Who would Win: Dream Team vs. "Redeem Team"?

The Game Room
1

It’s going to be asked a million-skillion-kajillion times once the Olympics start, so I’ll jump the gun now, before any games have been played. Doesn’t really matter anyway; the competition the two teams played/will play are completely dissimilar.

If it’s a Who’s Better? question, there’s not much question: Redeem Team is much better top to bottom. Bird was on his last wings, Magic had been out of the league for a season (HIV) and, umm, Christian Laettner probably wasn’t one of the best 100 players in the NBA in 1992, much less a dream teamer (Shaq should have been there in his place, anyway).

But you don’t need a 12-man roster for 48 minutes of basketball (or do the Olympics play 40? I’m not sure). You need eight, a specialist inserted for a few minutes for outside shooting or lockdown defense.

So if the two were playing each other, who wins?

The 1992 Dream Team:

PG
Magic
Stockton
SG
Jordan
Drexler
C
Ewing
Robinson
PF
Barkley
Malone
SF
Pippen
Bird
…and…
Laettner
Coach
Chuck Daly

2008 “Redeem” Team
PG
Chris Paul
Jason Kidd
Deron Williams
SG
Kobe
Dwayne Wade
Michael Redd
C
Dwight Howard
PF
Carlos Boozer
Chris Bosh (F-C)
SF
LeBron James
Carmelo Anthony
Tayshaun Prince
Coach
Mike K.

On the surface, Dream Team would seem better: 10 of the 12 are on the All-Time NBA 50 and most still near their prime (a lot of 8-year vets, though; guys starting their slide).

But nobody on Dream Team is quick enough to stay with Chris Paul (not even Stockton).
LeBron James would outmuscle Scottie Pippen or go by Karl Malone at will.
Besides Magic & Bird (again, creaky-backed Larry Bird), Dream Team is a very average passing team and not all that fleet of foot.
Fun to see a fivesome of Paul, Kobe, Prince, LeBron & Howard wreak complete defensive havoc.
Coach K has whipped these guys into game shape.

But then…
I could never see a team of Magic-Larry-Michael-Barkley-Stockton choking in a close game;
Umm, Michael Jordan;
A lot of big guards that I don’t think Redeem Team would have an answer for (Jordan, Drexler, Magic)
Did I mention Michael Jordan?

So, in my final summation, I’m taking Dream Team because Jordan wouldn’t let them lose. He outclassed the competition in his day and would do the same to Redeem Team.

Your thoughts?

2

I’m with you. The Dream Team had Jordan. Plus Pippen and Barkley were both still pretty good at the time. Magic and Bird might have been old but they weren’t that old. They were still Magic and Bird…and they had Jordan.

3

Bird actually was done; he retired after the Olympics and was not a prime contributor (again, bad back, probably not so much his age). But Magic didn’t appear to have lost much even after away from the NBA (though the competition back then wasn’t such the test it will be now). He was planning the return, but then the whole Catching AIDS on the Court issue (thanks, Karl Malone) pushed him back into retirement.

It would be quite a site to see Kobe square off against Jordan, but people just don’t seem to remember how generally unstoppable he was in his prime. Big hands and a ridiculous first step. Even an excellent defender like Kobe would have had his hands full. I’ve never seen anyone have more insane spurts than Kobe – not even Jordan – but that freewheeling, touch-it-shoot-it mentality would never happen under Coach K.

A guy who I think would be pivotal in such a contest would be Pippen. An all-time great defender and terrific secondary passer, he didn’t give up anything on the offensive end and that would make him a difference maker in a game like this: a great defender who still must be guarded.

Of course, he would draw LeBron James as his assignment.

4

If they played by NBA rules, Redeem Team would blow Dream Team out. It would be like a modern baseball team playing against an All-Star team from the Golden Era of Baseball(before Jackie Robinson.) Modern athletes are bigger, stronger and faster. Sixteen years is a long time. They have made a lot of strides in training and coaching since. IIRC, the MVPs of the Dream team during their Gold medal run were Drexler and Barkley. Barkley was undersized for his position and Drexler’s jumper was flatter than Keira Knightley. It worked for their time, but Sir Charles would get muscled out of the key and the Glide would get blocked out of the gym. Plus, the Dream Team had Laettner. Redeem Team has no scrub like that.

5

The Dream Team was much better, because it had:

  1. Two REAL centers who were among the best ever.

  2. Guys who could make jump shots and hit 3 pointers, whenever the opposition tried to go into the zone.

This year’s team is better than several recent ones, because they’ve had the chance to play together. But they’re STILL overloaded on small forwards and don’t have enough guys who can hit the outside shots.

