Mar. 27, 2012; Phoenix, AZ, USA; San Antonio Spurs guard Tony Parker during game against the Phoenix Suns at the US Airways Center. The Spurs defeated the Suns 107-100. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-US PRESSWIRE

2012 Olympic Basketball Preview:  U.S.A. v. France

France is a team that should not be underestimated:

French Starters:

C-  Ronny Turiaf

PF- Boris Diaw

SF- Mickael Gelabale

SG- Nicolas Batum

PG-  Tony Parker

They sport a talented cast of players, led by Finals MVP Tony Parker and defensive stalwart Nicolas Batum.  That duo is joined by an above average group of role players that includes NBA players such as Kevin Seraphin of the Washington Wizards, veteran Boris Diaw, journeyman Ronny Turiaf, and career D-leaguer Mickael Gelabale.

While France does have a lot of talent, they do lack size.  Seraphin will be forced into playing center, though he is just 6’9″, and the 6’10″ Turiaf represents the only true center on the squad (The 6’10″ Ali Traore can also play center, but likely won’t see much time in a game of this magnitude).

The lack of size might not be as problematic against the U.S. with only Tyson Chandler and Kevin Love patrolling the paint, but it will cause problems on the interior, and the Americans have plenty of players to slash to the hole.  Russell Westbrook in particular could potentially feast on the weak interior defense of the Frenchmen.

One thing to keep an eye on is how France employs the services of the newly re-signed Portland Trailblazer Nicolas Batum.  Batum was courted by the Minnesota Timberwolves, but ultimately the Blazers decided to match that offer to retain a young talent who is capable of playing either wing spot.

APRIL. 11, 2011; Portland, OR, USA; Portland Trail Blazers small forward Nicolas Batum (88) shoots the ball over Golden State Warriors center Andris Biedrins (15) during the fourth quarter of the game at the Rose Garden. The Blazers won the game 118-110. Mandatory Credit: Steve Dykes-US PRESSWIRE

Batum will have the unenviable task of drawing the best perimeter player on the court for the U.S., be it Kevin Durant, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, or Kobe Bryant.  Simply:  Batum is going to be worn out, regardless of the assignment.  Rendering Batum’s offense ineffective by virtue of wearing him out on defense will be the M.O. of the US squad.

While Batum is hardly an offensive juggernaut in the NBA, he makes up for it with his efficiency.  Last season, Batum scored 13.9 points per game, while hitting 39.1% from behind the arc.  With the International three point line being only 20’6″, expect Batum and the Frenchmen to launch plenty of threes.

Tony Parker is clearly the best player on the French team, but he may be outclassed by the US floor generals Chris Paul, Deron Williams, and the aforementioned Westbrook.  Parker sports the experience over these three, but the fact that Coach K is able to rotate the three of them in and out of the lineup will prove crucial, as Parker will simply be worn out late in the game and thus be unable to pull any late game heroics, if France is even anywhere within striking distance.

All in all, France is still a huge underdog to win the gold medal, and their odds are set at 25/1 by a popular Vegas booking site.  Still, quite remarkably, those odds are the third longest shot of the tournament, with only Spain boasting a better chance of beating the US out for the gold.

While France does have a lot of talent and team unity, it’s difficult to imagine them giving the American squad much trouble.  The US team is too deep, too good, and too prepared to let a team with only a handful of NBA players beat them.  I’m not suggesting it is an absurd blowout of the 40+ point magnitude, but the US will take care of business and remind the world why basketball flourishes here in the United States.

We may even see 12th man Anthony Davis get some burn during garbage time…

Score Prediction:  US by 21

Last week, our esteemed colleague Brett David Roberts, Esq. ran a piece pitting this summer’s Olympic Men’s Basketball team against the damn-near mythical ’92 edition, the one we’ve known from its inception as the Dream Team.  He stacked the two teams against each other position by position and went looking for the edges.

