The 1992 USA Dream Team was arguably the greatest team assembled in the history of the NBA. It featured the likes of many great players such as Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, John Stockton, and many other players.
But unarguably the biggest snub from this amazing ensemble was the terrific point guard Isiah Thomas. It is a well-known fact that Thomas was a sensational player at that time. So his snub from the team was a surprising fact.
The reason for it was due to the rivalry between MJ and Thomas. Jordan revealed the start of this rivalry in a 1992 edition of the Playboy magazine. In the magazine, Jordan said that when he saw Thomas for the first time at the 1985 All-Star game, the then-Detroit Pistons superstar gave him a cold shoulder.
Now, knowing MJ, it rubbed him the wrong way, and he accepted that rivalry with open arms. While most are already aware of the rivalry between the two stars and how it impacted Thomas getting snubbed from the 1992 Dream Team. There aren’t many who know about John Stockton’s side of the story, who was selected in place of Thomas.
Well, Stockton himself revealed his reaction to that in a recent interview with John Whitlock. The Utah Jazz star revealed:
“Well, I gotta tell you one of the neat things that he did I mentioned that he’s come into my life a number of times and done impactful things. So that whole selection went down again I was surprised when I got the call in the first place. I didn’t believe it when I got the call I had to call our team to confirm it. Um so before I said yes and so you know kind of the standard for me is my expectations were that I would never be selected for a team like that. So then I’m selected. I just get prepared and do it and so who else was on the team was kind of irrelevant to me or who wasn’t. I was asked I have a job to do let’s go and so um then the controversy comes out but as I mentioned I don’t read the newspaper, I don’t have social media which didn’t even exist then.
“Uh so I only heard about it on the on the days that we’re playing Detroit which is only twice a year so um you know and then you heard about it a lot and you know I think you know Isiah until he put a couple whopper games together that year. I’ll tell you that he was a load and a half to try to play against but uh you know there was a point there but what that special thing that he did amidst all the noise on it, he found a way to call my dad. I mean I don’t know how you hear how he would even do that but he called my dad personally. Didn’t have a secretary call he didn’t have you know. He called my dad and just kind of explained that he felt that he belonged as well not that it was John or me. I tell you my dad uh so much appreciated that and it put him at such ease and um again I’m so grateful for that I don’t know if I’d have been big enough to do that that’s for sure and so um you know that put everything at ease in my camp for sure when did that happen in 92 for sure.”
(starts at 14:00)
It is great to know that even though Stockton doubted his selection in the 1992 Dream Team, Isiah Thomas supported him.
If Thomas had been negative about it, it would have had a pretty bad impact on the morale of Stockton. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case and John had a good outing with the Dream Team, winning the gold medal of course.