They SHOULD win the gold, but they’re very vulnerable if the Europeans and the Argentines go into a zone and the Americans just aren’t hitting their outside shots.

6

You forgot to put Chris Mullin on the Dream Team.

7

And don’t think I didn’t notice that.

Dream Team wins. There is no doubt that when looking at the power forward and center positions, the Dream Team dominates. Part of this is due to 2008 stacking their lineup at smaller positions to better handle the international style of play, but it would really kill them in this match-up. Not only would it likely lead to foul trouble, you would also be at some pretty nasty mis-matches on the defensive end. Line-ups would exist with Prince and Anthony guarding Malone and Barkley. That does not bode well.

The biggest guns for the Redeem Team (Kobe/Lebron) would likely be guarded by the 2 Bulls on the team. This would seriously hamper two players that 2008 would need big output from to offset the inside imbalance.

At point, it’s probably a 2008 advantage, though a slight one. I think Magic and Stockton are better shooters but would have defensive issues. But, the Dream Team has enough size inside to really hamper drives to the basket.

8

This wouldn’t even be close. The original Dream Team would destroy the current version. People are completely misunderstanding the current NBA rule changes. The modern hand-check rules and zone defenses have really driven up scoring. Kobe couldn’t even carry MJ’s jock, Kobe averages 25 ppg, 6.5 points less than MJ, in an era where teams are averaging many more possessions with a greater efficiency and where defenders aren’t allowed to touch a ballhandler. If Jordan were playing now he’d have probably gained 6 points a game or more. Also Kobe’s scoring average will probably end up being lower if he has a similar twilight where his skills are greatly diminished in his final couple seasons after his 35th B-day.

The point above applies to everyone else too. As great as this year’s team is, the talent in the NBA is better than it has been in a long time especially at the guard position, it’s numbers are inflated by the offensively geared period in which they are allowed to play. Stockton put up great numbers in his time and did it with much more physical defense and while having to also play that taxing physical defense on the other end himself. The current motion offenses and handcheck rules allow much more freedom on the offensive end and an ability to coast on the defensive end in a zone scheme and to essentially hide a defensive liability or player in foul trouble.

The bigs on the current team would get abused in the low post. Neither Howard, Boozer or Bosh really know how to play with their back to the basket. They are more athletic and can get up and down the floor faster and can probably rebound better if motivated (though I bet Robinson and Ewing’s floor awareness and box outs would almost totally offset it). On the offensive end it’s really no contest though, those guys would be in serious foul trouble. Which brings me to another key point. the Dream Team was an insanely good Free Throw shooting team and this modern squad (like most of the NBA) is pretty average with Dwight Howard dragging them into the abyss.

Depth isn’t much of an issue. If anything it can be a detriment in a All-Star type team like this. Few successful NBA teams play more than 8 or 9 guys with any regularity and I worry that this current team will make too much of an effort to play everyone to keep their egos in check. The Dream Team succeeded in part because the stars were able to settle into somewhat comfortable and consistent roles. They knew who the scorer was on the floor at any given time and they knew where the matchups were. This current team is younger and as a result likely a little more selfish and certainly less able to quickly adapt and adjust to different personnel. Would you rather have Kobe, CP3, D-Wade, LeBron and Howard playing 20 minutes a game of MJ, Pippen, Stockton, Barkley and Ewing playing 30+ minutes a game? What good is having Tayshawn Prince as your 12th man when that means fewer minutes for LeBron? The Dream Team having Mullin, Laettner and an old, injured Bird is essentially moot since they weren’t getting in over MJ, Malone and Stockton unless the game was a blowout.

Finally, Pippen is the greatest defensive player to ever suit up. He’d have given Kobe and LeBron absolute fits. Hell, James Posey made Kobe struggle, Pippen would have owned him. LeBron’s size would have been a little tougher matchup but Pippen was the same height and much much faster and longer than LeBron. Pippen and Jordan’s Bulls were so great because each was a superior one-on-one defender and the man off the ball knew a bad, frustrated pass or shot was coming and were always prepared to intercept or rebound it. As good of a passer as LeBron is, he’s never faced a team with a guy who could check him and another guy athletic enough and savvy enough to make those passes dangerous.

The Dream Team would have blown out the new guys, I’m not even sure this new team can with the Gold with such a poor post-up game and so much inexperience. I’m worried that frustration and foul trouble could be their undoing.

