30 Years later: Celebrating the Trail Blazers’ role in the greatest team ever

This summer marks 30 years since the greatest basketball team ever was assembled. No basketball roster has featured as much talent and stars as this one had.

That 1992 Portland Trail Blazers squad featured Clyde Drexler, Terry Porter, Buck Williams, Danny Ainge, and others, whom took on Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and the Chicago Bulls in the NBA Finals. But I’m not writing about either of those teams. This team was and is still known as the Dream Team.

You probably remember this team quite well, don’t you? It featured Drexler, Jordan, Pippen, Patrick Ewing, Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, Magic Johnson, Karl Malone, John Stockton, Chris Mullin, David Robinson, and Christian Laettner, who had just been drafted third overall by the Minnesota Timberwolves out of Duke.

That has to be, without a doubt, the best-constructed roster of all time. The Dream Team went on to the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, and easily brought home the gold medal.

Here is something you may not remember. What was known as the Tournament of Americas, later known as the FIBA Americas Championship and the FIBA Americas, was held at Portland’s Memorial Coliseum. It was the first look at the Dream Team.

The other teams participating in Olympic qualifications were Venezuela, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Canada, Argentina, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, and Uruguay. The United States, of course, went 6-0. Barkley, with 16.3 points per game, led Team USA in the tournament, followed by Malone with 14.8. Drexler, who wore number 10 in the events that, year had 13.8 PPG in the qualifier.

My uncle, Scott Holmstedt, attended the tournament and had this to say:

"“That team was magical. They were a team of Fall of Fame players that were unstoppable. The team from Argentina knew they were outclassed before the end of the first half. They were congratulating the USA players after they made a jaw-dropping play. The Dream Team was the greatest to ever play.”"

The Dream Team would later defeat Angola, Croatia, Germany, Brazil, Spain, Puerto Rico, Arvydas Sabonis’ and Lithuania, and Croatia again to capture the gold medal. Croatia won the silver and Lithuania took home bronze.

An interesting note on that roster: The final spot went to Drexler over Detroit’s Isiah Thomas, primarily because two men, according to Jeff Zillgitt of USA Today,

"“Isiah Thomas was not a member of the Dream Team primarily because of two men, Michael Jordan and Chuck Daly. If we want to put a finer point on it, it was really one man — Jordan.”"

Daly, Seton Hall’s PJ Carlesimo, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, and Lenny Wilkens were the coaches of the Dream Team. Barkley (18.0 ) and Jordan (14.9) were Team USA’s leading scorers in Barcelona while Drexler averaged 10.5 points, 3.0 rebounds, and 3.6 assists per game throughout the run.

USA Basketball would go on to put more great teams together, including Dream Team II and the 2021 team that featured the Portland Trail Blazers’ own Damian Lillard. However, it’s very likely we won’t see a team like the original Dream Team any time soon.