Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Hold your horses!

Team USA won the FIBA Tournament of the Americas convincingly and has now qualified for the Beijing Olympics. That's great news if you're a fan of USA basketball (which I am), but I feel like much of the coverage of this victory has veered sharply into hyperbole.

A few articles, such as this one, have even gone so far as to speculate that this Team USA incarnation could have defeated the Dream Team. Quite frankly, I think the idea that this team could have beaten the Dream Team is insane. If you've been reading my posts, then you won't be surprised to learn that I think Team USA's downfall in a match-up with the Dream Team would have been the result of interior defense and a lack of rebounding.

The original Dream Team had Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, David Robinson, and Patrick Ewing on the inside. This version of Team USA has Dwight Howard, Amare Stoudemire, Tyson Chandler, and Carmelo Anthony playing on the inside. Do you really think the game would even be a contest on the inside? Absolutely not. Barkley was known as a sub-par defender, but he'd probably be the second best interior defender on the current version of Team USA (behind Chandler). Malone, Robinson, and Ewing were all top tier defenders, in addition to being dominant offensive forces. The inside battle would have been between men and boys, and the men would have won convincingly.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

The original dream team, even though many were past their prime, would slaughter the current team USA. I like the current team, I’ll like them more if they add a couple of more skilled big men, but they are not nearly as strong as the Dream Team was.