The 2024 U.S. Men’s Basketball team > The Dream Team?
If I saw you suggesting before the Paris Olympics that this year’s American squad was greater than 1992’s, my reaction was visceral and immediate: You’re going to need to show your work on that calculation.
That they’d need to show it, the members of this year’s star-studded version of Team USA.
You wanted to anoint this team – which struggled to get past South Sudan in its Olympic run-up – the best and the greatest? My inclination was to let them win the thing first.
Suggesting this team was the greatest of them all, pre-Paris, seemed like great fodder for a psychology course – a real lesson in recency bias.
Like folks might need to brush up on their art history. Like this could serve as a study in perspective and a refresher course about how profoundly impactful the Dream Team was. How iconic. How incredible. How cool.
How that squad, featuring the airified stylings of Michael Jordan in his prime, as well as Magic Johnson and Larry Bird and eight more Hall of Famers, really got the whole globe round-ball rocking.
It felt like the math wasn’t mathing when you tried to reduce it to numbers: Yes, I know Magic was 33 that summer in Barcelona and Bird was 36 and neither was at the height of his powers, but, uh, LeBron James is 39, Steph Curry is 36 and Kevin Durant is 35. Great still on a nightly basis, but not greater than they’ve ever been.
So I wasn’t sure what type of apple-to-apples equation you were trying to feed me in an attempt to override a core belief I’d held since I was a kid watching as the Dream Teamers cemented themselves as the greatest men’s basketball team ever. As in forever-ever.
But consider me summer-schooled. Get it; got it. Aha!
In this example, one team dominated its competition, averaged 117.3 points and won its eight games by an average of 44 points, including winning its semifinal by 51 and its gold medal game by 32.
The other team averaged 105 points and won its six Olympic contests by an average of 19 points. It had to rally from a 17-point deficit to win its semifinal by four and then needed a late surge to win the gold in an 11-point victory in the Olympic final.
Clearly, one team has the edge.
It’s Team 2, this year’s team, the one that had to fend off such superior competition – a deep pool of talent traceable in many ways to the Dream Team 32 years before.
MJ, Magic and Bird – and Charles Barkley, Scottie Pippen and Patrick Ewing. Karl Malone, David Robinson, Clyde Drexler and John Stockton. Players who inspired and impressed and got the ball rolling around the globe nine Olympics earlier.
Who set in motion the plot involving this year’s American squad, headlined by Lebron, Steph and KD, and featuring Laker Anthony Davis and L.A. native Jrue Holiday doing much of the defensive lifting. Plus the Clippers’ Tyronn Lue lending insight as an assistant coach.
“There’s the dream team, the redeem team. What’s this team?”
LeBron: “The Avengers.” pic.twitter.com/zFUfo1UlOk
— Emblem Sports (@Emblem_Sports) August 11, 2024
Basketball’s Avengers, as LeBron called them, whose assignment was to prove themselves the greatest collection of talent ever assembled – a necessary objective, it turned out, against a field this strong.
Team USA wasn’t facing down Loki and Thanos, but it had to solve for Nikola Jokić in a semifinal and Victor Wembenyama in the final – the Joker and Wemby, comic-book-caliber foes unlike what we could have imagined in 1992.
This wasn’t a final-round romp against Toni Kukoč and a Croatian contingent with a smattering of guys with a smattering of NBA experience. This was a tournament teeming with NBA star power, including Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Giannis Antetokounmpo and Rudy Gobert. Riddled with quality NBA talent, from Nicolas Batum to Dennis Schröder and Jamal Murray to Bogdan Bogdanovic.
What it was: The Greatest Tournament Of All Time, the toughest to win, requiring the biggest, most transcendent stars of their generation to dig deep, to have a flair for dramatics suited for a Hollywood Olympics four years from now.
It took huge games from Team USA’s four rostered NBA regular-season MVPs, including a 16-point, 12-rebound, 10-assist triple-double from LeBron in the United States’ thrilling 95-91 semifinal victory over Serbia on Thursday, when the Americans had to claw back from deficits of 17 points in the first half and 11 in the fourth quarter.
Chef Curry cooked with 36 points in that game, including his go-ahead 3-pointer with 2:16 to go. Joel Embiid – a native of Cameroon who played as the United States’ one permitted naturalized player – added 19 points on 8-of-11 shooting.
And in the final against France, Curry was back at it, sprinkling four of his eight 3-pointers during the final 2:43 of the 98-87 victory, putting to bed the host team’s dream of dethroning the Americans. James added 14 and Kevin Durant – who became the first four-time men’s gold medalist in Olympic basketball history – had 15.
It was the leaders of the Lakers, Golden State Warriors and Phoenix Suns who saved the day, even though their teams either failed to get past the first round of the NBA playoffs last season and, in Curry’s case, failed to make it at all.
That tournament ended with the Boston Celtics (whose three Olympians didn’t include Finals MVP Jaylen Brown, but did include Jayson Tatum, who often was the odd man out in Coach Steve Kerr’s rotation in Paris) beating a Dallas Mavericks team led by Slovenian superstar Luka Doncic.
This tournament ended with Team USA’s fifth consecutive gold, a streak that could be in even more peril in L.A. four years from now. Because it’s almost certainly going to require play at least at this level to continue to subdue an ever-improving world pool – and if this team was that team …
It’s the stuff great sequels are made of.
For now, though, go ahead and crown them, and start with LeBron of House James, King of the NBA, Protector of American Exceptionalism and now a three-time gold medalist and leader of the Greatest Team Ever.
