Grant Hill revealed incredible new details about the legendary 1992 scrimmage where a group of college stars shocked the iconic United States men’s national basketball team before the Barcelona Olympics.
Speaking on The Cousins podcast with Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady, Hill explained how the famous upset happened and how brutally the Dream Team responded afterward.
“I don’t think we knew we were going to be playing against them. What we were doing the day before was practicing to show them what the international teams would do and how they would play. I thought it would be a controlled scrimmage or maybe we’re on offense and they’re on defense in the half-court.”
“When we arrived, they were like, let’s go. Let’s play. We didn’t have time to process it because we were so much in awe. Roy Williams was the coach. He was at University of Kansas at the time. I remember him saying, all right, you five start. Grant, you got Jordan. I’m like, oh shit.”
“We went out there and I think they almost treated it like an All-Star Game, where you don’t really want to step on anybody and you’re just going through the motions. We went out there like we were going against our heroes. We’d never seen them before and we were trying to measure ourselves against them. We got the better of them.”
“Allan Houston caught fire. He might’ve hit like 10 threes. Bobby Hurley’s dribble penetration was great. Chris Webber was banging on everybody inside. Anfernee Hardaway and I were making athletic plays. Everybody contributed and played well. There was no pressure on us. It was a moment we had fun with and enjoyed, and I think we stunned everybody. I think we stunned ourselves.”
“Now the next two days, we could barely get the ball over half court.”
“They tried to say in the documentary that Chuck Daly rested Michael Jordan. Steve Webb had a great line. So you’re saying the rest of the guys were chopped liver? The next day, Michael picked up whoever was bringing the ball up. Michael and Scottie Pippen were everywhere. It was like the movie Space Jam where you lose your powers. That’s what it felt like.”
“We didn’t even know it was being recorded. We were just in awe.”
The 1992 Dream Team remains widely viewed as the greatest basketball roster ever assembled.
The team featured Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, Scottie Pippen, Karl Malone, David Robinson, Patrick Ewing, John Stockton, Clyde Drexler, Chris Mullin, and Christian Laettner.
Many considered them unbeatable before they even stepped onto the Olympic court. Hill, however, was part of the select college team that stunned them during a closed scrimmage in San Diego before the Olympics began.
The college squad featured future NBA stars like Hill, Chris Webber, Anfernee Hardaway, Bobby Hurley, and Allan Houston. The group originally believed they were simply helping the Dream Team prepare for international opponents. Instead, they suddenly found themselves playing full-speed against basketball gods.
For years, rumors surrounded the scrimmage because footage remained mostly unreleased. The story became more popular after ‘The Last Dance’ documentary briefly referenced the loss, although Hill believes parts of the story were softened afterward.
Hill said the Dream Team completely changed its intensity during the next practices. Jordan and Pippen reportedly pressured the ball relentlessly from baseline to baseline. The Dream Team played with full playoff intensity after the embarrassment. And the Dream Team never lost again.
They went undefeated at the 1992 Olympics and destroyed opponents by an average of nearly 44 points per game on the way to the gold medal. Barkley led the team in scoring at 18 points per game, while Jordan averaged 14.9 points, 4.8 assists, and 4.3 rebounds. Still, decades later, Hill clearly remembers the feeling of shocking the greatest basketball team ever assembled.