9

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it here: The Dream Team…the REAL Dream Team…was the greatest basketball team the world had ever seen. There’s really no comparing Magic Johnson, Karl Malone, Charles Barkely, or (yes) Michael Jordan (not to mention phenomenal team players in Scottie Pippen, John Stockton, and David Robinson…he actually offered to play small forward if it came to that) to even the elite players of today. And for all their NBA success, this was a very hungry unit absolutely determined to avenge the abject humiliation of '88.

Did you see the games? Fait accomplis. Done deals. No one else stood a chance. Not even in the earliest Olympiads were the results this one-sided. They were leisurely out there, having fun, showing the world just how cavernous the gap really was.

Not even the '96 squad (“We said we were gonna EAT these guys for lunch.”) could measure up to this. I see no indication that the '08 squad is better. As for a good chance of bringing the basketball gold back to America…well…that remains to be seen.

10

Oops. Must have cut and … forgot to paste. As I looked at the two rosters I noticed how there were some similarities, one of which being each had only one lights-out shooter (Michael Redd being Redeem Team’s).

Very interesting analysis, Omniscient. Excellent points.

Two things I find interesting about this thread is:

1.) Scottie Pippen’s brilliance being recognized. I can’t count how many forum posts from other 'sites that make the general consensus that Pippen was overrated and shone only because teams put all their focus on Jordan.

2.) How MLB threads gather so much more interest than NBA ones. :frowning:

11

No player is going to completely shut down an opponent, but Stockon is about as good as you could hope for going against Paul. He was an all NBA defender that year, and still in his prime.

Scottie Pippen is in the top two or three best guys to guard LeBron in the history of the league. Yeah, James is stronger than Pippen, but Pip is quicker and can match LeBron’s speed.

What? John “All time assist leader” Stockton and Scottie “Prototypical Point Forward” beg to differ. Even Jordan is a great passer for his position. The guy averaged 6 assists against 2.5 TOs the year before the Olympics. Not all that fleet of foot? Again, that’s just crazy. Jordan and Pip were incredibly fast, and so were guys like Robinson and Malone.

You think that team would wreak complete defensive havoc? I’m sorry, but it’s the Dream team that would wreak the havoc. The Bulls won 6 titles based on the Doberman D of Pip and Jordan. Give them a backstop like Robinson and their defense would be absolutely scary.

No way. Robinson, Ewing, Pip, Jordan, and Malone were all phenomenal athletes. Hell, Jordan was a 20, 6, and 4 player at age 40 in the modern NBA. 92 Robinson, for example, is only matched in size, speed, and athleticism in the modern NBA by Howard, and maybe Oden. The rest of the guys would all be towards the top of their positions, if not the top, in terms of athleticism.

The real problem with this argument is that I can make a team of NBA players that would give the Redeem team a run for their money:

Nash/Parker
Ginobli/Martin
Pierce/Iguadola
Garnett/Stoudamire
Duncan/Brand

I mean look at the Dream Team’s stats from the previous NBA year:

Magic (91): 19.4 ppg, 12.5 apg, 7.0 rpg
Jordan: 30.1 ppg, 6.1 apg, 6.4 rpg on 52% shooting
Bird: 20.2 ppg, 9.6 rpg, 6.8 apg
Barkley: 23.1 ppg, 11.1rpg , 4.1 apg
Robinson: 23.4 ppg, 11.7 rpg, 3.7 apg, 3.2 bpg
Malone: 28.0 ppg, 11.2 rpg, 3.0 apg

I could go on with guys like Ewing, Stockon, and Pip, but I think the point has been made. Everyone of those guys is better than anybody playing now. There’s no 20, 10, and 3 bpg guys in the league today, the Dream team had two. Only LeBron is above 20, 6, and 6. The Dream team had three guys that did that. I don’t know why all of these guys happened to be in their prime at the same time, but you’re talking about the NBA’s greatest players. They would destroy this Redeem team.

12

Barkley, Malone, Ewing, and Robinson against Boozer, Bosh, and Howard? Please.

13

Omni, there’s a guy named Bill Russell who wants to have a word with you about that. :smiley:
How would the 1964 professional team match up? Russell, Chamberlain, West, Robertson, Lucas, Baylor, Petit & Wilkens would hold there own, I’m guessing.

14

Yeah, Russell is the shit. Too young to have really seen him play so I can’t really make an argument either way, but I suppose if I wanted to try and substantiate my claim I could say the Russell is the best defensive Center ever while Pippen was more versatile and could defend 4 of the 5 positions on the floor at a epic level. Perhaps that makes him a little more valuable and unique.

