This topic contains 1 reply, has 2 voices, and was last updated by AvatarAvatar CATTTOL 13 years, 10 months ago.

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  • Posted on: Sun, 09/02/2012 - 8:59pm #43043
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    Tim Stokes
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    We all recognize the ’92 Dream Team as being the best assembled talent on a roster of all-time. But alot of it by that point was legacy and resume, and not on court abilities. Magic and especially Bird were shells of their former selves. Stockton was hurt, and beef aside, Isiah Thomas was the more impactful player and ELITE star of the late 80’s and early 90’s and should have been on that team given what it represented.

    As we saw with the overhype of the 2012 team, that while yes, they blew teams out once in awhile by lofty margins if they got ridiculously hot from behind the 3 point line. They lacked extreme amounts of bball IQ, passing ability, catch and shoot ability, defensive intensity and of course … size in the front court.

    That’s why the ’92 team, even with overall slightly inferior athleticism (not by much considering they had peak MJ, Pip, Drexler, Barkley, Malone, and David Robinson) … they were a complete basketball team. It’s the same reason why the 2012 team struggled against athletically inferior competition in Lithuania and Spain.

    Which brings me to the 1996 team that SHOULD have been on the floor in Atlanta for the Olympic games. IMO, it would’ve been easily the best team of all time given the all around skill level, knowledge, shooting, and size … and also considering most of the elite players were at the end of their prime, at their peak, or entering their prime / peak.

    1996 Team USA as it should’ve looked

    PG – Gary Payton / John Stockton
    SG – Michael Jordan / Reggie Miller / Penny Hardaway
    SF – Scottie Pippen / Grant Hill
    PF – Karl Malone / Shawn Kemp
    C – Shaquille O’Neal / David Robinson / Hakeem Olajawoun

    Look at that team. Down right frightening.

    Can you imagine the defensive intensity of PEAK Gary Payton and just exiting prime MJ hounding guards … with just exiting prime Scottie Pippen swooping in to help those two on traps? All three of them being able to go extra hard on defense with the beefy and intimidating Karl Malone backing them up, and having the MONSTER Shaq protecting the rim?

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  • Posted on: Mon, 09/03/2012 - 1:11am #711368
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    CATTTOL
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     Back in 1989, FIBA decided to allow professional basketball players to compete in the Olympic Games, and that decision ended up changing the game of basketball forever. The 1992 U.S. Men’s Olympic basketball team was legendary in every sense of the word, and they inspired about a gajillion international players to pick up a ball.

     
    But despite the fact that—spoiler alert!—the ’92 team is far and away the greatest basketball team ever assembled, there have been five other U.S. Olympic hoops teams assembled from NBA players since then, and today’s list looks at which of those groups comes closest to matching ‘92’s awesomeness.
     
    Without further ado, the top five NBA Olympic teams since FIBA changed the rules in 1989:
     
    #5 – The 2000 U.S. Men’s Olympic Basketball Team – A couple of things about this team knock it down the list of the best NBA Olympic teams ever, and it starts with the fact that, for the first time, major stars were actually declining the opportunity to participate. It’s not that this team was lacking star power; Jason Kidd, Vince Carter and Kevin Garnett were all among the biggest stars of the era. However, Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan and Allen Iverson weren’t on the roster, and as a result the rest of the world kind of saw this group as vulnerable. Carter’s infamous dunk over Frederic Weis notwithstanding, the U.S. team barely squeaked out a semifinal win over Lithuania, and the championship victory over France was relatively close as well. Compared to the first couple of pro Olympic groups, this one just wasn’t as dominant of an overall performance, mostly because some of the big-name players didn’t show up.
     
    #4 – The 2008 “Redeem Team” – When the ’04 team failed to win the championship, a lot of the apathy shown by superstars the previous couple of Olympics dissipated and the big guns decided it was time to bring the gold medal back where it belonged. Jerry Colangelo took over the roster in 2006 and immediately started putting together a team that could redeem themselves and the country. Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony were much better, much more mature players than they were in 2004, and the addition of veterans like Kobe Bryant and Jason Kidd helped steady some of the other young guys on the team. Also, for the first time the team featured non-superstars like Tayshaun Prince and Michael Redd to help balance out some of the egos on the roster, and that recipe worked wonders in the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing. They defeated Spain in the championship to claim the first U.S. gold since 2000, and that included the FIBA tournaments in 2002 and 2006.
     
    #3 – The 2012 U.S. Men’s Olympic Basketball Team – Injuries killed what this team was supposed to be, taking big-time talents like Derrick Rose, Dwight Howard, Blake Griffin, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh away from a team they were very much looking forward to playing with, but in the end it really didn’t matter. The 2012 roster still had loads of superstars featuring everybody from Kevin Durant to LeBron James to Kobe Bryant, and despite a lack of star power in the front court, they went undefeated and beat Spain in the championship game for the second straight Olympics. They looked good, had great chemistry and were as confident and dominant as any team since the ‘90s.
     
    #2 – The 1996 “Dream Team III” – If you’re wondering what happened to “Dream Team II,” they were the group that won the gold at the FIBA World Championship. The second iteration of a pro Olympic basketball team was technically “Dream Team III,” which featured five guys from the first group (Scottie Pippen, Karl Malone, David Robinson, John Stockton and Charles Barkley), as well as some new future Hall-of-Famers like Shaquille O’Neal, Hakeem Olajuwon, Gary Payton and Reggie Miller. They won their games by an average of 32 points a night and actually set four Olympic basketball records in the process, all of which still stand today. Forget all the crazy talk about the ’12 team having a shot at beating the Dream Team; if any other group had a shot, it would have been the ’96 group.
     
    #1 – The 1992 “Dream Team” – Everything that needs to be said about the ’92 Dream Team has already been said a thousand times, but what this essentially boils down to is of the twelve guys on this roster, eleven of them were Hall of Famers. Watch the NBA TV documentary on these guys and you’ll understand just how dominant they were and what kind of global effect they had on the game of basketball. You put Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson on the same team, even if the latter two guys were well past their prime, and you get the single greatest basketball team ever assembled.
     
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