Sabonis was the greatest international player of all time. His skillset changed the way the olympic basketball game was played in the USA.

Had he played in the NBA from 18 years of age and up, he would be a top 5 center in the history of the game.
At age 31, with bad knees, and back, he walked onto a Portland team, and was the leading scorer and rebounder in the playoffs against a championship UTAH squad.

Because I've learned from this thread that international competition has changed little in the last 20 years and heck might have even been tougher in 1992 since Lithuania had 2 nba players. So it is safe to assume, by the Matt r theorem, that the 1988 competition was roughly equivalent to 1992.


And a bunch of college kids ****ing obliterated them.

And no I can't say why I think the DT is a little better. It isn't obvious to me I just sorta feel that way. Certainly not confident about it. And becoming less confident any time a proDT person posts itt.

Oh sorry, should have gone straight to the "just sorta feel that way" argument. Clearly that is a rock solid premise.

Thanks for all the data you have provided.

This would be a scathing comeback if I were, ya know, arguing in favor of the Dream Team itt. But I'm not because I dont have any good arguments for them and wouldn't expect anyone to agree with me


Not that that has stopped any of the other tards who, to my chagrin, agree with me.

Instead you choose to misrepresent arguments in defense of a position you already agree with. Do you also enjoy banging your head against a wall?

For example:

1) The Lithuania having 2 nba players argument was in direct response to another poster who claimed the '92 team played against no pro hacks. Would seem relevant that there were in fact more pros on the '92 team than the '12 team. Again not a pro '92 argument, but rather a retort to a pro '12 one.

2) It was obvious Matt R was just trolling with his graphs as they were in reference to a pro '12 poster using a Rajon Rondo game of HORSE as evidence of the '12 team being better.

Also, your '88 vs '92 competition argument might have some validity if you actually knew how those teams stacked up against each other. Do you even know how many of those teams played in both Olympics and of those teams how many of them had a large amount of players return? And of the players who did return did they improve or not over the 4 years?

Yeah that's some pretty elite fact twisting.

I posted the HORSE video when there was a discussion on whether shooting 45% from 3 was sustainable or not. The point was that when you are as wide open as the 2012 team was on their attempts, anyone can sustain that kind of percentage, especially with the shorter FIBA line.

I never posted "Rondo made that many 3s in HORSE, therefore the 2012 is better than the Dream Team" because even though the conclusion is correct, that would be some BADUU level thinking.

Sorry, I think I joined the thread after that so must have got the context wrong. Apologies.

Nonetheless it is pretty obvious that Matt R was trolling with his graphs and analysis. Which makes it funny that Vhawk is using that to mock the '92 side.

I don't see why. We know how good these players are by having watched them play against the best competition in the world in over 82+ games a year for multiple seasons.

We could be having basically the same conversation in a universe where pros still don't play in the Olympics.

Looking at margin of victory or individual stats against inferior competition in a handful of games doesn't tell us much of anything compared to analyzing the players and how they'd play against each other.

Prime Jordan isn't going to struggle because he didn't shoot very well in the Olympics. The 1988 team doesn't come close to matching up with any of the professional teams just because they had a great MOV in the Olympics.

The graph was a joke pulled from this post by Iggy:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...postcount=1531

It wasnt about 45% but 56% being sustainable

And he only got to 56% bc of one outlier 8/10 game yet people say he should hit 56% in the long run even tho that would take him from a .400 efg on jumpers in NBA to a .840 efg in Olympic 3s

And the fact that rondo shoots better in horse than from ft line in games is evidence that game shooting (pressure, winded, not able to get in a groove of lots of shots quickly from same area, etc) lowers your fg even if wide open when compared to Shoot Arounds


I still maintain that people itt dont actually believe that kd would shoot 56% from 3 in the long run against these Olympic teams

No, it wasnt. It was to support the position that the 2012 team did not face considerably more difficult competition than the DT did.

Which is an absurd, ridiculous position, and about par for the course for the pro-DT crowd.

And yes, I do enjoy arguing with and refuting weak positions, even when they happen to support a conclusion I agree with. Its called intellectual honesty.
My comment about his theorem has nothing to do with any graphs.
I dont understand. I know that competition in general did not increase in any meaningful sense between 1988 and 1992. This has been established to a certainty by Matt R. So is your argument that, in 1988, the international basketball community was just...throwing the games? Intentionally fielding weak teams?

IOW, what exactly is the alternative here? How come a bunch of college kids were able to just destroy everyone (except the Soviets, which dismantled themselves)?

Durant's ability to maintain 56% with this line, on this team, depends solely on his shot selection

Agreed. Once he gets to 56% and stops taking any more shots, he can maintain his % indefinitely.

