I mean, I guess I agree with you that if you only consider a portion of the relevant information when comparing the 1988 team to 1992 by ignoring the games that 1988 lost or played close, ignore the fact they didn't even win gold or silver, and ignore the actual makeup of the teams, you could possibly come to the conclusion that 1988 is pretty close to as good as 1992. But why would you want to do that when you can actually be intellectually honest?

yup, this post is the definition of intellectual honesty, "they didn't even win silver!"

Sorry, games they lost? Plural? Close games? Avg margin was >30 ppg. Bronze medal was 29.

Yeah lump all 92ers together and make some ******ed claim which has no basis in fact and start tossing insults, gg.

Who has argued that international competition has "probably" not gotten better? Anyone? I think pretty much everyone agrees that it has (and not just probably). The 1992 Lithanian team was possibly an exception but that does not change the overall picture.

So WTF are you talking about? Sry but this has to be one of your dumbest posts ever. I guess I should lump all you 2012ers together and say you are all ******ed just because you made a dumb post. Then blather on a bit about intellectual honesty and so on ...

You havent been following this thread much, huh? There have been a couple dozen posts about how skill level doesnt increase much over 20 years, and even if it does, this doesnt impact elite athletes, so there is no reason to think that 2012 faced (significantly) tougher competition.

And the fact that you talk about the 1992 Lithuania team as a possible exception just makes me cringe. No, they were not a possible exception. The fact that they had 2 NBA players does not change the fact that 2012 Lithuania >>>>>> 1992 Lithuania

You are a tard calling 92ers' tards because they can't make an argument that you can't make either. Tard!

It makes you cringe, but you can't be bothered to provide some sort of data proving that the 2012 team was better. Sabonis was probably better than any player on Lithuania in 2012 and I have no clue about the rest of the players. The 2012 team could be better, but you've provided no argument in support of your claim. The majority of the 2012 Lithuanian team plays in the Lithuanian league which is absolute crap (not the better European leagues) and they have no decent players that stand out other than an nba role player and a high draft pick for the Raptors.

Lithuania is an interesting outlier because in 92 they had one of the best players in the world (and one of the GOAT's), that will do wonders for your "average skill level", even so, as a country and as a team you're insane if you don't think they improve a ton.

OK I'm not even quite sure what's going on anymore. The butthurt is infecting your arguments and making them nonsensical, I believe.

But they didn't win silver. Do you know what intellectual honesty even means?

Lost OR played close. Sorry, I should have either left the 's' off or said 'and'. It is interesting to note that when one side begins to resort to grammatical nittery, it generally means they are overwhelmed in their own wrongness. It's like a prison of wrong from which there is no escape, and the only hope is to point out an extra 's' so that they may escape on a technicality. Sorry, but if the argument was close that may have worked, but we're way past that at this point.

As I talked about in detail a few posts back, no one even cares about average margin of victory. It is the distribution that is relevant.

Ketter,
Cut them a little slack. The foundations of their sort by birthyear sporting analytics identity have been reduced to rubble. They are still at the first stage of the grieving process, shock and denial. They know the truth is there but they can't accept it yet. So they get mad. Really rilly mad. They can't help it though so we should just watch and observe the anger. Soak it in so that we may learn from it and perhaps we will never be caught in a place that is so undeniably, embarrassingly wrong in the future. It's a sad, sad place to be, and I hope that none of us on the victorious side of this debate will ever have to experience it..

Some people did argue that skill level wouldn't necessarily increase over a 20 year period in the NBA. Arguing a shorter time frame of 10 years, I'd say it would be fair to say that the skill level in 2000-01 was lower than it was in 1990-91.

Did anyone argue that an increase in skill level, if it exists, wouldn't impact elite athletes? People argued that the level of athleticism isn't necessarily higher, and, if it is, it may not appear as a major difference amongst elite athletes. I'd argue the 1992 team was more athletic than this team, and I don't see that as being a hard argument to make.

This doesn't follow.

I also don't know why people are so concerned about Olympic results. Could we not have an intelligent discussion about how teams made up of NBA players would fare against each other under FIBA rules without having seen them in the Olympics? How would a team of pros from 1988 fair against 2010?

I take it into consideration because sometimes it is hard to predict how a group of 12 guys, elite or not, will play together. You can't really accurately predict how guys like Kobe Bryant or Carmelo Anthony will affect teamwork, maybe they will be selfless and integrate seamlessly with the other 3 or 4 guys on the court like the 1992 Dream Team did. Maybe they won't and they'll want to keep the spotlight all to themselves, and there will be situations where they are in danger of losing to teams like Lithuania or Spain if they have to face tough teams that play together well.

It's kinda like asking why even play the game when one team is way better on paper? You need to take results into account because there are a lot of moving parts. The funny thing about this is that the 1992 Dream Team is both way better on paper and they have far superior teamwork as evidenced by actual results. I guess that just means more lol's for us, though.

What are you basing this on?

Really? I have been following the thread but I suppose it is possible that I missed something. Please refer me to some of those couple dozen posts that claim international competition in general is no better today than it was 20 years ago. Thank you.

