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[Rabid Wolverine]

1992 .... Barcelona .... the Dream Team .... Jordan ... Magic .... Pippen .... Byrd .... Barkley ...... and coutless other.

The memories........

Those sure were the days.

 

[DMczaf]

Greatest team ever assembled

2nd greatest?

 

[pilonv1]

Chris Mullin would be a good addition to this years team, he'd still probably be their best shooter.

 

[DaMan121]

I always objected to the post 92 US teams being called the "Dream Team". Cause they arent. The 92 team was a DREAM TEAM, in every sense of the word. They werent the dream team simply because they were NBA players, but because 3 of them were without question the greatest 3 that ever played the game. The subsequent US teams were simply the attitude, without the talent. Lets recap:

The 94 World Champinship team (Dream Team 2), still dominated, however the margins were half at best, and the arrogance was far more apparent.

Atlanta was better, however the rest of the world wasnt as intimidated, and Yugoslavia took it to them in the final.

96 world Championships, alas, wasnt comprised of NBA players, the US team did ok, reached the semis (should have one it against Russia, if it wasnt for a great comeback).

Sydney, the 'dream team" was trully dead here. 60 point leads from 92, were now single digits, a lucky win over Lithuinia by 2 points gave them a finals birth, but their posturing and overstated celebrations drew large booes from the crowd. They beat France in the end, but only just.

2002 World Championships, meh.

and now...

Having said all that, I still believe the US is the no1 favourite, and the team to beat, theyll bounce back....

Aussies lost though Tough group :/

 

[Shinobi]

The other teams have improved over the last 12 years as well. It isn't as if Dream Team 92 would be beating today's teams by 60 points. That was just one great team playing against a bunch of scrubs. Of which today's US team is one of many.

BTW, what's this arrogance thing all about? Because a team is arrogant, it takes away from their greatness. Fuck that noise...if you're arrogant as fuck and you still put up, that proves all the more what a bad motherfucker you are. And like some of the players on that team weren't arrogant anyway...

 

[Loki]

The other teams have improved over the last 12 years as well. It isn't as if Dream Team 92 would be beating today's teams by 60 points.

They'd be winning by 20-30 each game, easily imo. None of this nonsense like we see now.

The thing about the whole "international players have gotten better" argument is that yeah, they've definitely gotten better as the years have progressed, but why haven't our players progressed from where THEY were in that same (or roughly the same) amount during that same time period? These other countries didn't just "discover" basketball in the last 10-15 years, you know-- many foreign countries were fielding national teams and had professional leagues even in the late 60's-early 70's. I know, because my dad had offers to play in Greece, Italy, Spain etc. So since they've been playing ball for a long time, presumably the steep initial learning curve has long since been surmounted, and any gains after those formative decades (not years, decades) should be incremental at best. In which case it should hold for our guys too, given the natural course of supposed bball "evolution"...but it hasn't. Gee, I wonder why.

 

[Bat]

Yeah but basketball became MUCH more popular on a world wide basis in the 80s, so basketball got a lot more popular, leading to a wider talent pool. At the same time, coaches who got their training in US went back to all these countries and for the first time there was top level coaching for those talent pools. So yeah, it makes sense that other countries improved their talent and training more than the US did.

 

[Loki]

Yeah but basketball became MUCH more popular on a world wide basis in the 80s, so basketball got a lot more popular, leading to a wider talent pool. At the same time, coaches who got their training in US went back to all these countries and for the first time there was top level coaching for those talent pools. So yeah, it makes sense that other countries improved their talent and training more than the US did.

Good points that I hadn't considered. I still don't think that in 10-12 years or so, the competition can improve THAT much (particularly not with the style of team ball these foreign teams play- the art of team ball has long since been honed, if not perfected), to the point where we go from winning by 30-40 every game to barely eking out victories and actually losing games by significant margins. I think it has more to do with our end than theirs, personally.


Like I said, and as others have pointed out, the team definitely should have been put together better, which means a better mix of shooters, slashers, pivot men, rebounders/defenders and playmakers. The fact that our current crop of supposedly "elite" players do not feature those varieties of player with any of those sorts of skills among them (not even one to represent each category) is a cause for concern, and makes one wonder about the state of NBA basketball. Never has the term "one-dimensional" been more apropos. If all of your supposed "best" players are one-dimensional, that says a lot.

 

[J2 Cool]

Oh, and for all those who argued back when the NBA was in its playoffs that today the game has more talent that in the late 80's, early 90's... LOL. Sure, the other countries have gotten much better but the best the NBA has to offer is a parody of the talent back then.