Michael Jordan is obsessed with golf – this we know, and we’ve seen plenty of examples. Including, most recently, the ownership of a private Florida club, Grove XXIII, where he’s often playing 36 holes in a day (or more) and hosting some of the best in the world.
But one of the most golf-obsessed efforts for Jordan came during the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.
Jordan’s resume speaks for itself when it comes to on-court accomplishments. When the American ‘Dream Team’ was assembled for the 1992 Olympic games – it was the first Olympics to feature active professional players from the NBA, and the team would go on to defeat its opponents by an average of 44 points en route to gold – Jordan was an obvious selection.
“Probably the team of all-time,” Chuck Daly, the team’s head coach, said in a CBS interview in 2005.
A part of why Jordan said ‘yes’ to joining the squad was because he was able to play golf every day, often multiple rounds. Charles Barkley remembers the time Jordan, David Robinson, Daly and he played 18 during a game day where they’d later face Puerto Rico.
Jordan wanted to do another 18.
“Chuck says, ‘Hey, guys. We played 18. Let’s go.’ Which then Michael replies, ‘I’m gonna get another 18 in. Chuck looked at him, and said, ‘We got another game tonight!’ ” Barkley recalls. “Michael says back: ‘I’ll be good!’ ”
Later at the game, Daly is doling out guarding assignments to the team before tip but Jordan disagrees with Daly.
“No, I got the point guard,” Barkley remembers Jordan saying. “Chuck asks why he doesn’t want the 2 guard. Michael’s kind of leaning down, looks up and says, ‘I said I got the point guard. He said some stuff about me in the newspaper and I’m going to get ’em.’ And we’re all looking around like, uh oh, this little kid in trouble!
“It’s just amazing how he played 36 holes of golf and he was guarding that dude like it was game 7”
It wasn’t the last golf story from Barcelona, either. While Jordan may have won the battle with the point guard from Puerto Rico, what he didn’t count on, however, was getting a defeat at the hands of his coach.
Daly and Jordan were familiar with each other, as Daly lead the ‘Bad Boys’ Detroit Pistons to back-to-back NBA titles, defeating Jordan’s Chicago Bulls along the way.
“He walks by the bench and says, ‘don’t ever beat me at golf again.’ ”
Chuck Daly, after his golf matches with Jordan in Barcelona.
Their relationship blossomed quickly across the pond however, and one day Jordan, Daly, David Robinson, and Charles Barkley played golf together and Daly shot an impressive 70 to beat Jordan.
“I had some reservations about Chuck. We played against him. Going into the Olympics, I got a better impression about him. The more I got of him, the more I wanted to hang out with him,” Jordan said in that same CBS interview. “When he beat me at golf … it was just like the Pistons beating the Bulls. That just ate at me, because I didn’t think he was capable of beating me.”
As the story goes, Jordan began pestering Daly to see if he would go out and play at the next available time, which meant getting up at 4 a.m. the next day to head out – Daly recalled with a laugh.
Jordan would go on to keep his golf efforts up in Barcelona, while, of course, the Dream Team would go on to top the podium. From 1991-1993, Jordan’s Bulls would win three straight NBA Championships.
And he never forgot Daly’s defeat on the course.
The year after the Barcelona Olympics, Daly would go on to coach the New Jersey Nets, his first of two seasons with that squad. At one point, Daly’s Nets were playing the Bulls and Jordan, according to Daly, was “scoring at will.”
At one point, Jordan scooted past Daly on the sidelines.
“He walks by the bench,” Daly recalls, “and says, ‘don’t ever beat me at golf again.’”