Dream Team vs. Redeem Team: You've Got to be Kidding Me

"Redeem Team proves worthy of Dream Team comparison" That's the headline of an espn.com article today by hoops scribe Chris Sheridan (who has covered basketball at the Olympics since 1996), and it seems to be the running theme on the interweb today: everybody wants to compare the 1992 Dream Team to the current "Redeem Team" that just have a great run to win Olympic gold.

So my question is: why? There IS no comparison to the Dream Team, and in trying to compare the current guys, all you're going to do is diminish what they've done. Why not just appreciate what LeBron and Kobe and the rest did in restoring basketball glory for America. But no, this is the age of the internet and 24 hour news and sports networks and, of course, blogs, so you do what you can to get ratings and readers. Today, apparently that means making a comparison where there isn't one. ESPN certainly weren't the only ones to do it. The folks over at si.com gave it a whirl too, as the wiley vet Jack McCallum (who's one of the best and most knowledgable hoops writers out there) pulled rank and took the Dream Team side, while poor Chris Mannix got stuck doing the impossible- trying to argue that the Redeem Team even belonged on the same court. Foxsports.com has their take on it, and so on and so forth. Read any or all of these and the thing you notice is nobody really tries that hard to say the Redeem Team is anywhere near as good as the Dream Team (well except Mannix, but I'm guessing he drew the short straw s it wasn't really his choice). Sheridan's article gives a side-by-side comparison of how the teams did in the Olympics, and as you can see, it's not close.

Well me being me, I decided we needed to see some more stats to prove just how ridiculous an argument this is, and thanks to the folks at basketball-reference.com, we can do that. So we took the stats for each player (well excluding Christian Laettner because he sucks and he was the token white guy pretty boy and he never played and it was a joke he was even on the team. And also because he sucks) in the season leading into the Olympics they played in (1991-92 for the Dream Teamers, 2007-08 for the current squad). We'll use points per game and John Hollinger's Player Efficiency Rating or PER (which according to John "The PER sums up all of a player's positive accomplishments, subtracts the negative accomplishments, and returns a per-minute rating of a player's performance." For a really "mathy"-yep I just made up the word mathy. Deal with it- explanation go here) for everybody, and then a few position specific stats. Should be fun. Should be really one-sided. Just like how the game would be.

DREAM TEAM


Starting Lineup
G- Magic
G- MJ
F- Bird
F- Barkley
C- Ewing

Crunchtime Lineup
G- Magic
G- MJ
F- Pippen
F- Barkley
C- Robinson (look at the numbers- he's clearly better than Ewing)

POINT GUARDS
Magic Johnson (stats from 90-91 season because he didn't play in 91-92), age 32, 19.4 PTS, 12.5 AST, 7.0 REB, 1.3 STL, 25.1 PER
John Stockton, age 29, 15.8 PTS, 13.7 AST, 3.0 STL, 40.7% 3pt, 22.8 PER

SHOOTING GUARDS
Michael Jordan, age 28, 30.1 PTS, 6.1 AST, 2.3 STL, 6.4 REB, 27.7 PER
Clyde Drexler, age 29, 25 PTS, 6.7 AST, 6.6 REB, 1.8 STL, 23.6 PER

SMALL FORWARDS
Larry Bird, age 35, 20.2 PPG, 9.6 REB, 6.8 AST, 40.6% 3pt, 21 PER
Scottie Pippen, age 26, 21 PTS, 7.7 REB, 7.0 AST, 1.9 STL, 21.5 PER
Chris Mullin, age 28, 25.6 PTS, 5.6 REB, 3.5 AST, 2.1 STL, 19.9 PER

POWER FORWARDS
Charles Barkley, age 28, 23.1 PTS, 11.1 REB, 4.1 AST, 24.5 PER
Karl Malone, age 28, 28.0 PTS, 11.2 REB, 3.0 AST, 25.4 PER

CENTERS
Patrick Ewing, age 29, 24 PTS, 11.2 REB, 3.0 BLK, 22.8 PER
David Robinson, age 26, 23.2 PTS, 12.2 REB, 4.5 BLK, 2.3 STL, 27.5 PER


REDEEM TEAM


Starting Lineup
G- Kidd
G- Kobe
F- BronBron
F- Melo
C- Howard

Crunchtime Lineup
G- Paul
G- Wade
F- Kobe
F- Global Icon
C- Bosh

POINT GUARDS
Jason Kidd, age 34, 10.8 PTS, 10.1 AST, 1.7 STL, 7.5 REB, 16.7 PER
Chris Paul, age 22, 21.1 PTS, 11.6 AST, 2.7 STL, 3.2 REB, 28.3 PER
Deron Williams, age 23, 18.8 PTS, 10.5 AST, 1.1 STL, 3.0 REB, 20.8 PER

SHOOTING GUARDS
Kobe Bryant, age 29, 28.3 PTS, 5.4 AST, 6.4 REB, 1.8 STL, 24.2 PER
Dwyane Wade, age 26, 24.6 PTS, 6.9 AST, 3.3 REB, 1.7 STL, 21.5 PER
Michael Redd, age 28, 22.7 PTS, 3.4 AST, 4.3 REB, 18.8 PER

SMALL FORWARDS
LeBron James, age 23, 30.0 PTS, 7.9 REB, 7.2 AST, 1.8 STL, 29.1 PER
Carmelo Anthony, age 23, 25.7 PTS, 7.4 REB, 3.4 AST, 1.3 STL, 21.1 PER
Tayshaun Prince, age 27, 13.2 PTS, 4.9 REB, 3.3 AST, 0.5 STL, 15.6 PER