Brett saw a distinct advantage for ’92 at the center position, where Patrick Ewing and David Robinson would more or less have their way with defensive specialist Tyson Chandler, 19-year-old Anthony Davis, and Kevin Love, who is not really a center.

At forward, Charles Barkley would prove something of a matchup nightmare for the likes of Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Durant, and LeBron James, dynamic scorers who could be handled defensively by Scottie Pippen and Karl Malone.

At guard, the sheer greatness of Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson would prove overwhelming for Kobe Bryant, who could only hope to approach their level of play, ultimately falling just short.  James Harden, Russell Westbrook, and Chris Paul would kind of wash out with Clyde Drexler and John Stockton.

Roberts concluded that “the teams just don’t stack up.”

The ’92 squad, “the greatest team ever assembled in sports, all sports” was “superior in all aspects” to the current model.  He’s not alone in his thinking.  Eighty-six percent of the more than 180,000 votes cast in a recent ESPN poll had the Dream Team over Team ’12 in a seven-game series, with 73 percent imagining victory in six games or less.

Before we get to our take on the matter, it might be worth trying to parse some of the popular thinking in regards to the Dream Team; to try to understand what the mind’s eye sees when that wonderfully musical phrase is uttered.

The Thinking

For starters, there’s the ridiculously impressive résumé.  Eleven Hall of Famers.  Ten of the “50 Greatest Players in NBA History.”  The league’s all-time leader in assists and steals.  Numbers two and three in points scored.  The two greatest players of the 1980’s.  The single greatest of all time.  And the accolades, my God, the accolades!

• 15 MVP awards
• 56 All-NBA First Team selections
• 23 Championship rings
• 11 Finals MVP awards
• 117 All-Star Game selections
• 11 All-Star Game MVP awards
• 24 All-Defensive First Team selections
• 2 Defensive Player of the Year awards
• 4 Rookie of the Year awards

The Dream Team was more than that very impressive list of accomplishments, of course.  They were an ideal, a manifestation of greatness itself.  The thing to remember about ideals is, once they’re set, they tend to stay set.  They don’t shift to accommodate progress; they become the measurement of it.

We recall an episode of The B.S. Report from October of 2009 in which, during a discussion on the Beatles, Chuck Klosterman talked about the idea of absolute greatness and what happens when we collectively assign it:

You kind of have to look at rock bands the same way you look at Presidents.  It doesn’t matter how long America exists.  When people talk about the greatest Presidents – Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson – there’s a handful of people that are always going to be in that top-five category because they sort of define what a successful President is or the values and the criteria of what makes a good President.

The Beatles, more than any other band, set [those] criteria.  There can’t be a future band who is better at being a group than the Beatles were because all other groups are really doing is fulfilling the criteria that they made.

We don’t normally get into trolling the comment section for fodder, but this nugget from trada9404 in response to a July 12 piece from TrueHoop sums up what we think people think about when they think about the ’92 v. ’12 debate:

in 2006, lebron, wade, melo, dwight howard, bosh and cp3 all lost to greece, and several other games were very close; also, they almost lost to spain if it wasn’t for kobe’s hero ball at the end bailing them out – so how could these things happen if it is all about athleticism? clearly, basketball smarts and TEAM skill has something to do with it. how could these guys that obviously lack these things and lost to Greece, all of a sudden beat MJ and company? gimme a break.. it just doesn’t make any sense

Apparently, trada has had some experience travelling under suspended animation like the crew of the Nostromo as, to him, six years’-worth of growth counts as a “sudden” change.

Funky definitions aside, what he says ties in with Klosterman’s idea.  Notice that he doesn’t explain how or why the Dream Team would win a seven-game series against the 2012 model.  Instead, he rolls out reasons why 2012 is the inferior team, ways in which it doesn’t fit the criteria for absolute greatness established two decades ago.  None of these reasons, by the way, have anything to do with matchup advantages or basic basketball skills.

