Dream team

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As a dream team that was United States men's national basketball team at the 1992 Olympics designated in Barcelona, which won the gold medal in a superior manner. The team is considered to be the largest collection of individual talents in basketball history . She was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a team in 2010 .

Sporty background

Before the 1992 Games, the International Olympic Committee 's amateur rule for basketball was no longer applicable . This enabled the US team, which previously consisted of young college players, to compete with a selection of the best players in the US professional league NBA for the first time.

In the documentary The Dream Team (2012), Dream Team Scout Rod Thorn stated that he first contacted Michael Jordan , the reigning Most Valuable Player and NBA Finals MVP , who was considered the greatest figurehead of American basketball in 1992. Jordan initially did not want to take part, as he had already won the Olympic gold medal for the United States in 1984 . When Thorn successfully brought Magic Johnson and Larry Bird into the team, as they saw their participation as a worthy end to their careers that were coming to an end ( HIV infection with Johnson and chronic back problems with Bird), Jordan changed his mind. From then on, it was no longer a problem to recruit the other NBA stars. In order to represent not only professional but also amateur sport, the reigning college player of the year, Christian Laettner , was nominated as the 12th man .

A neuralgic point was the tension between the Chicago Bulls , to which Jordan and Scottie Pippen belonged, and the Detroit Pistons of coach Chuck Daly and their best player Isiah Thomas . While Daly demonstratively approached Jordan by playing golf with him in preparation , Jordan made sure behind the scenes that Thomas was not nominated. The training camp was deliberately chosen in Monaco : the rich leisure and nightlife offer offered players and coaches many opportunities to go out together and grow together. An important sporting point was that the Dream Team lost in training camp with 54:62 against a selection of US college players (including Chris Webber , Grant Hill and Penny Hardaway ). The players vowed to take every game seriously from now on. They also found that the two best players (Jordan and Johnson) only harmonized when one was subordinate to the other in terms of sport. In an internal 5v5 game, Jordan's team (Jordan, Malone, Ewing, Pippen and Bird) defeated Johnson, Barkley, Robinson, Mullin and Laettner; Drexler and Stockton were all out, leaving Jordan the Took the leadership role of the dream team.

As expected, the team dominated the Olympic competition at will. The “Dream Team” won all games by a large margin. The lead in the semi-finals against Lithuania , which had four reigning Olympic champions from the Soviet era in its ranks, was 51 points in the end. It was the closest in the final against Croatia , when the US team won by 32 points. The Croatian team was led by Dražen Petrović , who had stars like Toni Kukoč , Dino Rađa and Stojko Vranković by his side. Nevertheless, the team had no chance in both games against the Americans. During the entire tournament, the sporting management of the US selection did not take a single break .

The Dream Team's style of play was characterized by a strong man marking and a lot of quick attacks, which resulted primarily from numerous ball wins on the defensive. The weak throwing rate of the respective opponent in connection with the rebound superiority of the Americans was decisive for the victory in every game.

Origin of the term "Dream Team"

Even before the tournament, the term “Dream Team” became a synonym for the US team in the media and in public. Mainly two reasons are likely to have led to the extraordinary name: For the first time in history, the best US professional basketball players were able to compete in a joint national team. This first gathering of the stars, traditionally scattered across many teams in the NBA, took place at a time that many consider to be the largest concentration of superstars in the history of the NBA. The older "legends" of the 1980s like Magic Johnson and Larry Bird met younger stars like Charles Barkley , Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan .

The team was largely removed from the sporting context in public discourse, as victory was assumed to be certain from the start. In terms of sport, at most the question arose as to the level of success.

Persistence of the term

In the years that followed, the international US basketball teams continued to be referred to in the media as the “Dream Team”, albeit with consecutive numbering: “Dream Team II” for the team at the 1994 World Cup , “Dream Team III” in Atlanta 1996 etc. The expectations of the audience remained correspondingly high. The US team remained unbeaten for ten years, but there was a growing discrepancy between the term "dream team" - which suggested a loose, playful dominance - and the actual performances of the USA. The superiority of the US team could not be overlooked. Game dwindled, the results became scarcer. The series of defeats at the 2002 World Cup in their own country, which ended in a disappointing 6th place for the USA, destroyed the myth of the “Dream Team”.

However, the fading of the dream team myth is closely linked to the success of Barcelona. The 1992 Olympic basketball tournament is considered by many basketball historians to be a kind of "international big bang of basketball", as the "Dream Team" triggered an enormous worldwide surge in popularity for this sport.

The players of the "Dream Team"

The US team brought together some of the most famous American basketball players of all time, including Michael Jordan , Magic Johnson and Larry Bird . With the exception of Chris Mullin and then college player Christian Laettner , all players on the "Dream Team" were voted into the selection of the "50 Best NBA Players of All Time" in 1996, and except for Laettner they all got into the Naismith Memorial Basketball after their careers Hall of Fame inducted , as well as three of the four trainers (all except Carlesimo). On August 13, 2010, the 1992 American Olympic Basketball Team was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as a team. On September 30, 2017, the Dream Team was inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame .

The preparation:

Chuck Daly acted as head coach , his assistant coaches were Lenny Wilkens , PJ Carlesimo and Mike Krzyzewski . Rod Thorn was involved as a contact person in the selection process.

literature

  • Paul Collins: Michael Jordan. The star of the Dream Team , Econ, 1998. ISBN 3-612-26528-8
  • Chuck Daly, Alex Sachare: America's Dream Team: The 1992 USA Basketball Team , Turner Pub, 1992. ISBN 1-878685-27-9
  • Jack McCallum: The Dream Team: The Inside Story of the 1992 US Olympic Basketball Team , Little & Brown, 1992. ISBN 0-316-55370-0

Web links

References and comments

  1. ^ Associated Press : Federation Rule Change Opens Olympics to NBA Players. The New York Times , April 8, 1989, accessed September 11, 2014 .
  2. ↑ a b c The Dream Team , IMDB.com
  3. ↑ Michael Jordan Had Way More Power In Deciding Who Would Be On The Dream Team Than We Initially Thought , businessinsider.com
  4. ^ Grant Hill recalls beating the Dream Team in a scrimmage , cbssports.com
  5. ↑ Greatest game nobody ever saw , Sports Illustrated
  6. ↑ Due to the lockout in the NBA, the United States competed at the 1998 World Cup with a selection of professionals from other leagues and college players. She finished third, but is not seen as a direct successor to the “Dream Team”.
  7. ↑ Harvey Araton: 20 Years Later, a New World for the NBA The New York Times , June 21, 2012, accessed September 11, 2014 .
  8. ↑ NBA History: The NBA's 50 Greatest Players. (No longer available online.) National Basketball Association , archived from the original on April 5, 2010 ; accessed on May 14, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nba.com
  9. ^ NN: 1992 United States Olympic Team. On: Hoophall website; Springfield, MA, 2018. Retrieved May 13, 2018 (in English).