the 1992 team made smarter decisions when they were GETTING screened too. how many times do you see guys going under the screen when they should go over or vice versa. how many times do guys get caught on the wrong switch or make the wrong rotation. with guys like mj and scottie in practice, that stuff just isn't happening as often.

also, when you have devastating post players like mj, drexler, magic, scottie, mullin - guys that don't just play bully-ball down there - instead, a higher proportion of their buckets down there are scored faster; they have quick spin moves, turnaround jumpshots that are accurate, and footwork like up and unders that guys like wade and lebron have not perfected and use probably 1/10 as often. these quick moves negate double teams and ruin a defenses typical rotation schemes.

fellas, do me a favor - please listen to steve kerr talk about exactly what i just said about rotations being much tougher against guys that can make quick, efficient moves on the post, not just bully-ball - it's about 1 minute long and starts about the 10:05 mark... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZEHddkl1hE

in my last 3 posts, i tried to detail as concisely as i could SOME of the things that made the 1992 team a smarter team. when those guys were coming up in high school and learning the fundamentals, mj hadn't started tomahawking on everyone yet, and the AND1 tapes hadn't started yet - the combination of these two things made it so in practices all around the country, guys were just trying to see how high they could jump and dunk, and how pretty their handles were. all the fundamental footwork and positioning stuff on both sides of the floor became much less of an emphasis in players' minds as the game evolved into a more aesthetically appealing game.

i bring this stuff up, because how else could you explain team usa's FAR more athletic teams having this



happen, and this



happen?

we've basically gone through a phase after mj retired, where guys got away from the fundamentals. we're only now getting back to them.

i'm out until the evening fellas. maybe i'll see some of you guys at summer league at thomas & mack in a hour or so.

this can go round and round all day. my understanding is that melo isn't elite because he is so absolutely ****ing terrible at defense, and durant is decidely meh aorn. since everyone seems to think cp3>>>magic (really? that much better than magic ****ing johnson?), let's assume he's elite on defense too. you still have melo getting lit up and durant running into malone/robinson screens all day.

but to answer this premise... I just might put robinson on LBJ, with malone providing help because tyson chandler is not a threat. or you could put the DT's best defender on LBJ (pippen by a nose... lol) and put robinson on durant.

dude, they aren't that big, everyone knows that any pro athlete who played prior to the 21st century just isn't that strong, or fit, or athletic. we're talking the 21st century, it's superior by defintion. also, they use camera tricks in those photos. #cmonman

--------------------

and to reply to the notion someone posted last night that duke mike would find a coaching answer to the matchup problems, I humbly submit that chuck daly might have come up with a few counters of his own.

READ MJ'S REPLY TO KOBE FFS. He said, and he's right, that the DT's superior BB IQ would more than compensate for the supposed athleticism advantage. he also noted that most of the DT was in their athletic prime. (you guys know that's age 27, right?)

We all know that everyone on that 92 team was on steroids, especially Jordan. How should we take that into account?

the same way you account for the designer PEDs that the '12 team is taking.

lol at over half these posts. mainly mj not cracking the starting lineup on a top 5 nba team today and drob not being athletic. i am getting trolled so bad

Why are you mentioning Voulgaris? trainwreckog isn't Haralabob, that's coltranedog, but trainwreck is the guy who said that Isiah Thomas is better than Chris Paul.

11 future Hall of Famers..... /thread

Why does that really matter?

You could easily form a team of:

Lebron
Wade
KG
Duncan
Kobe
Durant
Dwight
Allen
Pierce
Billups
Cp3
Kidd

That'd would be 12 likely HOFers. Obviously Billups is close but everyone else is either a lock or close to lock. Does that mean this team, in 2012, would be better than let's say:

Cp3
Wade
Lebron
Love
Dwight

Durant
Rose
Deron Williams
Bynum
Bryant
KG

Would the first team, currently, be better than the latter in 2012? I doubt it. But obviously Bynum, Love, and maybe even Deron aren't lock HOFers.

Thing is, 11 HOFers is misleading because you can't tell how many HOFers are on this years team. At least 3, possibly as high as 9-10 (don't think Chandler and Iggy make HOF, but everyone else at least has a shot).

Not all the players on the 1992 were lock HOFers either.