POWER FORWARD
Chris Bosh, age 23, 22.3 PTS, 8.7 REB, 1.0 BLK, 2.6 AST, 23.8 PER
Carlos Boozer, age 26, 21.1 PTS, 10.4 REB, 1.2 STL, 2.9 AST, 21.9 PER

CENTER
Dwight Howard, age 22, 20.7 PTS, 14.2 REB, 2.1 BLK, 0.9 STL, 22.9 PER


BREAKING IT DOWN:
POINT GUARDS:
All the Dream Team had to offer were the best point guards of all-time. No big deal really. While Magic had sat out the 91-92 season because he had the HIV virus (remember when that was a big deal? I'm not trying to make light of the AIDS virus, but in 1992 this was like 120000 times more scary than terrorism. Now? Do we ever hear anything about AIDS in the news anymore? Weird. Good work science for handling that one. Makes you wonder what we'll look back on 16 years from now and think "That was news? Really?"), he was still damn good in the Olympics, while Stockton was hitting his prime in all its short-short glory.
Redeem Team offers two good young points who are good and are going to be great, and one Jason Kidd who should not be on this team. Don't get me wrong, Kidd'll go down as one of the five best points ever (he wouldn't be in MY five best, mind you, but for the national media? Oh fo sho!), but to call him a shell of his former self would be a black mark on shells everywhere. There's at least 5 other American point guards who are better than he is right now.
ADVANTAGE: Dream Team in a landslide

SHOOTING GUARDS:
The two funnest things about this game: 1) watching MJ vs Kobe. 2)Watching all 12 guys on the Dream Team try to guard LeBron at different portions of the game and watching 0.00% have success (hell he might be able to score on all 12 at once. Have I mentioned he's now 6'9 260? And possibly still growing? Just checking). The MJ vs Kobe battle would be one of the few sports moments we'd dub as epic that would actually BE epic! You have to think that nothing would please the 1992 Michael Jordan more than out and out destroying Kobe Bryant. I mean making him cry for his mommy kind of destruction. And America in general would rejoice at watching Kobe be humbled (except of course Kobe wouldn't be humbled and would make excuses or fake an injury and then give another awkward Kobe post-game interview in his best MJ-voice on why he didn't get schooled). It's just crazy to think that if Kobe is the second best player on this team (after Kobe's stink bomb in the Finals, we're all in agreeance he cannot be the league's best player right now, correct? We'll give that one to BronBron? Agreed? Good), that means he's a damn good player, and yet MJ is just so much better in every single aspect. It's astounding really. It just blew my mind.

Oh sure there's other good players here and good matchups, like Dwyane Wade (every time I see the spelling of "Dwyane" I'm angered that nobody at the hospital in Chicago where he was born had the stones to tell his mom "Look, that's not how it's spelled. I don't care if you're trying to be original or different, that's just plain stupid to spell it that way. Spell it correctly or get a different name." Really, would it have been that hard to do that?) vs Clyde Drexler. Or Michael Redd vs...um, yeah not sure who Michael Redd wouldn't get worked over by. Maybe have him play one of the women's Olympic players (by the way, can we stop calling the women's team the Dream Team? Nobody dreams of women's basketball. Nobody. Not even women's basketball players). By the way, just thought this was a good time to remind Bucks fans that there's only another three years and $51 million to go before you're free of Michael Redd! Let the countdown begin!
ADVANTAGE: Dream Team

SMALL FORWARDS
So LeBron is pretty good. He has the highest PER of anybody here, and has stats just as gaudy as MJ- only he's still just 23. You're fooling yourself if you wouldn't take him over a 35 year old Bird, or Pippen or Mullin in the primes. Heck, other than Jordan, is there anyone else listed here you'd rather take than LeBron? Me neither. After him, clearly Bird and Pippen are better than Melo, and maybe even Mullin too. Like Mike Redd and Jason Kidd, I'm not sure why Tayshaun is even on the team. So who then gets the advantage? The Dream Team has more depth and quality players, so I guess it comes down to this: who would you rather have? LeBron and Melo, or Bird, Pippen AND Mullin?
ADVANTAGE: Redeem Team (come on like you didn't make the same decision!)

POWER FORWARDS
We'll keep these next two positions short and sweet since there's really not much to say: hmmmm would you rather have two first ballot hall-of-famers, or two all-star level post players? Yes? You in the back? The hall-of-famers? Correct!
ADVANTAGE: Dream Team (if the point guards was a landslide, what's this, an avalanche?)

CENTERS
More than any other area, you can see how much the game has changed in the last 16 years at center. Bosh played a lot of time here during the Olympics, but I'd still call him a forward, yet I think the most telling thing is that USA brought just 3 guys out of their 12 who would be considered low-post players, and one of them, Boozer, hardly ever played. Not only that, but Bosh and Howard were rarely on the floor together. For the Dream Team, you always had either Ewing or Robinson on the floor, along with Barkley, and/or Malone. Another thing that makes it tough on the Redeemers is that Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, and Amare Stoudamire all decided to stay home. Had those three made the trip I think this very well could have tipped things in the Redeemers' favor, but since we're just talking about the Olympic teams themselves and not who the best NBA players were at the time, you have to leave TD, KG, and Amare out. So really, this isn't a fair comparison considering how the Redeem Team chose their team, but hey, this hasn't really been a fair comparison to begin with, now has it?
ADVANTAGE: Dream Team


So there you have it, it's the Dream Team in a runaway. While I think this would be a very entertaining game, I think the Dream Team would win by at least 20. I do think the "Crunchtime" lineups listed about would create some very interesting matchups, but the problem is I don't think we'd ever get to Crunchtime with much to play for. So there you have it, trying to say the Redeem Team could beat the Dream Team is pointless, baseless, and is just plain wrong. But hey, it won't stop all the other websites from trying to tell you otherwise.