LOL. I made the point. I know what it was in response to.

But beyond that, there is no evidence the Lithuanian team in 2012 was better than the 1992 team. If you can provide some go right ahead.

*****For the record, that only applies to the Lithuanian team*****

I must have missed this. Where was this established? Not denying that is the case btw.

EDIT: I think I found the theorem. Which, by the way, you called fallacious. If it is the one I'm thinking about then the following is happening: you are arguing against a position you agree with using a position you think is fallacious to support your argument. Well done.

He is arguing against a line of reasoning being used to support 1992 > 2012, i.e. foreign competition is not materially better now than 1988/1992.

Not that even if this were true (it probably is), does it change any conclusion. Nor does it apply a model for measuring foreign competition, such as how does it weigh a superior Soviet team in 1988 with the others.

Yeah, I got that part. It just seems that A) he is choosing the wrong points to do so and B) is using an argument he himself called fallacious in defense of his position (which actually isn't his position). All of this under the guise of fighting for intellectual honesty. You can cut the irony with a knife.

If ifs and buts were candy and nuts vhawk would be right, sometimes.

This is probably the worst post in this thread. It is BADUU territory bad.

Margin of victory is basically meaningless when comparing US Olympic basketball teams.

apparently 92ers aren't familiar with the form of argument where you argue against what you believe. vhawk's point, which you all have missed because, well, how are you going to get it since it involves a modicum of subtlety, is that international competition has probably gotten better and lol @ using margin of victory in the gold medal game to make your point definitively that 2012 < 1992.

Of course the competition has gotten better. It isn't even worth debating such an obvious point. That entire debate started because some poster thought there were no NBA players on the 1992 teams. Then the thread puked AIDS for several pages because of a post that shouldn't have sparked serious debate.

For whatever reason, vhawk thinks the level of competition the teams faced is relevant to how 92 and 12 would match up head to head. The data from a handful of Olympic games is useless compared to the data from hundreds of NBA games.

Level of competition, margin of victory, and individual stats in the Olympics are all irrelevant to this discussion.

OK so I tried to read the new replies in detail but I was getting AIDS in my eyes, so I will take excerpts...

The following bit from vsquawk seems like a fair representation of this new airborne mutation of AIDS:

So how did this morph into "international competition has changed little in the last 20 years"? The claim was that the average level of talent per team in the NBA has not changed appreciably in the last 20 years. The former claim is probably wrong, while the latter is pretty obviously right. Preeeetty big difference there. Sweet try at the losing the interwebs argument switcheroo though!

The one guy talking about relative "international competition" was exclusively talking about Lithuania, not competition as a whole, so you don't have that escape route.

Also, I'm not sure if anyone even made the claim that average margin of victory was all that relevant in comparing the teams. The distribution is relevant however when we're comparing. For instance, the 1988 Olympic team won games by 44, 6, 15, 51, 67, 37, loss by 6, 30.

The Dream Team: 68, 33, 43, 44, 41, 38, 51, 32.

The 2l0l12 team: 27, 47, 83, 5, 29, 33, 26, 7

The reason the average margin of victory isn't all that relevant is that, as I mentioned earlier, it's not particularly meaningful if you beat a team by 40, 50, or 80+. All it means if you beat them by 83 and you're continuing to shoot threes is that the team could not compete with you, you're running hot with your outside shots, they have no perimeter defenders, and you're running up the score to impress the 12 year olds who think 2012 pwns all because sort by birthyear. This will skew your average way high. When you look at the distribution though, you see that the Dream Team had no chance of losing any game, the 1988 team played 2 close games while losing one in the knockout stage, and one other that was much closer than any game the DT played. And when you look at the 2012 team results you see that they almost lost to Lithuania and Spain.

Also, in case you were curious, the 1988 Olympic team did not, in fact, win the gold (or silver) medal. So there's that little thing there as well.

Yes, they did not win the gold. But they did absolutely destroy international competition. They blew out nearly every opponent and won the Bronze game in a laugher.

No, it isnt meaningless, but I agree with your general point, that result in a single game is overrated. Like the result in the 1988 USA-USSR game.

say that again?

i can ask probably 10 people from the SB forum to say hello that i'd trust with my money (hell i'd beg them) to set a better line than a random 'bookie'.

see man, i hadn't posted in this ****ing scum bucket thread until now too. now i'm a part of it forever. thanks.

and no, i don't wanna read anyone else's arguments or explain myself. hopefully in the morning i'll have forgotten i ever posted here.

how do i remove the checkmark from the forum page?

Lol we all got his point and I think most agree with that point. My only issue was with him taking pro-92 arguments completely out of context. And other than BADUU I don't think anyone thinks they can prove their point definitively.