1992 USA Olympics Dream Team: 6 fascinating stories about the greatest basketball team ever

#5 Sir Charles the ambassador

Charles Barkley spent a lot of time walking through the city

If you had to pick an Olympian from the Dream team to be the representative of the team, names like Jordan, Bird or Magic come to mind. Or perhaps the all-American hero David Robinson. If not them, John Stockton is another safe bet as an everyman sized guard who holds his own against giants.

Whoever you picked, you probably would have struck many names to get to Charles Barkley. The resident bad boy barely made it to the squad over concerns regarding his volatile persona. The very last thing David Stern needed was Barkley going off in Barcelona on his wild rampages.

Barkley had told an old lady in Boston, "Shut up you (female canine).” He had fallen into another controversy when he spat on a little eight-year-old girl Lauren Rose, he apparently intended to spit at a heckler. Later, he apologized profusely.

What he didn't apologize for was elbowing Herlander Coimbra of Angola in USA's first game at the Olympics. Barkley claimed that he was hit first. Before the game, he had said, “I don't know anything about Angola, but Angola's in trouble.”

Barkley ended up becoming the leading scorer for the Dream Team. He averaged 18 points per game through 8 games and was the most visible face around town. He refused to travel with a security escort or an entourage. He'd walk out of the hotel at random and give a few hundred bucks to a likely candidate for a bodyguard and tell him "You're my bodyguard for the night."

There may have been some resentment against Team USA for not staying at the Olympic Village and choosing a hotel instead. But they would have caused a riot by staying at the Village. Barkley's everyman antics endeared him to the locals and did well for the image of the team which was seen as too good to mingle with the rest.