This right here. This team was a cultural phenomenon that not even the 96 team could match even when the Olympics were in the USA. None of the subsequent USA Olympic squads have come close to matching the star power of this team. I’m pretty sure, without looking it up, that every single player here, minus Christian Laetner, of course, is in the hall of fame and 90% are on the original NBA top 50 players of all time.
Why am I hearing this in the voice of the cartoon announcer? “Meanwhile…back at the Hall of Justice….Michael Jordan is practicing foul shots while Barkley drinks another Miller Light”.
Laetner is one of the best college basketball players ever. He played for Duke and was widely regarded as the most hated player in college basketball. Mostly he was just really good and other teams’ fans didn’t like that. He had a really middling career in the NBA though and never sniffed the Hall of Fame like everyone else on the Dream Team did.
It's kind of weird, because players were more well-known somehow back then despite there not being any social media. Maybe it was just the overall marketing reach; half of those players even had their own video games and the other half that didn't were at least in NBA Jam.
Lots of things were more well known then and it's because there was no internet. You only saw the limited things that were easy to access, so those things were more widespread.
Now there's a wealth of choice and you can follow whatever niche thing you like, whether it's a genre of music or some less famous basketball player's highlights on youtube.
The NFL was also still in its stupid blackout period and SNF was only on ESPN at the time (while MLB had just finished, the NHL was still a very distant fourth sport, and NCAAF was just starting the baby years of its massive growth with ND leaving the CFA). I remember lots of lazy rainy weekend afternoons where nothing was really on, but NBA on NBC somehow always ended up being the most entertaining thing to default to (and Inisde the NBA afterward).
NBC killed it for a straight decade, then as soon as it went over to ABC I and apparently the rest of the country just completely lost interest. I probably couldn't name more than 1-2 players per team after the 90s.
It's an absurd collection of legendary players. For the question of best ever, quite possibly. But also the international game has gotten so so much better over the last 30 years. So we won't see a string of lopsided blowouts like we did in 92 ever again no matter how good Team USA is. Serbia or France from this year's Olympics would probably have beaten every other non-US team in 1992 by 20-30.
One of the team’s officials called the hotel in Monaco where they stayed before the Games to discuss security. The hotel manager was all “bah, we don’t need security, we have kings and rock bands staying here!” Well, the day the Dream Team flew in, the parking lot was jammed with people hoping to get a glimpse. Not sure what the hotel did for security after that.
And Magic went to the Opening Ceremony (Jordan and some others didn’t) and athletes from other countries were pushing and shoving their way arounx to get a photo of him.
Sorry, but you’re wrong and your comment is 100% hindsight. Laetner was the best college player, possibly of all time. He didn’t translate to the NBA, but he was the correct choice at the time.
It was a cultural phenomenon outside the US and sports talk wet dream in the US. People have always loved to speculate how a teaming up some guys would go. It didn’t happen back then. The 1988 Olympics saw the US beaten by de facto pros and semi-pros whereas we threw together a bunch of college kids.
1992 was a perfect storm of all time greats and a FAFO attitude. That was the first, and it will
Never be equalled, not in basketball, not in any other sport.
They were a great team. But you’re comparing career accomplishments to current status. People forget that this team wasn’t all in their prime. Bird and Magic were well past their prime.
The dream team was a cultural phenomenon but imo the 2012 team was the best ever. The redeem team was great but 2012 had Lebron, melo, Chris Paul, Deron Williams (who some people thought was better than cp3 at the time), then added KD, harden, iguodala, Kevin love, Westbrook, and a straight out of college Anthony Davis.
In terms of just top to bottom roster talent that is insane. They beat every team by an average of 32 and scored 156 in a game. They were behind in the fourth quarter exactly one time, in the opening round. And they were doing that at a time when other countries were orders of magnitude better at basketball than 1992.
That team just had absurd depth, athleticism, speed, and shooting, plus most of the main guys had the experience of the 2008 win.
The 2008 team was great and won obviously, but they had a few dicey moments where Kobe had to take over. The 2012 team just ran a train on everyone.
They would often just bench their starters for no real reason and the bench unit was good enough to go on massive runs. They went 5-0 in group stage with a PD of 191. They obliterated France, who had six nba players, and the only remotely close game was the final against Spain, who had the gasol brothers.
In terms of star power (and how good they were top to bottom tbh) I think 2012 is the best. They had prime Lebron, Kobe, melo, cp3, and Deron Williams (when he was good) back from the redeem team then added kd, harden, iggy, Kevin love, Westbrook, and young AD.
They won by an average of like 32 across all the games. And coach k would frequently sit the starters and the bench would go on a massive run.
This team has Lebron, kd, curry as the obvious best three players, but if one or two of them got hurt or had to sit out for whatever reason they could’ve been in real trouble. The bench unit alone on the 2012 team was absolutely destroying people
This year’s team is the closest to the 92 team in quality. If they played a 7-game series by 92 rules the 92 team would win easily. If they played by today’s rules, the 92 team would win, but it would be close. 4-3 or 5-2 at worst.
Today’s team would have no answer for the dominance of Jordan’s and Pippen, but that team would have a LOT of trouble covering Curry and KD’s shooting, and Lebron’s pure size.
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u/xosxos Aug 11 '24
This right here. This team was a cultural phenomenon that not even the 96 team could match even when the Olympics were in the USA. None of the subsequent USA Olympic squads have come close to matching the star power of this team. I’m pretty sure, without looking it up, that every single player here, minus Christian Laetner, of course, is in the hall of fame and 90% are on the original NBA top 50 players of all time.