Dream Team: I think Not!
| 16
|
by Kayos
Basketball has always been a worldwide sport. You can say basketball to any culture and they would know what you are talking about. Unlike Football, where it can be distinguished between "American" football in its uses with pigskin and "European" football in its correlation to Soccer. Basketball has reached so far and wide it's one of the Olympic sports and has been for years. Excellence at its best. One of the very few reasons I watch it. However, my interest in basketball is waning.
In 1989, the Internation Basketball Federation allowed the United States to field professional players for their team. Since the '88 Olympics had past, United States waited until the 1992 Summer Oluympics in Barcelona, Spain to gather a team called the "Dream Team". This team consisted of Michael Jordan, Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Clyde "The Glide" Drexler, Chris Mullin, Larry Bird, Scottie Pippen, Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley, John Stockton, Karl Malone, David Robinson, and Christian Laettner representing the college choice. Literally, this is a dream team. Each member of this team will be in the HOF if they aren't already there. You couldn't bench a better team than this.
Now, you're wondering why my interest is waning...well, every US Olympic team that follows is being called the Dream Team. SO NOT TRUE! How do you call a group of men who can't come close to the accomplishments of the men above a "Dream Team". I hope you're not going on a wing and prayer. I won't say the members of the subsequent teams won't get the accolaides of the others but for you to describe these men as a "Dream Team" is contradictory to me because you have the best players in the game now. The 1992 Dream Team were and are the best players in the game. John Stockton beat Magic Johnson's record for Assists after Johnson retired in 1991. Half the team is named in NBA's 50 Greatest Players. These men made milestones and moved mountains. The teams after that are struggling to set the record these men have set while playing in the Olympics. Are you kidding me? The 1992 Dream Team set records even in the Olympics and you want to continue to moniker every team after that the same name! It borders on blasphemy.
I think the officials, the public, or whomever came up with the name Dream Team should find a new name for the gentlemen who will roster the next teams because you are doing a great disservice to the original, never-duplicated always imitated "Dream Team", the 1992 United States Olympians.
