1992 would crush 2012. Maybe if they had Howard, Wade, Bosh healthy and suiting up. But really 29 year old destroys 33 old Kobe, Pippen gives Lebron a great challenge, Barkley, Malone, Robinson and Ewing destroy the boards. And Stockton was the man, the matchup between him and CP3 would be amazing.

I think you're confusing yourself. I'm not saying implementing zone defense helps offenses. Stewie was arguing that zone defense was this huge advantage for teams defensively, and banning it somehow "protected" NBA offenses in 1992. The statistical evidence shows this is completely false. I'm not even making a positive claim here. In fact your statements about teams playing zone less than 10% of the time reinforces my point.

It's b/c the zone in the NBA isn't the same zone that you can use in international ball. Using the NBA as some sort of evidence proves little to nothing.

Zone D is effective in the international game b/c its a true zone. You have not used any stats of the use of the zone in the international game to the NBA. I'm sure you can't really compare the two nor do I have the stats. The hybrid zone used in the NBA has been proved to be largely ineffective that what the lack of use of it shows. A true zone, is an effective tool to slow teams that can't shoot down. That's the heart of it. The problem is the current zone due to rules is largely garbage in the NBA.

I do agree with some of the points that if 2012 had a healthy DRose, Howard, Wade suiting up they could really give the '92 team a run and may even be a favorite.

But then you have the obvious counter of giving the Dream Team Rodman, Olajuwon, Payton, Dumars to fill in their weaknesses instead of the old injured players and Laettner so hypothesizing about swapping out players for 2012 becomes silly.

1992 > 2012 and it's really not close.

Perhaps you should reread Stewie's post that I was responding to rather than vigorously arguing against crap I'm not even saying.

Dumars in 1992? Meh. More like LOL.

Olajuwon wasn't allowed to play for the US in 1992 b/c he wasn't a citizen.

GP in 1992 averaged 9.4 ppg. Again, we love to add in players that WOULD never had been on the team to make our point look good.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/...paytoga01.html

Rodman I could see but LOL at allowing him to be on the team at the time.

smh. Dumars and Payton I'm obviously adding for their defense since the claim is that the DT's only weakness is defending quick, penetrating point guards. Dumars and Payton on the team rather than Laettner and an injured Bird obviously completely erases that problem and 1992 dominates even more. Or Tim Hardaway if you don't understand why I would consider Dumars. I'll give you the Olajuwon point, but we don't even need Olajuwon with DRob and Ewing. Center clearly isn't a weakness. And if we're not allowing Rodman why are we magically healing injured players to play on the 2012 team? I will take a Larry Bird with a healed back please. There goes any semblance of a 3 point advantage.

Lol Harden for good measure.

I know why you are adding them. Point would be they would never be added at that time. Payton wasn't nearly the player he was a couple of years later. He hadn't made an all-star team nor an all defensive team in 1992 much less all nba player like everyone else on the team. his first good/great season was 2 years later. Yet, we deserve his talents on the team? It'd be like saying Avery Bradley deserves to be on the team b/c 20 years from now he was a HOF player who played great defense on the wing.

I'm not saying we aren't allowed to add Rodman. The point was he was insane and not really a player that would represent the country. Much like MWP won't ever be on a team even in his prime.

Dumars I guess I could see, but he wasn't nearly that great in the time and I think really overrated as a player.

People LOL at Laettner, but at the time, no one knew he was going to be a bust. 20 years from now, there could be people LOLing (or whatever they will do in 2032) at Anthony Davis being on the team, or they could be wondering why Davis, the guy who turned out to be the GOAT, hardly got any playing time.

Payton would never be added at that time yet we have Christian Laettner on the team? He was the 2nd overall pick and a defensive stud even if he wasn't very successful on offense yet. The point is we're swapping out players now since I'm allowing the Howard, DRose, Wade arguments so I'm adding players to fill in gaps.

Joe Dumars made 4 all-defensive first teams by 1993 and made 3 all-nba (second and third) teams by 1993. lol at him being not "nearly that great" at the time.

Also, I'll take Isiah Thomas and a dose of 20 year old Shaq please. Leave Rodman off if you insist.

hgh is at worst the 3rd best player in the world right now, no one else mentioned has nearly the same impact

DRob in '92 > HGH in '12, and if poor defense vs. quick penetrating shooting guards is some kind of kryptonite for the '92 team then the addition of some combination of GP/Dumars/Hardaway over players that didn't even play has way more impact than adding HGH.

Then you have 20 year old Shaq vs. a declining DWade and a healthy Bird shooting 40% from the 3 vs. a healthy DRose. Still not close.

Laettner was picked b/c there was always 1 college player on the team. Obviously there is always room to kick that college player off.