Most tellingly, trada concludes his comment by stating that the idea of “these guys” who “lost to Greece” beating the Michael Jordan-led ’92 group simply “doesn’t make any sense.”

It just doesn’t make any sense.  If the Dream Team were the very definition of greatness – “the greatest team ever assembled in sports, all sports” – well, how could anything ever top that?

The Sentiment

The most important factor shaping this discussion, perhaps, is the matter of how we feel about the Dream Team; what they mean to us.  Their formation was certainly the most culturally significant basketball occurrence – perhaps the most culturally significant sporting occurrence – of the past 25 years.  Following the “Golden Era” of the mid-to-late 80’s, the establishment of Michael Jordan as the most dominating player in the game, coupled with the emblazoning of his high-flying silhouette into an iconic logo and his emergence as a near-omnipresent media figure, had propelled basketball to all-time highs in popularity, both nationally and abroad.  The Dream Team was a coronation of sorts, a celebration of the NBA’s still-ascendant rise into sport superpower status.

This collection of players captured our imaginations, not through the beauty of their play during the Olympic tournament – they won their games by an average margin of 43 points, which did not exactly make for compelling viewing – but through the simple fact of their existence.  The world hadn’t seen anyone like Michael Jordan since the days of Babe Ruth, which meant that most living people hadn’t ever seen anyone like Michael Jordan with their own eyes.  Beyond just Jordan, no one had ever seen such elite talent gathered onto one team before, certainly not outside of an exhibition setting à la the All-Star Game.

For a summer, we were united in our awe of them and, this being the Olympics and all, our pride in them.  We embraced them rapturously, without cynicism.

Our personal lasting memory of the Dream Team is from the Gold Medal Game against Croatia, which we didn’t actually see because we were spending our afternoon in the left field stands at Yankee Stadium, watching the Red Sox take the third of a four-game series which they would ultimately split (Roger Clemens, 8.1 IP, 4 K, 6 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 0 BB; Jack Clark, 1-4 with a 9^th-inning homer; Papa K, one screaming foul ball snagged during batting practice).  We sat with our family in the dripping center of that awful monument to all that is Ungood, surrounded by vile, hairy-knuckled New Yorkers, their mouths twisted into hideous asshole’s leers, their voices thick with cruel boast and ignorance.  We sat timidly, fearing reprisal should we make our allegiance known.  Though neither team was very good at the time – both were below .500 and more than 10 games out – fan relations were just as venomous as they always had been, and probably always will be.

At some point in the game, after a handful of beery arguments had been observed in various pockets of the stands, a particularly loudmouthed Yankee fan sitting in our section returned from the concessions, a plastic cup of amber hate fuel clutched in each of his violence-wreaking fists.  As he sidled into his row, he made an utterly logic-defying announcement: “the Dream Team’s getting beat.”

Everyone in earshot – Yankees and Red Sox fans alike – snapped to his attention.

“What?” we cried incredulously.

As it turned out, it was early in the first quarter and the U.S. trailed by only a handful of points (they would go on to win by 32).

For a brief moment, though, we were united by the experience we had all been sharing before our paths had crossed on this Saturday in August.  The news acted as a momentary cease-fire; our mutual animosity had been dissolved by our common interest in what was unfolding an ocean away.

Recounting all of this is our overlong way of saying that the Dream Team was special.  They were special in a way that we can’t imagine another team being ever again.  They were a new idea, and ideas can only be new once.  Any future run is just a retread.  We can refine our execution of the idea through repetition, but never recreate the same spark and magic thrust off by the original version.

Furthermore, they existed in a time when athletes were still revered beyond their athletic achievements.  Through round-the-clock media coverage, we’ve gotten too close to their humanity to regard them as heroic.  We still admire their feats, but take more delight than ever in over-analysis, petty competitive comparison, and the skewering of personality than ever before.  It’s the nature of entertainment in a post-TMZ culture.

