I have only a fairly superficial understanding of both sports in the Olympics. Best as I can gather is that the Soviet Red Machine and current-day USA men’s basketball team are/were basically the shoo-in defaults to win every Olympic gold medal in their respective sport, unless some underdog managed to pull off a major upset.
Were they equally good or was one slightly better/worse at their respective sport?
One of the differences between then and now is that the Soviet hockey team didn’t really play against the top-tier talent from the rest of the world. At that time, professional athletes weren’t allowed on the Olympic teams, and the Warsaw Pact nations routinely flouted that rule by giving their Olympic athletes non-athletic “jobs,” while allowing them to play and train full-time.
So, while the Soviet team was, in essence, experienced professional players, in the Olympics, they were playing against teams made up of amateurs – in the case of the U.S. team, largely college players. Thus, the U.S.'s Olympic hockey players were not as experienced, nor necessarily as talented, as a team that the U.S. would have been able to field if they’d actually been able to put the country’s best players on the ice.
The Soviets were fielding a team of professionals in all but name. The rest of the world fielded teams of kids and amateurs. Quite talented amateurs, but even then, the best young players in the US and Canada were already playing low level professional hockey.
Right- they played in amateur leagues made of professional organizations, and were ostensibly employees of those organizations. In essence, ALL sports in the USSR were ‘amateur’, even though in practice they were essentially professional in every way that counted.
The comparison to US Olympic basketball dominance would be more like comparing the Soviet hockey teams’ dominance to the “Dream Teams” of the early1990s. Basically all-star teams from the highest levels of professional sports in both cases. The only real difference is that nobody else in the world really has comparable pro basketball leagues to the NBA, while the US and other countries had comparable hockey leagues of their own. I would bet that US and Canadian teams made of the best the NHL had to offer at the time would have been very comparable to the Soviet teams, but instead it was collegiate hockey players who we fielded, who weren’t even necessarily the best we had at the second tier- there may well have been a bunch of players who forewent college to play in the minor leagues.
On the other hand, the fact that the Soviet hockey teams played against amateurs might also have led to them being relatively worse players themselves. Top-level competitors need top-level competition to keep themselves at their peak.
They might have been worse players for not playing against top tier talent. But they had the advantage of playing togething as a team for extended periods of time which is critical in a fast-paced team sport like hockey.
Good point; unlike, say, gridiron football, if a young hockey player in Canada or the U.S. was particularly promising, they likely would have been signed to (or at least offered) a professional contract right out of high school, if not before, rather than playing in college prior to turning pro.
For what it’s worth:
In the 1970s, there were several international series, which pitted the USSR’s hockey team against professional players from the West:
tl;dr: during various 1970s tournaments in which the Soviets played against professional-level Western players and teams, they did well, but were not particularly dominant, particularly when playing against national-level teams, rather than individual NHL/WHA teams.
I see, so at the risk of oversimplifying, Team USA is good at basketball because it’s legitimately dominant, but the Soviets were good because of weak opponents (and also, of course, “professional amateurs?”)
Pretty much, yes. They had a talented, experienced, professional-level team, which practiced and played together year-round, and they dominated in international play against teams made up of younger amateurs, who likely weren’t playing together full-time, but were assembled specifically for those tournaments.
I think the Soviets cared a whole lot more about winning, the USA basically coasts through basketball tournaments until they get embarrassed and send in the big guns the next time out.
I think this is definitely true; the Soviet Union, and other Eastern Bloc countries, clearly felt that success in the Olympics, and other international tournaments, was a key way to demonstrate to the world the superiority of the Soviet and communist systems.
Exactly, for NBA players the Olympics and the FIBA tournament are more like nice experiences. The current team is made up of good players, but not a single one of them would be on the team if we sent the actual best team we could.
In 1976 the Philadelphia Flyers taught the Red Army team a lesson in NHL style hockey. The ‘Broad Street’ bullies were reigning two time Stanley Cup champions playing on their home ice in the Philadelphia Spectrum and it wasn’t the amateur style game the Soviets were used to. At the end of the first period a Flyer body-checked a Soviet team member and knocked him on his ass. After some nonsense about the Soviets refusing to continue the Flyers beat them 4-1 by playing aggressive hockey after their well established intimidation tactics. But keep in mind the rest of the NHL didn’t do well against the Soviets that year, nor hadn’t been able to deal with the Flyers game in the previous two seasons either.
The Soviets played a best of three series against NHL All-Stars in '79. They split the first two games 1-1, so it all came down to game 3. The Soviets humiliated the NHL all stars 6-0 in that game 3.
By contrast, a similar exhibition between the US basketball team versus all stars of whoever has the next best basketball league in the world would probably be three straight humiliations. And the US team doesn’t have the advantage of team cohesion like the Soviets had.
I think the US basketball advantage now (or certainly during the dream team era) is larger than the Soviet hockey advantage was in Lake Placid.
In terms of historic favorites, my top three is probably the Dream Team #1, US women’s soccer 20 years ago #2, then the Soviet hockey team #3.
I don’t know about US basketball, but there is a long tradition in Canada of high level amateur players being given cushy, if not well-paying jobs, so they could devote most of their time to hockey. Years ago, a friend of mine on Canada’s Olympic judo team and his teammates all had “jobs” that let them train and compete and buy groceries. Not sure how different this is from the Soviet practice. My WAG is in the US, Olympic athletes tend to come from wealthier families (not a thing in the USSR) and college teams where there is some money sloshing around to aid some players in some sports.
What on earth are you talking about? Any high level amateur hockey player is busting their ass in the major junior leagues trying to catch the attention of NHL scouts. The side job support thing might happen in various obscure sports, but in hockey the top talent in Canada is and has always been trying to punch their ticket to the big leagues, and they typically turn pro a couple years younger than bball and football in the US where most prospects use all or most of their college eligibility.
The only place that would make sense (and I know it actually happens) is in colleges. If they can’t get full athletic scholarships players get low effort jobs that essentially subsidize their college careers so they can play for the team.
Beyond that, what use is there for maintaining an amateur status? It’s not needed to play in the Olympics anymore.
How do these players feed and house themselves? In the past (thus “long tradition”) they were often given jobs in the company town’s major industry: smelter jobs for the Trail Smoke Eaters, for example. Not sure what your loint is: that somehow amateur players in Canada receive no financial support?
Sorry, I misunderstood what you were saying. I thought you meant there were top talent players that stayed amateur by this means, as the Soviets did with their top teams. Sure there are 19-year-olds playing hockey in Junior A and such in that position. But only for a year or two, after which they turned pro or washed out. And those players would never constitute the best players Canada could assemble. In that era Canada sucked at Olympic hockey because everyone over 20 who was any good was in the NHL.