“I don’t know anything about Angola, but Angola’s in trouble.”
NBA legend and Hall of Famer Charles Barkley uttered those now infamous words back in 1992 ahead of his all-conquering USA Olympics ‘Dream Team’ taking on basketball minnows Angola.
The African nation of about 12.5 million (in 1992) had zero NBA players on their roster while Team USA had some of the greatest hoopers — Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird — on planet Earth.
It was a David vs Goliath matchup in every sense, and Angola’s head coach Victorino Cunha knew they needed a miracle to stand any chance of slaying the Team USA giant.
According to the 6ft 7in, 172-pound Angolan forward Herlander Coimbra in GQ’s ‘Oral History of the Dream Team’, Cunha attempted to boost his team’s morale by essentially telling his players the Dream Team wasn’t as good as everyone made out.
Cunha told his players that “only Larry Bird and Michael Jordan were really, really good [and] that the other Dream Teamers were just okay.”
Basketball wasn’t the global game it is today, and although the Angolans had heard of Bird and MJ, they weren’t actually all that familiar with the likes of Barkley, Karl Malone, David Robinson, Chris Mullen, Patrick Ewing, Clyde Drexler, John Stockton, Scottie Pippen and Christian Laettner.
However, as Coimbra and his teammates quickly learned, “those guys were on another level — a galaxy far, far away.”
The United States was Angola’s first game of the 1992 tournament and the basketball part-timers “felt like we were the luckiest guys in the world.”
“We were going to play against the best, but also against African-Americans—our little cousins from America,” Coimbra remembered.
“During warm-ups we tried spectacular dunks to show them that we could play like in the NBA. They didn’t dunk even once. They were really serious, all business.”
It was a game that turned out to be a surprisingly chippy affair.
Philadelphia 76ers star Barkley, known for his aggressive playing style, got himself in trouble early in the game after throwing a brutal elbow into Coimbra’s chest.
The Round Mound of Rebound’s elbow was met with loud boos from the Barcelona crowd and it drew a technical foul that ended a 31-point US run.
“They were playing a little chippy, and I warned him a couple of times,” Chuck said. “I thought he was getting away with a couple of little cheap shots.”
250lb NBA superstar Barkley elbowing 174lb economics student Coimbra was a bad look for a Team USA squad that was supposed to be upholding the values and integrity of the sport in front of a global audience.
The ‘bully’ image was not one the US wanted to portray to the rest of the world, and even MJ thought Barkley’s recklessness was going to get him kicked out of the Games.
Barkley’s elbow was a major talking even after Team USA’s resounding 116-48 win.
“After the game, all the journalists wanted to talk to me about the incident,” Coimbra recalled.
“They wanted to know why. Did I say anything to provoke Barkley? I told them I didn’t do anything. For the next days, that’s all the press wanted to talk about. It became so crazy that I had to say in a statement that we only came here to show how good we were. We didn’t want to feed the rumors. But between us, we talked about it.
“We were not really surprised that Barkley did that, because he was known to be a dirty player.”
Chuck, however, insisted it wasn’t all his doing when reflecting on the incident later on in his career.
“That team played dirty,” Barkley said in an NBC film.
“I said hey, dude, if you do that any more, I’m going to clock you. So he did it a couple more times, and I clocked him.”
To be fair to Barkley, he redeemed himself in the aftermath of the game, stopping to take a photo with Coimbra.
According to one reporter, “the two developed something of a bond in the years that followed, as the elbow made Coimbra a big deal in Angola.”
Barkley kept a lid on his emotions for the rest of the tournament and turned out to be the Team USA’s best player and leading scorer, averaging 18 points per game.
The US won the gold medal at a canter, beating their opponents by an average margin of 44 points and seeing off Croatia 117-85 in the gold medal game.
The 2024 version of Team USA — led by LeBron James, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant — are currently in Paris for 2024 Olympics.
The US are bidding for their fifth straight Olympic gold medal and face Nikola Jokic and Serbia on July 28 in their first group game.
They will finish their group stage with games against South Sudan on July 31 and Puerto Rico on August 3.