Ever since the Redeem Team went to Beijing, captured the Gold Medal and saved American basketball in the Summer of 2008, the most popular (and sometimes contentious) barroom debate that basketball fans have every four years is, “Could this version of Team USA beat the Dream Team?” As is the case with any hypothetical prompt like this one, there is no way to definitively answer the question that is being presented, even though you'll more likely than not be in the presence of someone who is trying to convince you otherwise.
Today I — and Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green — will take a stab at trying to figure out whether the 2024 version of Team USA, led by LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant, could beat the Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird-led Dream Team. I'll let Draymond take the first crack at it, since his four NBA Championships are superior to my two College Intramural League 2nd place finishes.
Draymond's position here should not come as a surprise. Whether it's his passionate defense that the 2017 Warriors would defeat the 2004 Pistons, or his choice of LeBron James over Michael Jordan in the long-held GOAT debate, Draymond has been pretty consistent in his stance that the modern era deserves more love than the old heads and many members of the media are willing to give it. You could read this as Draymond simply propping himself, his teammates and one of his close personal friends up, but is that really any different than Charles Barkley or Kenny Smith doing the exact same thing on Inside the NBA?
Of course, this brings up an entirely separate conversation about how players from any era are often unwilling to concede that any other era may be better than the one they played in. Interestingly, this is a problem that seems to be pretty unique to basketball. You don't see this as often in football, baseball or hockey. Consider, Joe Montana, once considered the greatest quarterback of all-time, recently said that Patrick Mahomes was “in a class by himself.” This was just a few days before Mahomes won his 3rd Super Bowl, putting him one behind Montana's total. Can you imagine Shaquille O'Neal touting Nikola Jokic as a better big man than him? It would never happen.
So, who would win: The Dream Team or 2024 Team USA?
Let's just start here: People forget that Larry Bird and Magic Johnson were well past their prime's by the Summer of 1992. Bird could barely move due to a bad back, and he never played another game of competitive basketball after the 1992 Summer Olympics. Magic had retired ten months before the Games were held, and he already wasn't the guy who won five NBA Titles in the 1980s. That leaves nine NBA players who were in, or close to, the primes of their careers, and Christian Laettner, who never really enjoyed an extended NBA peak.
Now admittedly, LeBron James, Kevin Durant, and Stephen Curry are not in the prime years of their NBA careers. But am I really supposed to believe that 2024 Kevin Durant is not a better basketball player than 1992 Clyde Drexler? Is 2024 Stephen Curry not still well ahead of 1992 John Stockton? Sorry, but I'm comfortably taking 39 year-old LeBron James over 26-year-old Scottie Pippen. And if we're looking at big men, Team USA's tandem of centers — Joel Embiid and Anthony Davis — have combined for a total of ten All-NBA appearances. At the time of the '92 Olympics, Patrick Ewing and David Robinson had combined for six.
From my couch, I can hear you yelling, “Well what about MJ?” Yes, Michael Jordan was at the peak of his powers, and few athletes were as dominant at their apex as MJ was in 1992. But this isn't a mid-December game against the Washington Bullets that MJ could decide all on his own that he wasn't losing. He has to contend with a roster of the game's greatest players from 32 years in the future, and if that doesn't seem like a big deal, think about it this way:
If you presented someone who was unflinching in their defense of the Dream Team with the question of whether the 1960 USA National Team could've defeated the '92 team, they'd likely make a passionate case that the game of basketball was in a more competitive, more athletic, more evolved place in 1992 than it was in 1960. After all, 32 years is a long time.
So why doesn't the same logic apply to the Dream Team versus the 2024 Team? After all, 32 years is a long time.
Across the world, the game of basketball is in a far better place now than it was in 1992. Look at the quality of opponent each of these two teams played. In the 1992 Summer Olympics, there were 9 internationally born players who had or would eventually play in the NBA. That number has swelled up to 66 in 2024. There were as many players with NBA experience on the Puerto Rican National Team (Jose Alvarado, Tremont Waters, Davon Reed and Gian Clavell) that will finish in last place in 2024's tournament as there were on the Croatian National Team (Toni Kukoc, Drazen Petrovic, Dino Radja and Stojko Vrankovic) that the Dream Team defeated in the Gold Medal Game.
There's no questioning the cultural impact of the Dream Team. I don't see a scenario where there is a basketball team that is assembled that is more impactful than the group that captured Gold in Barcelona. But we're talking about a hypothetical game being played between two basketball teams, and that doesn't take “impact” into consideration. That, in large part, is why I'm with Draymond… I think the 2024 USA Basketball Team has the edge over the Dream Team too.
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