The "The Last Dance" Thread

As much as I loved those guys and we wore Nike Blazers for my HS team in 1981! in 1984 the adidas Top Tens and Forums were the top of the line in hoops and Lendl was the top of the tennis world in the shoe game. McEnroe wore Nike but was more known for Tacchini (I love that stuff)

 

Many if not most of the Trail Blazers' title team in 1977 wore Nikes, although Walton was in Adidas.

 

Nah, I know McEnroe wore Tacchini, but he was an early, well known Nike guy. The first of the counter-culture Nike guys, and well before Jordan.

The documentary took a swing and a miss on that point.

 

Would have been much simpler, and truer, to just say Nike became a global brand because of Jordan.

 

Had the US had to fill the 1992 team with college players it would've been a formidable squad. Off the top of my head I figure Shaq, Webber, Penny, Laettner, Hurley, Hill, Mashburn, Jim Jackson and Alonzo Mourning would have been part of the team. I can't see anyone other than possibly Croatia beating them.

 

I think the point is that in 1984 very few people were even thinking of Nikes as the same as adidas, especially for leisure wear.

Tennis was huge compared to hoops and adidas was on top, hell even beach volleyball wear was bigger (look it up in videos and movies).

 

Crowds aren't lining up 100 deep in Barcelona to see Mashburn and Mourning.

 

There was a college all-star team that played the Dream Team in a couple of exhibitions. The college team won the first game, although supposedly, Chuck Daly wasn’t trying to win to teach the Dream Team not to take anyone lightly. Then the Dream Team crushed them in the second game.

https://www.thesportscol.com/2017/10/dream-team-vs-college-stars/

There also was a legendary intrasquad scrimmage with Jordan’s team facing Magic’s team. Supposedly, some people called it the greatest game nobody saw.

 

Did you watch last night's episode? There was plenty of footage.

 

There's a story out there on the intrasquad game too. Complete with scoring stats. Apparently Laettner had 10 in the game.

You can kind of look at 1992 as the time that college basketball started to fade in terms of star power and the NBA really took off as a global entity. There hasn't been that much star power in college since that early 90s period and then kids started going straight to the pros from HS.

 

Then they went out and played at about 55% throttle through most of the Olympics (more like 35% in half the games).