--Though it is more in the romantic tradition of journalism to have an eccentric two-fingered typing style, I type well, owing to a background in piano and a typing class in high school. I now suck at the piano. And I would probably suck at high school if I went back.--I will talk about my four grandkids all day. Their names are Oliver, Eudora, Zev and Asa. Another one is due in November.--My golf game is just good enough to be ultimately disappointing.--I count myself lucky to have been covering the NBA in the 1980s and early 2000s.
