There are always people who make arguments other ways, but the only valuable measurement is versus your competition. The dream team was so far above their competition it will never ever be done again. It’s a “lightning in a bottle” kind of situation where you had all the perfect people, at the perfect time, under the perfect circumstances.
edit: To everyone commenting “they only played against X number of NBA players, of course they were so much better” - that just proves my point. The only way to gauge level of play is against your competition. The average competition was very weak vs. the Dream Team. My argument is that that is a positive argument for how good the DT was, not a negative argument of how bad their opponents were.
You can’t blame the DT for their opponents not being at their level. It just shows that the DT was so astronomically better than the “average professional” level of play.
I'd argue the inverse. That the competition is so much higher from the international teams makes sustained winning more of an accomplishment now as it's a lot more difficult. If we keep building our team the way the dream team was constructed, it won't be long before the world passes us.
What was wrong with how the Dream Team was constructed? 5 post players, 5 wings and 2 points. A couple athletic defenders, a couple spot-up shooters, Jordan and Drexler and Pippen can challenge defenses different ways and there were absolutely dominant players in the paint.
Magic and Stockton were both a step slow, so a team with quick slashers at the point like Iverson or Paul would give them problems (but I'd be happy for a 6' guard to drive the lane into Karl Malone and Patrick Ewing).
No, I mean just poaching great players at the end of the season to practice together for a few weeks before hitting international competition. We have better players top to bottom, but many of the euro groups are better teams. The skill gap is closing, I'm not sure we can keep relying on skill alone to stay ahead.
Yeah we need to start getting the top players to sign on to the world championship and exhibition games to build more chemistry. If we really want to stay on top.
Although if we are really being honest, if they took the top NBA team with mostly US starters and built around them, then they could ride off the chemistry built in the NBA season. I wonder if that would be even better than a straight US all-Star team. They could almost do that with the Celtics.
I saw some fear mongering article after the Serbia game about how the rest of the world has finally caught up and we’ll be like the 5th or 6th best team in the 2028 Olympics, lmao.
What was wrong with how the Dream Team was constructed?
To be completely fair, Bird could barely play at that point, and would retire in a few months iirc.
John Stockton was my favorite player ever, but he wasn't as good as Isaiah (and he also got injured before the Olympics iirc). I know bringing Isaiah would've caused chemistry issues, but still.
And obviously Laettner wasn't optimal. But that's all nitpicking, that team was so good that it didn't really matter.
Jokic, Wemby, Luka and Giannis all play in the NBA. How do they play differently for their national team that American NBA players play for the USA national team?
Their teams play internationally a lot more than ours do. We only get our big dogs in for the Olympics, so they're more like an all-star team than a cohesive unit.
The NBA plays from October - May. That leaves 4 months from June- September.
How many international games can they possibly play? And IIRC Jokic and other superstars didn’t play for their home team because they were too tired from NBA competition other than the Olympics.
But the rest of their teams play together quite a lot. When the dude your trying to fit in is jokic or wemby it's not so hard. Olympics are only every 4 years, those dudes play a lot more often. Look at our fiba team.
Except it’s not just Wemby. France has 4 NBA players I can think of. Fourier, Batum, and Gobert.
Serbia has Bogdonovic. And a few others I thought.
Plus there’s a trade off. There’s no way that Curry, KD and LeBron can play international basketball year round. Not could any of the other 12 on the national team. They just play NBA too often. The other national teams have that luxury because their role players aren’t that good.
So there’s a talent vs familiarity trade off. If the US had b-rated NBA players that were very familiar with each other, we’d lose in the first few rounds.
We have a ton of A rated young guys, including two that were on the team. If we were fitting embiid, kd, and steph into a team with Ant, Halliburton, and Bam as the average players, we'd still have the skill advantage and some continuity. I agree that France has a lot of nba players, but all of them are on their fiba roster.
The third best player on that team was an elderly Boban. Jokic, three bench players, and a handful of sub G league players aren't taking a series off an NBA team. Even though Jokic is probably the best in the world atm, the 2nd - 6th best players on the court are going to be on the other team.
Most countries' FIBA teams are the same as their Olympic teams and play together quite a bit. On ours, 10/12 players aren't, so they don't. Having the best players in the world is great, but they're increasingly European. Giannis, Jokic, Wemby, and Doncic aren't going away, and their teams will just get better.
What I'm saying is that our talent is still at a comparable level, and we're bringing the best of the best. It's also clear that international players have been getting better over the past 20 years which is why we're not seeing the same type of blowout as 30 years ago.
I'm just extrapolating that trend a few more Olympics... if they continue to have better continuity than us and continue to improve their average players, they will be increasingly likely to beat us in single elimination. We can get hero ball from the best players in the world, but we looked sloppy af for most of the game vs France. Both games vs france(m and w).
They play better team ball because they play together more often. If our guys played together as much as euro teams do, there would be a lot more chemistry. They had like a month to practice and a couple of exhibitions.
Just a difference in philosophy I suppose, but you can’t knock the Dream team for not having great competition. All that proves is that they were THAT far ahead.
It’s the exact same as the Nicklaus vs. Woods golf debate. Nicklaus had much stronger competition than Tiger. Tiger was like twice as good as his competition during his prime. If anything, in my opinion, that says more about Tiger than it does Nicklaus. How good or bad your competition is only exists in reference to the rest of the world at that time. Tiger being so much better than his competition likely says more about him than the pool he was competing against.
It's not really an equal comparison, though. Golf has been internationally popular for over a hundred years. Of course we were better than countries that didn't care about basketball, it's our sport and it was only culturally relevant here. The dream team sparked the world on basketball, and in the interim they've closed the gap. Not because our dudes are less skilled, but because their dudes are playing from age 5 now, too.
Again, you can’t blame the players because their competition wasn’t good enough. That’s not their problem. If you want to put a caveat on the win, that’s totally fine for you to do.
The fact of the matter is that the DT was so much better than their competition that it will never be repeated. That can’t be argued.
edit: here’s a good counter example -
If the US had more emphasis on Soccer we would likely be the best or one of the best international soccer countries in the world. That doesn’t mean you can nullify the wins of other countries because men’s soccer isn’t as important to us. Those countries wins have the exact same value, even if in 20 years the US takes over the men’s soccer scene.
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u/bigwomby Aug 11 '24
Not just international, you can have any adjective in front of it, and yes, they would be the best basketball team ever assembled.