BTW, just bc I couldn't sleep, here's the rotation I came up with for 2012 team vs. Dream Team:

(Repeats each half)
PG: Paul 5 minutes, Williams 2 minutes, Paul 5 minutes, Williams 3 minutes, Paul 5 minutes
SG: James 8 minutes, Westbrook 4 minutes, James 8 minutes
SF: Durant 5 minutes, Bryant 3 minutes, Iguodala 4 minutes, Bryant 3 minutes, Durant 5 minutes
PF: Love 5 minutes, Durant 3 minutes, James 2 minutes, Durant 5 minutes, Love 5 minutes
C: Chandler 5 minutes, Love 3 minutes, Chandler 4 minutes, Love 3 minutes, Chandler 5 minutes

That way, when LeBron's either resting or playing the 4 while Durant's resting, we have Iggy in the game to guard Jordan, and Westbrook to create offense. Kobe takes the rest of the backup wing minutes mainly just for his shooting ability. Other than that, pretty self-explanatory. D-Will runs the offense when CP3 rests, we slide Love down to the 5 when Chandler's on the bench, and we slide Durant down to the 4 when Chandler or Love's on the bench. Minutes come out to the following:

Durant 36 MPG
James 36 MPG
Love 32 MPG
Paul 30 MPG
Chandler 28 MPG
Bryant 12 MPG
Williams 10 MPG
Westbrook 8 MPG
Iguodala 8 MPG

ur klove trolling is getting out of hand

also trainwreckdog is the GOAT, lollll at people still responding seriously to him.

I think the final score is something like...

1992 - 140
2012 - 18



lol this fantasy even being a 4 page thread.

Krzyzewski was an assistant coach for the DT and he has stated on multiple occasions Daly threw the game.


(not directed at anyone in particular) Dream Team is obviously a pretty solid favorite here. Huge edge for them in team chemistry and personalities/competitiveness/WIM whatever you want to call it. Athleticism is probably close to a wash but I'd give the edge to 1992 due to DRob/Ewing vs. Chandler/Love/Davis (or Griffin). The gradual increase of athleticism over time in the general population has virtually no impact here as we're talking about the top 10'ish players in the world. No reason to think there's an appreciable difference in genetics between the top 10 players when you're only 20 years apart -- it could very easily be superior in the '92 team and either way it's so close as to not matter.

As another poster noted the difference in average weight b/w the two teams is a whopping 2 tenths of a pound, and average height in the NBA is actually shorter now. We can give the edge in training/nutrition/pharmacology to 2012 but training was obviously pretty advanced at the relevant level in 1992 so it's a lot closer than many 15 year old basketball fans would have you believe, and the difference is nowhere near big enough to make up for the massive difference in quality of centers between the two teams and competitiveness/WIM.

In summary, 2012 > 1992 is approximately as lol as LBJ=MJ. Or at least close enough to note that the difference in lol is negligible. The dude saying MJ wouldn't even start on a top 5 NBA team today should be the poster child for these sort by birthyear debates. Dream Team wins a best of 7 in 5 games, maybe 6 if Chuck Daly decides to throw the first game so the Dream Team takes Tyson Chandler seriously and the kiddies watching stay interested.

What do people think of Spains chances vs USA?

I think it probably comes down to Calderon, he is gonna have to not turn the ball over and really play well vs the tenacious ball pressure of Russ/CP3.

Not sure what Spain will go with for big rotation since they got 3 of the best bigs in the NBA. Maybe both Gasol bros at the same time? Marc a way better player now than he was in '08.

I'd give Spain like 1/5, 1/6 chance of winning the game. Probably the equivalent of a 14 beating a 3 in NCAA tourney.

you cannot throw a game with that team, even if he tried that only helps the pro 2012 argument

What exactly do you mean by "you cannot throw a game with that team"? And how does whatever you mean by that only help the pro 2012 argument?

You can't throw a game as a coach when your 12th best player is still the best player on the court, it doesn't matter how many minutes you give any player you're still a huge favorite.
The whole argument for 92 is depth (11hofers, etc), well if by playing a non optimal rotation that team is suddenly expected to lose to a college team, that argument seems pretty weak.

How can you not slot it in the classic 5/12 slot there? Perfectly primed for an upset.

This doesn't make any sense. You can obviously make coaching decisions that directly impact your probability of winning a given game, no matter how good your players are. This is the definition of throwing a game (from the coaches' perspective), short of telling your players to lay down. And even if their 12th player is better than the other team's best player, that doesn't change the fact that MJ >>> most of the other players on the DT and limiting his minutes to prove a point impacts your chances of winning.

And it goes way beyond not playing an "optimal rotation". Daly wasn't making ANY adjustments at all according to first hand sources.

And even if it were "impossible" for a coach on a superior team to throw a game, saying that its a point in favor of the pro 2012 argument is a complete non sequitur.

yes, but how big the impact is obviously depends on your roster and the opposition. In that game, if the team was as unbeatable as some itt will have you believe, it should have close to 0 impact on win probability.

When you're playing a team consisting of elite college basketball players that will be great NBA players within a couple years and future all-stars you can obviously still lose if your strategy and teamwork are nonexistent.

I would imagine if other posters are saying the DT was close to unbeatable they meant with the head coach not intentionally trying to lose the game.

Daly - a bigger factor on the DT than Jordan apparently

Its unfortunate that a post this good only got one response.

The more I think about it the more I feel I want the 92 team to win for nostalgic reasons. I guess they have better depth but there biggest advantage is at center and Chandler is very talented defensively. I am not sure Robinson is going to dominate him.