It’d be interesting but I do think that the “modern conditioning and strength training” argument holds more water when you talk about the 60s versus the 90s. The mid-80’s is when players and teams really started focusing on it and athletes started to treat sports as full time jobs. Plus medical treatments were advanced to allow guys to play after injuries. From the 90s to now the differences are pretty small, but back then it was common to hear about athletes drinking and smoking in the locker rooms and some who never saw the inside of a weight room.

I think Russell, Robertson and Chamberlain would hold up, size and ball skills under the basket translate pretty easily and the lack of bulk would help them get up and down the floor a little better than some of the huge modern Centers and Power Forwards. The 1, 2 and 3 positions are a different story. Guys like Pippen, Jordan, Magic and Drexler are a completely different animal than what those guys in the 60s faced. They were taller, longer, stronger and faster than their peers, let alone guys from 30 years earlier when a Slam Dunk was a rare novelty. Do you think Jerry West, for all his greatness, could have made that famous drive and layup Jordan made in the 91 finals?

15

Yeah, I realized after I wrote that I had overlooked Stockton and not thoroughly considered Pippen’s passing ability (although I contend Pippen was a good passer but not a great one, but worked terrifically in a system that emphasized ball movement and lacked a great point guard).

And yes, a D anchored by Jordan-Pippen-Robinson would create major issues. Absolutely. :smack:

16

Mind you, I fully agree that there’s a lot of talent on the current team AND that a lot of the stars on the Dream TEam were past their peak

I’ll also note that:

  1. Foreign competition wasn’t nearly as good back then

  2. Foreign teams were in AWE of the NBA stars, sometimes seeming thrilled to be beaten by their heroes.

Obviously, the gap has been narrowed, if not quite closed completely. Foreign teams were intimidated by Michael Jordan. They respect LeBron James and Dwayne Wade, but they are NOT intimidated.

I STILL think the Dream Team was better suited for the Olympics, because I’m not at all happy with the way recent teams have been put together. PART of the problem has been that you can no longer just toss an All-Star team together at the last minute and expect them to stomp skilled teams that have played together for a long time. But the other thing is, recent teams have had NEITHER a dominant center NOR top-notch 3-point shooters. The teams that have given us fits have invariably had one or both of those things.

17

My best friend idolizes Jordan too. It’s true that he absolutely outclassed everyone in his day, but things are different now. He might still be the best if he were in his prime today instead of the early 90s, but he wouldn’t be the best by such a huge margin. Part of the reason he dominated so much in his time is that his competition just hadn’t caught up yet.

18

I would just point out that for MJ we don’t need to guess at this … too much. He played 5 years ago at ages 38-39-40. Surely we aren’t going to make the case that the game has revolutionized in the past 5 years.

MJ averaged 22.9 in the NBA in 2001-02 (before he got nicked at the All-Star break he was one of 2 NBA Players who averaged more than 25 points, 5 assists, and 5 rebounds) He didn’t play enough to make the final stats for the NBA season but his average would make him 9th in the NBA.

He averaged 20.0 in 02-03. Jermaine O’Neal was the 20th Leading scorer in the NBA with 20.78 per game.

Again in both seasons he was long, long past his prime. In his prime I am pretty confident, that along with the all-timers with whom he was paired, MJ would have been capable of beating the Redeem Team in a seven game series.

19

Sigh… I HATE being right. It’s pretty clear the current U.S. team was badly conceived, AGAIN! The Australian team, which is no great shakes, gave the U.S. all it could handle, even with its best player on the bench.

Why? Because the U.S. still hasn’t figured out that, in the international game, you need guys who can hit 3 pointers consistently.

Once again, the U.S. team has way too many small forwards and point guards, NO big man, and no reliable 3 point shooters. Whe the Redeem team runs up against big men like Yao Ming, there will be nobody who can contain them. And when teams go into the zone, and dare us to hit 3 point shots, they can be confident we won’t hit them (3 of 18 against a mediocre Aussie team bodes very poorly).

Don’t they ever learn?

The saddest thing is, when we lose, the media and fans will blame it on the “arrogance” of the American NBA players. That’s nonsense, of course. The U.S could and should still be able to put together a near unbeatable team. The players we have are very good, but they’re NOT well balanced at all, and they weren’t assembled to win in international competition. That’s the fault of Colangelo and Coach K.