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The 1992 Dream Team is justly celebrated as the greatest collection of talent in the history of the game - Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan among other luminaries - and big wins were routine.
Here’s the win over Germany, where the US prevailed by 43, 111-68.
When you watch this, you see so many stories of triumph. Bird, Pippen, Barkley and Malone rising from small cities to basketball immortality, Johnson overcoming his HIV diagnosis to have one last hurrah as a player and Christian Laettner fresh off an epic college career.
One of the most underrated stories on the team though was probably Chris Mullin.
Mullin, who was one of Coach K’s first targets as a young head coach at Duke before choosing St. John’s, realized during his third NBA season that he was an alcoholic.
He went into rehab, successfully, then ferociously rehabbed his game. Even by NBA standards, Mullin was supremely fit and turned himself into a highly dangerous basketball weapon.
The US team wasn’t just talented; it was supremely skilled and on a mission. The US really toyed with Germany here and the German team wasn’t awful.
Johnson didn't dress for this game incidentally.