Mullin I'm sure was not lock in 1992. 4 all nba teams and only 4 all star teams at the time. The big reason I think he is a HOFer is he was part of this team. his metrics are ULTRA weak for the HOF--BBref has his HOF probability at 13.2% yet he is in.

Ewing was again very close and probably a lock but I doubt 100%.

Pippen definitely was not a lock in 1992.

People continue to remember what they want to remember and nostalgia kicks in and they forget things. In 1992, Pippen was on 2 all-star teams and 1 all nba team. Yeah, lock my ass.

Robinson was a 3 time all-star and 3 time all-nba player.

The only 100% locks at the time were Magic, Bird and MJ. Ewing, Clyde, Barkley were very close to HOF locks at that time. Stockton, Malone, Pippen, Robinson, Mullin all needed the dream team + the rest of their careers (most 8-10 more years) to shore up their HOF bids. I love how everyone thinks that everyone was lock or close to lock at the time.

The current team has the following 100% locks: Lebron, Kobe. Durant, Cp3 are pretty damn close. Harden, RWB, Love, Melo, Deron have things to prove to be considered HOF level. Chandler has little shot. Who knows about Davis.

If the current team had Wade, Dwight--you'd have 2 more pretty much locks. Bosh has a good shot as well due to his situation.

yes karl malone and his 26ppg 11rpg 52% fg % over 7 seasons at the time was not close to a lock.

I think it matters quite a bit what ruleset the game is played under.

Hey trainwreck, for all your Puerto Rico and Greece pictures, I think you might have forgotten that the Dream Team also lost... to a bunch of college kids. So maybe you should chill on that argument a little bit. In a one game sample, stuff happens.

Also, pretty sure the Dream Teamers said their one weakness was for quick PGs. Hmmm, do you think maybe Russell Westbrook and Chris Paul might tear them up defensively as well as say Bobby Hurley?

Chuck Daley supposedly lost that game on purpose. Supposedly for motivational purposes. I'm not disagreeing that using a one game sample is ******ed just saying. The 1992 team supposedly beat that same group of college kids by 100 the next day.

Allegedly.

Karl was closer than let's say Pippen at the time. Karl had 5 all-star games and 5 all nba at the time and was only 28 at the time. He got his 2 MVPs later and had a long and stellar career afterwardss.

Along with the fact that this was just a scrimmage whereas the other two were competitive games. But yes, Chuck Daley purposefully did this by limiting Jordan's time and making poor substitutions. Also, you know the college kids were going to play at the top of their games. The Dream Team obviously just took it easy.

Hell, the Dream Team themselves could've lost just to make the college kids happy for a day and then bury them the next to show they weren't trying.

The dream team played in an era where offenses didn't have to deal with advanced scouting and, more importantly, they were protected vs most current defensive schemes due to illegal defense rules.

The pre-2001-02 illegal defense rules really make the game so much easier on the offense. The NBA was dominated by post players up until that point. The foundation of NBA offense didn't radically change because of AND1 tapes and because it wasn't cool. It just is much harder to play offense when teams can run pseudo-zones, much less full zone defense like you can under FIBA rules.

The 1992 team probably isn't smarter or more fundamentally sound. In fact, they were protected on offense and most couldn't shoot the ball as well as the 2012 team.

How dominant do you think someone like Bynum would be today if made fronting the post completely ineffective, you couldn't fake double teams, you couldn't crash down or cross the lane to deny post entry passes off the ball, rather you had to basically declare they you were playing him 1 on 1 in the post or send a full double team, no other options.

Yeah, that sounds like a lot of the exaggerating myth-making fish stories that come out a decade after the fact. I'm sure that Daley was trying more to play everyone even minutes than set a rotation like they desperately needed to win the game, but I certainly don't believe he lost on purpose, and I'm sure the "100-point" win the next day was more like 40 or 50.

nvmd

Is there anything like this for the Dream Team. I have been trying for two days to figure out how many minutes total Stockton played in the 1992 Olympics and have yet to see a set of stats that included minutes played.

a coach cannot lose a game, specially not with that roster, he could have played his worst possible 5 for 40 minutes and it still wouldn't matter

you're gonna have to look at the original boxscores from the newspapers they were published in in 1992. ofc I don't know of a paper that won't charge you to view 20-year old issues. given his 11 points and 8 assists in 4 games, the answer is probably not much.