Major League Baseball games in London, Japan, South Korea and Cuba. The NFL international series, coming next month to a South American all-seater near you. Game 39. Professional sports organizations around the world have fallen over themselves in recent years trying to break into new markets and expand their spheres of influence. But all of these flailing efforts to satisfy growth-obsessed stakeholders have failed to even approach the simple genius of NBA commissioner David Stern, who laid down the gold standard for globalization more than three decades ago when he willed the Dream Team into existence for the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona.
The US squad featuring Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Charles Barkley, arguably the greatest collection of sporting talent ever assembled, was more than just a great team. It was a sentient infomercial for a sport and a culture. Sports Illustrated writer Jack McCallum compared it to “Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, the Allman Brothers at the Fillmore East, Santana at Woodstock”. The Americans’ eight-game romp to the gold medal by an average margin of 44 points was a seminal moment where suddenly kids around the globe were growing up wanting to be like Mike. It was the closest thing to a big bang that a sport has ever seen.