Think about Michael Jordan:  Think of what we know about him now relative to what we knew about him then.  During his playing days, he was entirely his very affable public persona.  His now-infamous, near-sociopathic competitive nature was hardly commented on.  We simply loved him for his prowess, his gracefulness, his guts, his dazzling athleticism, his 30 points a night every night, his winning smile, his awesome sneakers, and probably ProStars too.

Imagine if Michael Jordan’s career was taking place right now.  Imagine how people would respond to the news that he had punched Steve Kerr in the face during practice.

How thoroughly would this news dominate our sports media?  How long would it be before the excessive coverage triggered a discussion on the racial implications of the event?

A black man punching a white man in practice and the media whipping into a frenzy over it?  A living expression of the still-unresolved racial bias that pervades our society, no doubt.

Remember when LeBron walked off the court after the Cavs lost to the Orlando Magic in the 2009 Eastern Conference Finals without shaking hands with his opponents?  Remember how “controversial” LeBron’s “brazenly unsportsmanlike” conduct was?  How would we feel about Michael yelling out “Thunder Dan Majerle my f***ing ass!” after defeating the Phoenix Suns in the 1993 NBA Finals?  Taunting your opponent as you crush their throat on the biggest stage available?  What sort of an example would that be for the kids?

Of course, great care and savvy in the shaping of his persona was a key element to Michael Jordan’s success, so this sort of stuff probably doesn’t happen in 2012.  But we can also think about what our perception of his career might be as it played out.  How much of our discussion on Jordan would unfold along the lines of, “Magic won his first title in his rookie season; his first of five.  It took Michael seven years to win his first.  We can’t start to talk about Michael in Magic’s class until he’s won five.”

When the Dream Team came together, our collective consciousness seemed more amenable to the propping-up of public figures than it does today, when we seem more inclined toward laughing at and knocking down.  More than any comparison of athletic accomplishments or eyeballing of positional matchups, this shift of perception skews public feeling to such lopsided support of the ’92 crew.

The Series

Well, maybe it does.  Perhaps we’re taking this all a little too seriously.  It’s just a fun, silly question.  Who would win in a seven-game series: the stars of the past or the stars of today?  We’ll try to answer it the best way we know how: by building the most plausible scenario out of the available facts and then filling in the blanks with numbers.

So, obviously, a time machine is involved.  We imagine that the Dream Team would get home court advantage; they were the more accomplished of the two, had won the most titles, probably had the higher collective regular season winning percentage (we’re not taking the time to look that up).  With home court, they would surely get the benefit of playing under home (1992) rules, i.e. hand-checking is allowed.

Here are the two teams’ rosters:

Here’s a Fun Fact for you: if you combined each team into one giant super-player and did their pre-game introductions “Get in the Ring”-style, the Dream Team would stand at 80 feet, one inch tall and weigh 2,695 pounds, against Team ’12′s 78 feet, nine inches and 2,646 pounds.

Now, over a seven-game series, both teams would be shortened to eight- or nine-man rotations.  The Dream Team’s rotation is the easiest to surmise: Larry Bird’s mangled, 35-year-old back led to his retirement from basketball immediately following his Olympic experience, John Stockton had suffered an “undisplaced fracture of the right fibula” during the qualifying tournament which limited him to only brief appearances in four of the eight tournament games, and Christian Laettner was, well, Christian Laettner.  Those three would spend most of series waving towels.

2012 is a tougher read.  There’s no doubt that rookie Anthony Davis would be consigned to the twelfth seat on the bench.  Who would join him?  We’re going to guess Russell Westbrook and James Harden, for the simple fact of their inexperience relative to Chris Paul, Deron Williams, and Kobe Bryant.

Now that we have our nines, how do we determine the series’ outcome?  In the other assessments that we’ve read, people seem to most frequently evoke the size advantage provided by Patrick Ewing and David Robinson as a guarantee on Dream Team victory, or the superior athleticism provided by LeBron James, Kevin Durant, and Carmelo Anthony on the wings giving 2012 the edge.