I never said that Lithuania was better in 92 because they had "2 NBA players". Others have pointed out the awesomeness of Sabonis which is certainly a factor which you seem to be ignoring, or perhaps to you he rates as simply "1 NBA player"?

This was exacly my concern when I posted before the olympics began. Although I can't quantify or prove it, I had my doubts of how well this years team would "play together". Some of these guys just don't "play well with others" LOL.

It seems like these days players egos have grown out of control. Not to lump everyone together but I think it is an issue. Just as an example, think about how Kobe and Shaq were in LA, one team was just not big enough for these two egos, just ridiculous. Compare to Magic and Kareem earlier, the mere thought of those guys having the kind of conflict that Kobe and Shaq had, both wanting LA to be "their team" is laughable. They co-existed beautifully as did the entire 92 DT.

As I said earlier, the 92DT was a whole that was as great as the sum of their awesome parts. This years team though was substantially less than the sum of it's parts and ended up being much better on paper than on the court.

Melo was probably the best player on this years team.

Your concern was that they just wouldnt play well together, and this fear of yours was vindicated when they won the gold medal, went undefeated, and won by an average of ~30 ppg?

What would they have had to do to be "greater than the sum of their parts" exactly? Beat Spain by 13 instead of 7?

"they won by avg of 30" hides the fact that multiple games were close until the 3rd or 4th quarter

They were the best team in the Olympics but it was pretty clear watching them that they didn't play as well as their talent level would indicate and they did too much ISO and took too many bad shots (many went in anyway, but a bad shot is
still a bad shot)

They were in danger of losing to both Spain and Lithuania. Both of those teams on paper are vastly inferior and had no business being anywhere remotely close in the 4th quarter. But yeah, they beat Nigeria by a zillion so you can point to the average margin of victory and pretend that means something.

You are either being deliberately obtuse, or you really are that dumb. What was that you were saying about intellectual honesty again?

I'd agree, but the level of competition would be so much greater when you are putting two US Olympic teams against each other compared to what they would face as their stiffest competition in the Olympics, the degree to which you should consider the play against that inferior competition is negligible at best. It is a completely different ballgame, so to speak.

The results for the DT in particular are meaningless because they had absolutely no fear that they'd lose. People scoff at the idea that they didn't go all out and that they treated the Olympics with great seriousness, but it simply isn't the case. At least now, the players actually have a great fear of losing after what happened in 2004. They mess around against ****ty teams, but against teams with even a tiny chance of winning, they are serious and dialed in until they get up big.

Again, there really isn't much to be learned when looking at the results against vastly inferior international teams when considering how players would play against the best of the best from a different class of players from the NBA.

On one hand, I agree that it is pointless to compare the two teams based on their performance against vastly inferior teams 20 years apart. The goal is to win, and ideally lock it up as soon as poossible. Whether you win by 30 or 70 in the end is irrelevant which is why I "cringe" when tards like vhawk point to statistics like average margin of victory as if they mean something.

I guess it comes down to your definition of vastly inferior. Is Spain in that category? Lithania? Do we discount those results? If it was just one game it would be easier to argue small sample size or whatever but the fact that there was more than one game where they underferformed by by a large margin, suggests that the team may not be as good as some people here seem to think.

Well, my main point is that it is ridiculous to look at MOV for the 1992 team because the competition has changed drastically and a team made up of pros actually failed and only got the bronze in 2004. The mindset is completely different now. There is a fear factor in being the next team to not get the gold in the Olympics and that adds a huge amount of motivation and focus. The Dream Team had no fear of not getting the gold and was just ****ing around.

People laugh about bringing up the mindset of the 1992 team, but Jordan did not give a **** and his stats were awful compared to what he could have done. Just look at his stats, FFS. It is absurd to think a prime, MVP level MJ couldn't have annihilated the competition he faced. It was a vacation with a couple hours of basketball sprinkled in for him and all the other players. They obviously wanted to make a good showing, but they also obviously weren't going all out. Winning by 30+ while only being somewhat focused was fine. Even their best competition, the Croatian team, was asking for autographs during the game, FFS.

It is absurd to think that they couldn't have won by more if they were driven to destroy the opposing team by as much as possible. You can watch all the games on YouTube. It was a ****ing joke.

Using MOV with Olympic teams is ridiculously disingenuous.

I'd love to read a breakdown of how vhawk thinks the 2012 team would match up with the 1992 team. I highly doubt he's capable of providing such an analysis.

vhawk, give a decent breakdown of how the 2012 team would have an advantage over the 1992 team. My guess is that you will hide behind the idea that you were simply providing arguments against flawed arguments and that you can't provide an answer to the question that I pose.

Simply break down why the 2012 team would be favored.

If I'm not mistaken, vhawk's position is not that the 2012 team would be favored but rather something like this:

1 - 1992 team would be a slight favorite
2 - everyone ITT saying the 1992 would be the favorite is a tard

Doesn't make much sense I know but there you have it. Interesting fellow that vhawk.

Yes, the way to deal with small sample size problems is to break them into even smaller samples to prove your point.