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Twenty years ago professional NBA players were allowed to play for the USA's Olympic basketball team for the first time: they became known as the Dream Team.
This week Team USA officials released the preliminary 20-man roster for the men's Olympic basketball team to compete this summer in London. As expected, the team will be stacked to the brim with future Hall of Famers, and narrowing down this group to 12 will be no easy task for Mike Krzyzewski and crew. The biggest names, such as LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Kobe Bryant, Derrick Rose, Chris Paul, Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh and Dwight Howard all figure to be locks to make the team leaving just a few spots on the bench to be filled with All Stars. It is a true embarrassment of riches. Barring a major upset, the 2012 team should repeat their gold medal performance of 2008.
When the IOC lifted all restrictions on professional athletes participating in the Olympics after the 1988 Games in Seoul, the American team pulled out all the stops and assembled a basketball squad the likes of which had never been seen in Olympic play before. The roster of that 1992 team reads like a wall in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame: Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, David Robinson, Scottie Pippin, John Stockton, Patrick Ewing, and Clyde Drexler all played in Barcelona that year. And indeed, in 2010 the entire Dream Team was inducted into the Hall of Fame.
The team was quite deserving of this honor as they gave one of the most thoroughly dominating performances in the history of modern sports. Their eight wins came by an average margin of victory of almost 44 points per game. Despite Olympic games being eight minutes shorter than NBA games, they averaged more than 117 points per contest. In all, the Dream Team set a pretty high standard for subsequent American teams.
This week Team USA officials released the preliminary 20-man roster for the men's Olympic basketball team to compete this summer in London. As expected, the team will be stacked to the brim with future Hall of Famers, and narrowing down this group to 12 will be no easy task for Mike Krzyzewski and crew. The biggest names, such as LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Kobe Bryant, Derrick Rose, Chris Paul, Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh and Dwight Howard all figure to be locks to make the team leaving just a few spots on the bench to be filled with All Stars. It is a true embarrassment of riches. Barring a major upset, the 2012 team should repeat their gold medal performance of 2008.
When the IOC lifted all restrictions on professional athletes participating in the Olympics after the 1988 Games in Seoul, the American team pulled out all the stops and assembled a basketball squad the likes of which had never been seen in Olympic play before. The roster of that 1992 team reads like a wall in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame: Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, David Robinson, Scottie Pippin, John Stockton, Patrick Ewing, and Clyde Drexler all played in Barcelona that year. And indeed, in 2010 the entire Dream Team was inducted into the Hall of Fame.
The team was quite deserving of this honor as they gave one of the most thoroughly dominating performances in the history of modern sports. Their eight wins came by an average margin of victory of almost 44 points per game. Despite Olympic games being eight minutes shorter than NBA games, they averaged more than 117 points per contest. In all, the Dream Team set a pretty high standard for subsequent American teams.