Singling out advantages and imagining outcomes that would revolve around them is a little too nebulous for us.  These sorts of things can be game-planned against and counteracted.  Instead, we prefer to look at the track records, and we’re not talking about the résumés.  We can’t, in good conscience, let the full scope of the Dream Team’s accolades sway our thinking when Team ‘12 is still in the process – in the cases of players like Durant, Davis, Harden, Westbrook, and Love, very early in the process – of writing its own story.  It would sort of be like listening to a batch of Deerhunter demos and dismissing them with a flick of the wrist, saying “eh, Loveless is just way better.”

Instead, we look to the relevant on-court statistical production.  As there’s nothing more relevant than recent history, we compiled the per-36-minute numbers for each member of our nine-man rotations from the two seasons preceding their Olympic tournaments (2010-’11 and 2011-’12; 1990-’91 and 1991-’92).  Then we ran about the simplest analysis we could come up with: we averaged everything out, reducing each team to a single, representative super-player, each standing nearly 80 feet tall and weighing more than 2,600 pounds, no doubt.

Before we get to the results, we should go over the matter of Magic Johnson.  As you likely know, Magic had retired prior to the start of the ’91-’92 season.  By the time of the Dream Team’s first inter-squad scrimmages, he had not played professionally – apart from in the ’92 All-Star Game – for seven months.  Furthermore, knee trouble consigned him to the bench for two of the eight tournament games and laid a tamp on his minutes during the six that he played in.

Needing to account for this somehow in our statistics, we decided that August ’92 Magic was two-thirds the Magic he had been at the end of the ’91 season.  For the purposes of preparing our super-player, we reduced his counting numbers by 33 percent and plugged the results into the blank space where his ’92 numbers would have been.  Was our deduction too harsh?  Not harsh enough?  Who can say?  None of this is real, you know.  We wouldn’t get too worked up about it.

The following table shows the career per-36 numbers for both super-players, the numbers from the two seasons preceding the Olympics, and the two-year per-36 averages.  The “winning” statistics are highlighted:

Overall, the Dream Team was the more productive group/super-player/whatever.  They enjoy decent-sized advantages in rebounds, steals, blocked shots, and points-per-36.  Their most glaring advantage is in the rate at which they put the ball in the basket.  Every player in our nine-man Dream rotation, aside from Magic and Clyde Drexler, shot better than 50 percent from the floor during our two-year sample, with Charles Barkley’s mark of 56.3 percent leading the way.  For Team ’12, only LeBron James (52.1 percent) and Tyson Chandler (66.7 percent off an average of 6.7 shot attempts per 36) connected on half their shots or better.

Here’s another Fun Fact for you: only seven teams in NBA history have connected on at least 52.1 percent of their shots over the course of a season.  They were the Los Angeles Lakers in 1979-’80 (won the Title) and then in each season from 1981-’82 through 1985-’86 (won two Titles, lost in the Finals twice, lost in the Conference Finals once), and the Boston Celtics in 1987-’88 (lost in the Finals).  Golden Era, indeed.

The one area where Team ’12 enjoys a distinct advantage is from beyond the arc.  With Bird (39.8 3FG%) and Stockton (39.5) on ice, the Dream Team are without their two best distance shooters (Drexler and Chris Mullin are next up at 33.8 and 33.3).  For today’s group, Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Durant, Andre Iguodala, Kevin Love, and Chris Paul have all shot better than 35 percent from downtown over the past two years.

The Conclusion

When we set out to write this, our intent was to take the contrary opinion and cast our vote for Team ’12.  After all, the past is dead, man, it’s gone, it’s buried.  The future is now, and if you can’t get with it, pal, well good luck living out the rest of your days as that sad, useless old man attempting to fend off his ever-growing irrelevance through the desperate clutching-onto of the ghosts of his youth; that pitiably out-of-touch bag of graveyard dirt too terrified of change to give himself over to the one true revitalizing force: mighty progress.

