American Basketball at the Olympics: Who's Dreaming?

I might start off by saying that everyone is certainly tired of this comparison by now, and justly so. I honestly think that the 1992 Dream Team would out do the 2012 Redeem Team 2.0 (in a best of seven series) if they were both able to compete against each other in their primes. However, I would like to make the case for the current team. I have avoided the large majority of the televised/blogsosphered debate, apart from Stephen A. Smith's substantive points made against a seemingly clueless Skip Bayless. Still, an analysis must be made. 

First off, we know that the '92 team was stacked: Laettner, D. Robinson, Ewing, Bird, Pippen, Jordan, Drexler, Malone, Stockton, Mullin, Barkley and Magic. What most may not consider is the status of some of these players. Magic had just retired because of his health stigma (HIV) and Bird had significant back problems, which would force him to retire immediately following the gold medal run. Stockton was coming off a broken bone in his leg, and not at his best. This, to me, is evident because he only played four of eight games. The outside threats would have included Mullen, Stockton, Magic, Jordan, Drexler, and, yes, Barkley (who shot 87.5% from beyond the arc in the Olympics that year). Let's face it: the strong point for the team was inside, a point which I will make more evident later on. 

The 2012 team is not too shabby either, however. They have Tyson Chandler, Durant, James, Westbrook, Deron Williams, Iguodala, Kobe, Love, James Harden, Carmelo, Chris Paul and Anthony Davis. Tyson Chandler (8.3 per) and Anthony Davis (yet to play an NBA game) are the only two averaging a career points per game total under 15.3 PPG. Five average career totals above 23.0 PPG (Kobe, Carmelo, Durant, LeBron and Westbrook). To me, the noticeable thing about this squad is who is not in it. Lacking Dwight Howard (three-time reigning NBA Defensive Player of the Year and six-time NBA All-Star), Derrick Rose (2011 MVP), Chris Bosh (seven-time NBA All-Star), Dwayne Wade (eight-time NBA All-Star), Andrew Bynum and Blake Griffin (all due to injury or laziness), I ask how this is representative of the USA's Best of 2012? In comparison, who is the 1992 Dream Team missing: Tim Hardaway, Dennis Rodman, Hakeem Olajuwan (in his prime) and a -fresh-out-of-LSU- Shaq. A great cast, but the fact that the 2012 is missing five players in their prime. In other words, I will make the bold prediction, even though they will lose Kobe, the USA team four years from now will be, hypothetically, much better than the current one. This is beside the point, since I am sure I will make this argument then.

The big thing you have to look at is how they fared against their competition. The 1992 Dream Team beat their opponents by a whopping 43.75. Wow, right? These teams were notable, though, in this sense. If we made a list of NBA players from each of the other teams the US played that year we would have an All-Star cast of Detlef Schrempf, Toni Kukoc, Dražen Petrović, Luc Longley, Carl Herrera, Alexander Holkov, and Stojko Vrankovic. Three of these players helped Croatia win the silver medal. The rest have won a total of five NBA championships (three from Longley, who played with some guy sporting a 23). This year the Redeem Team 2.0 had a different setting. They still won by an average of 32.1, but played more quality opponents. The only team they played without an NBA player was Nigeria, which they drubbed by 83. They actually had two close games against Lithuania, who has two NBA pros, and Spain in the championship game. Spain is an international oddity, as it is a promising cast: the Gasols (both NBA All-Stars), Ibaka (2012 All-Defensive First Team), Sergio Llull (Spanish League MVP), Calderon (NBA point-guard), Navarro and Fernandez (past NBA players who now play for Real Madrid). I would argue that this team has more star power than the "International All-Stars" offered for all of the other Olympic teams combined together in 1992. This goes without mentioning the 2012 team played eight of their thirteen games against top nine opponents in the world, all of which have at least four NBA players apart from Lithuania. 

Regardless, if we excluded the two games against Lithuania and Spain, the 2012 and 1992 teams have nearly identical totals for points won by (43.5 vs. 40.1) and points per game (117.25 vs. 115.5). Each team averaged five players in double digits, with one on each averaging nearly 20 (Barkley and Durant respectively). The big difference, which is obvious, is the style of play. The 1992 team dominated, and would continue to dominate, inside. Barkley (18.2), Ewing (9.5), Malone (13.0) and Robinson (9.0) had the paint covered, and to say that Love and Chandler could have handled those four would be a mistake. We saw that they could not handle Pau in the final, so to me it is evident that the 2012 team would perish in the half court game. The thing is that I am not sure how these games would be played out if we managed to manipulate the space-time continuum. Would it be a slow, laborious game with the 1992 team continuously passing inside to these big guys? Or would we see an up-pace scorcher from the Redeem Team?

The 2012 guys averaged over 36 three-point attempts every game while still maintaining a 44% average. Lining the perimeter: Durant, Anthony, Kobe and Paul. (LeBron hit a big three down the stretch as well that essentially clinched the gold medal game, but then air-balled one just moments after to cancel that out.) These threes would offset the course of play, in my humble opinion. If the tempo sped up enough, you would see a very different final. The ball would have stopped going low each and every time, and instead you would have likely saw Jordan try to take over. With LeBron or Kobe the most likely to guard him, foul trouble may have ensued. The real question is: Could the Redeem Team stand up to the type of pressure they would feel, and/or knock down the threes they needed? The Dream Team was older (relative to their average age in that Olympic year), but arguably more efficient. If the 2012 cast were to be slowed to a half-court game, would they look like the 2011 Miami Heat team that was better on paper, yet took stand up jump shots that ultimately culminated in their demise to the Mavs.

Oh, the hypothetical reality we can only imagine! As I mentioned before, I have the 1992 Dream Team winning. If you see the 2016 team play in Rio with Howard, Bynum, Durant, James, Melo, Love, Griffin, Rose, D. Will, Paul, Wade and your pick of any other American player in the league (Davis, Iguodala, Harden, Westbrook, Hibbert, or Rondo) that team will trump the Dream Team of 1992. I am already starving for more Olympics, and for good reason.