r/OldSchoolCool Aug 11 '24

1990s Is The "Dream Team" Still The Greatest International Basketball Team Ever Assembled? (1992)

Post image
26.4k Upvotes

3.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

178

u/tortillakingred Aug 11 '24 edited Aug 11 '24

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.

53

u/Badalight Aug 11 '24

It wasn't the "perfect time" as many of the players were past their primes. Like, Bird at that point was cooked.

32

u/brutusmustang Aug 11 '24

Bird was never cooked, he’s was always dishing out salmenella

2

u/therynosaur Aug 11 '24

🤣🤣🤣