But, after considering the data, we decided no-can-do: Dream Team in Six.

]]> http://hardwoodhoudini.com/2012/07/16/not-this-again-the-dream-team-vs-the-2012-olympic-squad/feed/ 0 http://hardwoodhoudini.com/2012/07/12/all-time-comparisons-could-the-2012-olympic-team-stack-up-with-the-1992-dream-team-from-barcelona/ http://hardwoodhoudini.com/2012/07/12/all-time-comparisons-could-the-2012-olympic-team-stack-up-with-the-1992-dream-team-from-barcelona/#comments Thu, 12 Jul 2012 06:21:02 +0000 Brett David Roberts http://hardwoodhoudini.com/?p=5914 There has been a lot of talk recently about whether the 1992 Dream Team is better than the current 2012 version there of, which is no longer named the Dream Team, of course.  We had the “Redeem team” in the 2008 Olympics.  Jerry Colangelo already said the current team could beat the 92 squad, as [...]

All Time Comparisons: Could the 2012 Olympic Team Stack up with the 1992 Dream Team from Barcelona? - Hardwood Houdini - Hardwood Houdini - A Boston Celtics Fan Site - News, Blogs, Opinion and More

There has been a lot of talk recently about whether the 1992 Dream Team is better than the current 2012 version there of, which is no longer named the Dream Team, of course.  We had the “Redeem team” in the 2008 Olympics.  Jerry Colangelo already said the current team could beat the 92 squad, as I wrote for Yahoo! Sports back in December when Colangelo made his outrageous comments.

 

Was Colangelo out of his gourd?

Or could the 2012 team really stack up with what many call the Greatest team ever assembled?

One thing that has changed in recent time is the inclusion of role players.  Tayshaun Prince was on the 2010 National team, and the current team features Tyson Chandler.  While both are excellent defenders, their offensive skill sets pale in comparison to every one of the 92 members, Christian Laettner included…We could speculate all day why Laettner was included on the team instead of the fresh faced LSU underclassman Shaquille O’Neal, but our answers would include the fact that Laettner both graduated and led Duke to a National Title, so maybe speculation there is unnecessary.

 

The 92 team was not without its head scratchers.  I wrote an article for Bleacher Report in 2010 that racism may have been a deciding factor in choosing an All American white boy like Chris Mullin over the much better and proven Isiah Thomas or even Dominique Wilkins, but we’re again going to stray from the lack of inclusion issues with the 1992 team, because what it did feature was a cast of legends:

 

David Robinson, Patrick Ewing, Larry Bird, Scottie Pippen, Michael Jordan, Clyde Drexler, Karl Malone, John Stockton, Chris Mullin, Charles Barkley, Magic Johnson (…and Christian Laettner).

 

Every single member of the 1992 team, with the sole exception of Laettner, is in the Hall of Fame.  All of them are included in the top 50 greatest players of all time.  As for whether the current team will include such a hallmark of resumes when everyone’s careers are completed is a matter of debate.

 

The 92 team also included the greatest player ever.  Michael Jordan’s excellence has been unequaled, and the closest thing the 12 team has to Jordan is Kobe Bryant.  What I fear is that Jordan could SHUT DOWN Kobe.  Jordan’s defense was equally as impressive as his offense, and even a prime Kobe would have trouble getting his usual array of shots off against a defender like MJ.

The 2012 roster includes: Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, Kobe Bryant, Tyson Chandler, Anthony Davis (The NCAA selection), Kevin Durant, Eric Gordon, Blake Griffin, James Harden, Andre Iguodala, LeBron James, Kevin Love, Chris Paul, Russell Westbrook, and Deron Williams.