The 2012 team shoots the 3 better and they have a couple huge match-up problems for the 92 team in Durant and CP3.

2012>1992

I really think the '12ers are ignoring this, or maybe thinking that a zone/coach mike would take care of it. The DT would pound the ball down low until the '12ers stopped it and/or chandler got into foul trouble. if for some reason chandler doesn't play major minutes (foul trouble, offensive liability), the '12ers get killed in the post.

I posted the 3FG chart solely to illustrate that the DT shot the 3 pretty well. I know the defense from '12 would be better, but everyone's saying the DT just sucked at it. and as I pointed out, bird/jordan took 46 shots and only hit 13 of them, way below expectation.

the real question is what was going on 10-15 years ago when the current stars of the league were being instructed.

stewie's post was awesome. I'd love to see him compare/contrast his post with the effect of the rules changes pertaining to perimeter play. I think that perimeter play has been "freed up" to the same extent that post play has been restricted, if not more.

I'm sure he's right wrt the league in general, but not sure that those changes would have the same effect in this hypothetical, since we're talking about post players who were used to being doubled -- in other words, being able to threaten a double-team from more directions wouldn't preclude the DT from feeding the post anyway. nowadays guys in the post are in "oh ****" trouble if they get doubled. the DTers wouldn't be nearly as bothered by it.

The argument looks good on the surface, but empirical evidence on how much it actually hurt offenses tells a different story. The rule change was implemented prior to the 2001 - 2002 season.

Points per game averaged over all games in 2000 - 2001 = 94.8
PPG averaged over all games in 2001 - 2002 = 95.5

Field goal percentage also increased from .443 to .445. Scoring averages and FG% actually went up, so even if the rule change was beneficial to defense and detrimental to scoring the amount was negligible based on the statistics. The impact clearly isn't anywhere near as large as Stewie would lead you to believe.

The no hand-checking and related rules had a much bigger impact on scoring and it's pretty obvious how heavily rules like that would affect perimeter shooting, i.e. the difference in ability between the two teams in 3 point shooting is not as big as the statistics posted by Iggy would have you believe. Also, the numbers he posted on the DT starting five 3 point %'s were abnormally low in 1990-1991. Small sample size. Compare those numbers to their career percentages, you'll get a much clearer picture of their real shooting ability. This plus the above mentioned rule differences and I'm not so sure the 2012 team is that much superior in the 3 point shooting department.

That evidence doesn't prove much. Most teams did not implement the zone nor really knew how to use it at the time.

You think NBA coaches did not know how to use zone defense? It wasn't a brand new invention, literally everyone who played or coached in the NBA had used it at some point in their careers. It's not difficult to learn how to play pseudo-zone when you did it for the first 15 years of your basketball career.

If you guys still think the zone defense rule change had a bigger impact than the no hand-checking rule, especially after I showed the numbers, I don't know what to say.

How much is zone used today in the NBA? You think after 1 season it was perfected? Give me a ****ing break. I don't know if the zone works or doesn't workwell in the NBA. Point is your "empirical" evidence that it doesn't work--it blows. Basically what you showed after 1 season, not much changed. Doesn't prove anything either way. Zone is hardly used nowadays in the NBA, but in the international game especially Olympics / World Championships its much more readily used.

So... you're saying the numbers showing an increase in scoring and FG% as a response to someone saying zone defense hurt scoring is ****ty evidence? wut?

And if zone is hardly used nowadays in the NBA what does that say about its usefulness in preventing opposing teams from scoring?

I'm not saying anything. You are saying what you pointed out proved something. I am point out what you proved what little to nothing. First of all, I'm not sure if the data is stastically significant. Next of all, it was the first season after the rules came into place. Things don't change over night. Do you have any idea what % of possessions were guarded in zone in 2001-2002? I have no idea. I'm betting its really low. The other thing is there are so many other things going on from year to year in the NBA that you can't really garner anything from the stats you posted. It's not like scoring went from 90 to 110 when zone was implemented or the opposite from 90 to 70. Basically not much happened. I don't know why not much happened. It could be luck, it could be anything. My bet is after 1 year, zone wasn't implemented very much or very well. You act like teams have implemented the zone well in the NBA over the years. The Mavs are the only team of note that I remember using it and using it well. I could be wrong. With that being said, the international game is not the exact game as the NBA. You have proved little on either side whether it would change the game significantly. My point is you really haven't shown much at all.

No offense, but do you know how statistics work? We're talking about 1,189 game samples here.

Whats the standard deviation? I know how statistics work. You didn't prove anything. There is variance from year to year in scoring. You didn't tell me if there were changes in the number of possessions from year to year. You didn't tell me anything. My point continues is you didn't prove a single thing. You for some reason think you did.

If you look at the years, you'll notice that the average Orat/Drat decreased from 104.6 to 103.6 but the number of possessions also increased from 90.7 to 91 with your scoring increase. My point still stands that you can't take anyway anything from those stats. Zone hasn't really been implemented into the game that much. While in the international game its much more popular.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baske...nba/52657598/1

As you can see less than 10% of all possessions are guarded by zone in the NBA.

Also in the international game you can do a true zone while in the NBA, 3 seconds in the key without guarding a player is a technical foul. True zone is much more effective than the fake zone we currently see in the NBA. I don't have the % of possessions that teams in FIBA ball use zone but I'm pretty sure its higher and has a bigger impact than you are making it out to be. Obviously, I can't prove it though so its just my opinion.