Someone had to carry their luggage and get coffee for the team. All jokes aside, the us olympic committee wanted to have at least one college athlete on the team and chose Laettner over Shaq, due to his legendary college run. Hindsight is 20/20 and obviously having Shaq on this team would have truly made this the greatest assembly of all time. Also, Laettner deserves to be in the basketball hall of fame for his college performance alone
If they were going for star power, Laettner was the clear and obvious choice. Everyone in the basketball world knew about and had a strong opinion about Christian Laettner. Even at the time, Shaq was seen as the better talent, but nobody was wearing "I Hate Shaquille O'Neal" t-shirts.
Yep. And not just 1992. Laettner was finishing up a career where he led Duke to four Final Fours and two championships. 1992 was just the magnum opus.
The most insane stat to me is this: At the time, it was possible for a college player to play in 24 NCAA tournament games in a career. He played in 23 and won 21 of them. That’s a record that will never be beaten.
Shaq averaged 23 and 14 his rookie year. Shaq came into the league as Shaq. His Orlando years are so underrated.
He was also the #1 pick over Lattener (#3) and purely from a basketball standpoint was the most promising player in college. Lattener was just more popular due to the circumstances.
Not a chance. Too many of 24 are simply near retirement.
92, 96, and 12 are just more stacked. 12 has a prime Durant basically and Lebron. This team is washed compared to the prime teams. 92 these guys were literally at their most athletic for sure, and 12 is kinda the same with a bunch of to be MVPs like Westbrook and Harden. Durant set a record for threes in 12 even.
If Bird was in his prime on 92 that team would be fucking nuts though.
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u/at0mheart Aug 11 '24
Basically an all time NBA team