 

Could any of those players step toe to toe with the guys in 92?  For starters, the lack of Dwight Howard would make neutralizing David Robinson and Patrick Ewing next to impossible.  Had Olajuwon participated, and not been a resident of Nigeria, I would fear for Dwight Howard’s life.  I wrote for Yahoo! that there’s just no way Howard could compare with the players of that era, and facing two of them in one game would give him fits.  It may be irrelevant with Howard not competing, but it needs to be considered, if you really want to even think a team like the 2012 team could match up down low.

Let’s try to look at this from a rational standpoint, comparing players on a per player basis:

92 Centers:  David Robinson & Patrick Ewing

2012 Centers:  Kevin Love & Tyson Chandler & Anthony Davis

Let’s be real:  Love and Chandler would have a lot of problems with Robinson and Ewing; both are far too talented offensively and Robinson has a tremendous speed advantage vs. them, and indeed any center in the modern era.  Robinson’s acumen facing up would give Love all he could handle to say the least, and Chandler would foul out in no time at all.  The 92 team is going to have a serious advantage on the blocks.  Davis would be all but shut down by the two legends.

 

92 Forwards:  Larry Bird, Scottie Pippen, Chris Mullin, Charles Barkley, Christian Laettner, Karl Malone

2012 Forwards:  Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, Kevin Durant, Blake Griffin, Andre Iguodala, LeBron James

 

Think about this:  Bird, Barkley, and Malone are all probably in the top 25 players to have ever played. Pippen may even enter that realm in the eyes of many.

Chris Mullin would function primarily as a spot up shooter in any scenario with such a talented team, but the fact that Dominique Wilkins wasn’t on the team is another debate all for itself.

Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Durant, and Blake Griffin are all dynamic scorers, but Pippen could give any of them headaches, and Griffin wouldn’t get to the rim as easy for rebounds with someone like Karl Malone boxing him out all of the time.  LeBron James is the one trump card here, because I think Pippen could potentially have trouble with The King, but who on the 2012 squad could cover Sir Charles?

Even with six forwards, and very good defenders like James and Iguodala, I have a lot of trouble believing the ’12 squad could do much defensively to slow the Dream Team.

 

92 Guards:  Michael Jordan, Clyde Drexler, John Stockton, Magic Johnson

2012 Guards:  Kobe Bryant, Eric Gordon, James Harden, Chris Paul, Russell Westbrook

 

Jordan and Magic are almost unarguably two of the five greatest players ever to touch a basketball.  Kobe Bryant is in that realm, but Gordon, Harden, Paul, and Westbrook are nowhere close.  The best we could give any of them is Drexler and Stockton level, and even that is pushing it, to be sure.

Will Chris Paul ever equal Stockton in assists?  It’s possible, and he might get there in steals too, but why wouldn’t we go with what has already been proven?

Harden, Gordon, and Westbrook all have yet to reach their full potential, but I don’t see anyone other than Kobe being able to hold a candle to the guys on the 92 squad, and I don’t mean just Jordan and Magic.

Kobe is better than Stockton and Drexler, but he’s just not paired with the guards to compare these backcourts.

 

Overall, I think you see the 92 team is just superior in all aspects.  Is the 2012 team very good?  Yes, you bet your butt they are, but they just aren’t proven Hall of Famers, and many of them never will be.  They’ll romp through their competition, and the ultimate measure might not be in box scores anyway, since the competition globally in 1992 was just far weaker.  Teams like Italy, Argentina, Greece, Turkey, Serbia Montenegro, and many others have just amassed a world’s more talent in the last two decades, and the game has become more global.  So, of course the 2012 squad will be unable to replicate the lopsided scores the 92 team did.

 

But that isn’t proof of any equality.  The teams just don’t stack up, and I don’t believe players are any better today than they were 20 years ago.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure all of the members of the 2012 squad could have flourished then, too, but as I wrote in the Howard article for Yahoo!, I don’t believe all of their dominance would have been quite as pronounced, and for this reason, I have to favor that 1992 team as the greatest team ever assembled in sports, all sports.

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