Again, you are using what they did in the future as indication of what you would do in 1992. This is the dream team and you are picking a guy that yes was highly hyped out of college who was largely a medicore plaeyr at the tiem b/c we can project him forward. Again, knowing what you would know in 1991 or 1992, there is little chance he would ever make the team while the other guys on your list at least make some sense. GP had a 13 per and a TS% of 47% in his first 2 years in the pros. He didn't make all-nba teams and had WS/48 of under 0.08 which is pretty bad for someone who made the team at the time. It's called cherry picking.

I know Dumars eventually made an world Championship--I'm just not infatuated with what he brings.

Leaving Howard off the team as FH mentioned is leaving off a top 3 player on the current team. I'm pretty sure you can only argue you are adjusting the bottom end of the DT1 while this years team is missing 3 of its top 8 players. That's why I think 1992 team would win easily. Against a 2012 fully stocked team--things would be more interesting and that's why we are conversing it.

Sounds good. The only sport where it is possible to compare players of the present with players of the past is track and field. Today's second rate track stars are nearly as fast as the icons of the past. In the decathlon today's unknowns are far better than yesterday's heroes.
The second rate 2012 players who couldn't make this team could probably win one or two games against the 1992 team in a 7 game series.

The problem is HGH >>> Chandler. The gap in talent at center is huge for the 2012 team especially since the top 2 centers (HGH + Bynum) aren't going to the game. Yes Robinson, Ewing, etc. can be argued being better than HGH, the problem is the talent gap for the 2012 without HGH at center is a lot more exposed.

Way to be as vague as possible with your "icons from the past" statement. We're not comparing 2012 with 1950. We're comparing 1992 with 2012. Even WITH the ridiculous statistical outlier known as Usain Bolt the world record has dropped less than 3% in the past 20 years. And advances in PED's obviously have way more impact in enhancing straight line speed vs. something as nuanced as basketball ability. Hell, differences in the way tracks are built has a huge impact on speed too. Genetics will be essentially identical between 2012 and 1992. Anyone who has taken a freshman bio course should know this.

Anyway, using track and field numbers to compare 1992 Dream Team to 2012 Olympic team is strange to say the least.

"There was always 1 college player on the team"? So you're using the exactly... zero dream teams that came before 1992 as precedent for this? Shaq was in college either way.

Christ. I'm not projecting him forward. I'm taking the 9.whatever ppg Gary Payton for his defense. If you think he went from crap defense in '92 to all-world in '94 I don't know what to tell you.

This is nonsense. Again, I'm not taking him for his offense so his PER TS% WS/48 and his QB rating are all irrelevant. I'm bringing him to shut down CP3 and RWB. I also still have Dumars so whatever.

No. Choosing players to play for a team is "picking" those players. Like how every Olympic team is selected. "Cherry picking" is choosing only data points that support your case while ignoring everything else. Guess what ignoring the per game scoring statistics in 2000 - 2001 vs. 2001 - 2002 when analyzing how zone defense impacted scoring is?

You don't need to be infatuated. He's really good and an awesome defender which is exactly what I need. I don't need a second 29 year old MJ.

I'm not "adjusting the bottom end". I'm filling in the huge (according to Iggy, and some others iirc) defensive weakness of the Dream Team. Just because I'm not adding a 30 ppg scorer doesn't mean I'm not making a huge improvement to the team overall. A lot more goes into making a great team than sorting by top 12 players.

I do think it would be more interesting with HGH though, I'm just saying the "swap out players on the '12 team" argument is kind of silly.

And I'm saying the "talent gap" for quick point guard defense can just as easily be filled for the '92 team as the center "talent gap" can for the 2012 team. Plus Shaq.

a completely ridiculous discussion but the "there was always a college guy on the dream team" is hilarious

well it's not untrue, it's just that all the other guys were college guys as well. never used it before, but this seems like a good time to bust out a TTHRIC

lolllll at ewing>howard, give me a break.

the problem is that the nostalgic crew always points to how the '92 team had so much WIM and team chemistry and 'smarter basketball players' and stuff, how could a coach possibly affect a game enough to 'throw it'? shouldnt they have been able to figure out for themselves how to beat a bunch of college kids if they were so unbeatable?

Anyone that thinks the 12 team is better. What you have to realize international rules are different than NBA rules which favors the 92 team signicantly not like they needed an extra edge to begin with. Even at 36 Bird could stil play at an elite level for 10 to 12 minutes which is all he would be needed for.

I'm just quoting these because it seriously cannot be understated how far international ball has come since 1992. Everyone should probably read them again just for reference.

No, international rules favor the 2012 team a ton since the shorter 3-point line and ability to play zone make shooters much, much more valuable, and the 2012 team has way better shooters. I absolutely think the Dream Team would be a 4 or 5 point favorite under 1992 NBA rules, it's the international rules that make guys like K-Love and Durant way more valuable, and Barkley and Malone much less so. It really doesn't matter how many minutes Bird can play since he wasn't really any better than Mullin by the time 1992 rolled around.