Dream Team turns reporter’s nightmare

It was a delayed plane that delivered my misfortune. I wasn’t on that plane; in fact I didn’t even hear about it until much later.

US Dream Team basketballers Kevin Garnett, left, and Gary Payton share a joke during a training session at Melbourne Park in September 2000. Picture: Joe Mann

It was a delayed plane that delivered my misfortune, my sliding-doors humiliation.

I wasn’t on that plane; in fact I didn’t even hear about it until much later.

But that plane was carrying the US Olympic men’s basketball team into Sydney for the 2000 Games. Studded with NBA stars and collectively worth several billion dollars, the so-called Dream Team has won seven gold medals in eight Olympics since 1992, when professional players were first allowed to compete.

It is a lopsided contest every Olympics, but no one cares because they are the rock stars of the Games and their arrival in Sydney in early September 2000 was big news.

By pure accident, I happened to be The Australian’s basketball writer for those Olympics.

I was part of a group of reporters assigned to cover our home Games for the paper even though I wasn’t a sports reporter. I had just returned to Australia after more than three years as the paper’s New York correspondent, so the editor assigned me to cover the basketball competition on the dubious grounds that “you lived in America so you at least know the rules”.

In a panic, I started reading everything I could about the game and especially about the Dream Team, which was about to arrive in Australia.

What I learned was that American commentators thought the 2000 Dream Team on paper was easily the least talented group to represent the US at the Olympics, even though it was still all but certain to be gold medallists.

So ahead of the side’s arrival I wrote a large feature for The Australian with the headline “Dream On”, saying how this was the worst Dream Team ever to leave US shores.

Several days later the Dream Team held its first training session in Melbourne near Olympic Park and I walked down there to interview its captain, a towering 211cm African-American centre called Kevin Garnett.

The whole Dream Team was training on the court, throwing basketballs everywhere, when Garnett walked off the court and sat down with me on the sideline, his bald head glistening with sweat.

“Thanks for talking with The Australian, Mr Garnett,” I began. “My name is Cameron Stewart and I’d like to ask …”

“Say what?” snapped Garnett before I could finish my sentence. His eyes opened wide, his nostrils flared. “What’d you say your name was?”

Suddenly Garnett turned to his team on the court and yelled, “Hey everybody, this is that Cameron Stewart from that Aussie newspaper who wrote all that shit about us. Man, what a load of shit that was.”

Suddenly all the basketballs on the court stopped bouncing. There was the briefest moment of complete, terrifying silence as the entire US basketball team glared at this hapless reporter. Then they all unleashed.

“Hey man, you ain’t shit!’’ yelled one. “Who you think you are, you is nobody!” said another. “Hey loser!” “Motherf..ker!” “Shit for brains!” On and on it went. I was being trash-talked in perfect unison by the world’s best basketball team. There was nowhere to hide.

Then I heard a laugh from behind. It was the US team’s media manager, who was thoroughly enjoying watching me being hung, drawn and quartered by his multimillion-dollar stars.

Later, after my public shaming was finally over, he took me aside to confide in me about what had happened.

The team’s plane had landed in Sydney from LA but it had been delayed and the team missed its domestic connection, he said. So the Dream Team was sitting at the airport, bored and waiting for the next plane when the manager decided to hand out some newspapers to help them pass the time. He grabbed a bunch of copies of the nearest paper – which happened to be The Australian – which also just happened on that day to have my deeply uncomplimentary “Dream On” story on the cover of the features section.

All of a sudden, he told me, the entire Dream Team – none of whom would ever normally read an Australian newspaper in their life – was devouring my words with steam coming out of their ears. “The plane was late and that’s the only reason that they read your story,” he said, laughing. “You were unlucky, I guess. But they got you back in the end, didn’t they? They got you real good.”

(Postscript – the 2000 US Dream Team won the gold medal in Sydney without losing a game.)