• Charles Barkley elbowed Angola’s Herlander Coimbra in Team USA’s first game in the 1992 Olympics
• Barkley refused to apologize and claimed he had been hit first
• Barkley added that he thought Coimbra was going to pull a spear on him
The 1992 Dream Team might just have had the greatest collection of basketball talent ever. With the likes of Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson leading the way, they crushed the competition to win the gold medal.
Charles Barkley might just have been their best player in the tournament, though, but Barkley being Barkley meant he was going to cause some trouble as well. In their first game against Angola, he elbowed Herlander Coimbra and was unapologetic about it.
“Somebody hits me, I’m going to hit him back,” Barkley said. “Even if it does look like he hasn’t eaten in a couple (of) weeks. I thought he was going to pull a spear on me.”
Barkley has never been one to shy away from retaliating if he felt someone had crossed the line with him and you can check out the incident down below.
While Barkley claimed he was hit first, the reputation of Team USA was tarnished by this incident. It took the focus away from a dominant performance, as they had just beaten Angola 116-48, with Barkley being the game’s top scorer by racking up 24 points. Fortunately, there were no more major controversies, and it was smooth sailing from then on.
The Dream Team’s Ridiculous Level Of Dominance At The Olympics
That dominant win against Angola was just a sign of things to come. They ended up beating their opponents by an average margin of 43.8 points in the 1992 Olympics and head coach Chuck Daly didn’t have to call a single timeout in any of their eight games either.
The closest game of the entire Olympics for them was the gold medal game against Croatia, where they won 117-85. The only other team that kept that margin under 40 points was Puerto Rico, as the U.S. beat them 115-77. It speaks to just how they were, far and away, the best team in the world.
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