Coach Steve Alford talks about a bet Michael Jordan made him and never paid. Reno Gazette Journal

It was 1984 when Michael Jordan fell in love with Bloomington and felt sorry for Steve Alford all at the same time. The same spring he felt the wrath of Bob Knight andthe earth-shaking rattle of Charles Barkley's dunks.

Jordan, a junior at North Carolina, was dropped in the middle of the picturesque college campus of Indiana University 36years ago. He was one of 72 Olympic hopefuls to descend on IU, invading Indiana Memorial Union, grabbing a scoop of ice cream at the Chocolate Moose, hitting McDonald's, inciting a buzz across campus.

Inside a tiny arcade in the student union, the likes of Karl Malone, Sam Perkinsand Kenny Fieldswould play. Jordan was rumored to have been at a Little 500 party at McNutt Hall. There were movies to go to in their spare time and putt-putt golf to play.

Mostly, though, it was basketball.

The 1984 U.S. Olympic Trials were heldApril 17-22, led by the venerable Knight, who would have to whittle the dozens of players down to 12 plustwo alternates.

Jordan came into the tryouts6-6, 197 pounds, a standout who had just been named College Player of the Year, ledthe ACC in scoring and had drained a memorable jump shot that won the national championship in 1982.

But Jordan and his North Carolina teamhad just lost to IU in the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAAtournament the month before. It was Dan Dakich's famed defensive game, holding Jordan to 13points. He couldn't be that special.

Many people on campus didn't knowJordan by sight.Outside of basketball circles, he wasn't a household name.

Michael Jordan (left) spent some time in Bloomington in 1984 for the U.S. Olympic Trials.(Photo: Associated Press)

Still, Jordan stood out among other players with his magnetism and charisma, said Jon Wertheim, who was 13 andliving in Bloomington when the trials came to town.Jordan walked around in Bermuda shorts and collared shirts and he joked with Wertheim, whom Jordanspotted carrying a tennis racket one day.

Hey, John McEnroe, Jordan yelled to Wertheim, motioning tennis strokes. When are we gonna play?

For Wertheim, his world was made.

"Jordan starts out as this normal, goofy kid, skinny, nice personality, confidentbut hes not untouchable,"said Wertheim, now the executive editor for Sports Illustrated. "Thisguy who's walking around campus, who's going back to North Carolina for his senior year. Then he goes pro, drafted No. 3, Knight loves him, he's the star of the Olympics. Byfall, he has his own shoe from Nike and he's not the goofy kid anymore."

"The general is assembling his troops for what he believes will be his greatest battle," the lead sports story in the IndyStar onApril 20, 1984, read. Knight went on to talk in an unusually gushing way about what it meant to be coaching for his country.

"There isnt anything I will ever do, anything I anticipate I will ever do, that I would like to do as well as this," he said at the time."Ill try to do it as well as I can and hope its sufficient. I cant think of a greater honor."

Knight had a big job to do, sitting and watching these guys play basketball, then, in the end, letting most of them go.

Jordan was one of the better ones, according to other players, but not necessarily the one who stood out.

"Nothing can prepare you for Patrick Ewing for breakfast, Charles Barkley for lunch and Lorenzo Charles for dinner," Ed Pinckney told the IndyStar in Bloomington that April.

"Three or four times a day I hear backboards rattling," Olympic hopefulTim McCormick said. "And each time I turn around, I see Barkley walking away."

Yet Knight seemed to have picked his ownfavoritein the eager-to-please Jordan, the perfectly kempt and feathered-haired Alford aside.

Wertheim, who was friends with Knight's son Pat,would play junior tennis at the courts and then take his lunch to Assembly Hall to watch practices.

"Eventhen I can remember (Jordan)being the teachers pet," said Wertheim, who is writing the book Glory Days: The Summer of 1984 and 90 Days that Changed Sports." "Everyone wanted to impress (Knight), but..."

Jordan did. Knight raved about Jordan to reporters.

"I think he's the best athlete I've ever seen play basketball, bar none. If I were going to pick people with the best ability I'd ever seen play the game, he'd be one. If I wanted to pick the best competitors I'd ever seen play, he'd be one of them," Knight said. "So, in the categories of competitiveness and ability, skill and athletic ability, he's the best athlete. ... That, to me, makes him the best basketball player I've ever seen play."

Later, Jordan would tell people how tough Knight was as a coach.

July 24, 1984: Olympic basketball coach Bob Knight (back) jokes with team members (from left) Steve Alford, Jeff Turner and Jon Koncak.(Photo: AP)

"Nobody (but Jordan) probably appreciated on that Olympic team other than myself because I knew it, I grew up with it how tough coach is," Alford told the IndyStar in October."But in that toughness, he shows how much he cares and loves and how much it makes youbetter. And thats not easy, especially when youre Michael Jordan."

During their time on the Olympic team, Jordan betAlford $100 he wouldn't last his entire college career playing for Knight and said he felt sorry that Alford had such a tough coach.

"It was kind of a tongue-in-cheek type of thing MJ was doing because he saw how demanding just the summer was," Alford said. "I dont think it was so much making that bet because coach was coach, it was more he was betting on I wasnt tough enough to handle it. It was a dig at me."

Alford proved Jordan wrong, though Alford never saw that $100.

Wertheim has a suspicion that Jordan's talk about the toughness of Knight was just that all talk.

"People have said how Jordan thought he was so hard," Wertheim said."But he found someone that was as driven as he was and I think they both really liked each other."

Those auditioning for Knightstayed in rooms at the student union and ate in the cafeteria. When they needed to get to practices, maroon vans crammed with lanky players could be spotted lumbering about campus.

Rod Humphrey was finishing up hisjunior year that spring at IU and remembers the buzz, the talk, the rumors that swirled about what these future NBA playerswere doing on campus.

"There were stories all over the place," he said. Humphrey saw plenty of it firsthand.

Eachday, the team would line up in the student union waiting for meals. It was a narrow hallway with not much room to maneuver so some of the guys would step outside to soak in the sun, waiting for the line to dwindle.

Most of the players were nice enough to stop and talk to the fans and students who approached them for an autograph or handshake.

One day, in between classes, Humphreytook a break to play Tapper at the arcade inside theunion.The next thing he knew, Karl Malone and Kenny Fields were next to him playing Ms. Pac-Man.

Michael Jordan was the leading scorer in the 1984 Olympics.(Photo: Lennox McLendon, AP)

Humphreybolted to the bookstore, bought a pad of paper and a pen, and ran back. Both gave him an autograph with no complaints.

"They were pretty cool about it," said Humphrey, now a CPA who lives in Indianapolis. "To those that followed college basketball to see the likes of Jordan and Ewing and Barkley and Perkins and Malone, these were the guys that ended up taking over the NBA. The fact that they were so approachable?For the most part they were just hanging out."

Or as Wertheim puts it: "They were as bored as all of us, hanging aroundin a college town," he said.

Knight eventually selectedhis12 players and two alternates. His team won thegold medal that summer. It was the lastamateur level U.S. team to win an Olympic goldinmen's basketball.

The team went 80, averaging 95.4 points per gameand holding opponents to 63.3. Four players averaged double figures in scoring.

But one led them all. His name was Michael Jordan (17.1)and he was about to get a shoe deal.

Follow IndyStar sports reporter Dana Benbow on Twitter: @DanaBenbow. Reach her via email: dbenbow@indystar.com.

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When Michael Jordan collided with Bloomington, Bob Knight and the Olympic Trials in 1984 - IndyStar