With the 2024 Olympics fast approaching, men’s basketball offers one of the most enticing medal opportunities for the U.S. team, with a new and eager roster looking to assert their presence on the world stage and prove that the U.S. is still a dominant force in basketball.
The NBA’s best American basketball players will head to Paris to compete in the most diverse and toughest field in the sport’s history. Dozens of NBA players have appeared on Olympic teams around the world, fully demonstrating the sport’s global influence. However, in 1992 the Dream Team faced off against only five international players.
It’s no longer a case of one or two real players and a ton of local players on the international team – Canada, for example, is a serious threat to win medals with players like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jamal Murray, RJ Barrett, Dillon Brooks and Lou Dort (just to name a few).
So we thought: If this is the best the United States has to offer, and this will be the greatest basketball tournament in Olympic history, how does the Paris 2024 team rank against three previous teams hailed as the legends of the sport? These include the 1992 Barcelona “Dream Team,” widely hailed as the greatest basketball team of all time, the gold medal-winning 2008 Beijing team, and the 2012 London team that featured some of the best modern players in their prime.
Paris 2024 team roster and identity
When people talk about the U.S. team’s strength in these tournaments, it’s mostly down to depth. Past U.S. Olympic teams have always had the best players in the world, but once you get beyond the starting five, the dropoff is noticeable.
This year, the paradigm was flipped in a big way: reigning MVP Nikola Jokic played for Serbia, runner-up Shai Gilgeous-Alexander played for Canada and the league’s leading scorer, Luka Doncic, narrowly missed the full game as Slovenia was eliminated.
Team USA has been trying out various rotations in preparation for Paris, but so far feel Manager Steve Kerr plans to start the game with the following starting pitchers:
PG: Stephen Curry
SG: Jrue Holiday
Science fiction: LeBron James
PF: Kevin Durant
C: Joel Embiid
The big surprise here is the decision to use Holiday instead of inserting someone like Anthony Edwards or Jayson Tatum into the lineup, but this group is very smart, with plenty of perimeter shooting, mid-range scoring and defense with both Embiid in the paint and Holiday with the ball.
That means the U.S. could field a formidable second unit of Tyrese Haliburton, Devin Booker, Anthony Edwards, Jayson Tatum and Anthony Davis that could be a medal contender in its own right. still They left Bam Adebayo and defensive specialist Derrick White on the bench.
Predicting Team USA’s impact is actually easier than it seems, given the number of NBA games at the Olympics. Basketball Reference Box Score Plus/Minus (BPMBPM is a basketball metric that uses box score statistics to estimate how well a player contributes to his team while on the court. The metric assumes that the average NBA starter finishes the season with a BPM of 0.0, with highs of +10 or higher representing the peak season of a legendary talent.
Average BPM for starters in Paris in 2024: +5.88 (All-NBA level)
2024 Paris bench average BPM: +4.23 (All-Star considerations)
Total BPM: +10.11
Our team is strong across the entire roster with very little difference in talent between starters and reserve players. This is an incredibly balanced team.
London 2012 Team
Talent-wise, this team was simply mind-boggling. The London roster was filled with modern NBA legends playing at the peak of their game. The starting lineup for the gold medal-winning game against Spain would have been on par with the 1992 Dream Team if not for the lack of center talent, which was this team’s biggest weakness.
PG: Chris Paul
SG: Kobe Bryant
Science fiction: LeBron James
PF: Kevin Durant
C: Tyson Chandler
Key players off the bench were Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Love, Russell Westbrook and Deron Williams.
Average BPM for 2012 London starters: +5.88 (All-NBA level)
2012 London bench average BPM: +3.2 (Excellent for an NBA starter)
Total BPM: +9.08
Surprisingly, the 2012 team was comparable in starting talent to the 2024 Paris Saint-Germain squad, considering they had LeBron, Kobe and CP3 in the starting lineup at their peak, but the current Olympians squad has a much better bench lineup at the top of the rotation.
That London team had a lot of really good players on the bench, but Harden, Russell and Anthony Davis hadn’t yet reached their peak, meaning they were more of a prospect than an established force.
2008 Beijing Team
It was a fascinating team. Four years before the London Games, LeBron was just hitting the peak of his career, they had Melo, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in the same class, Kobe was a bit younger (and better), and Jason Kidd was the point guard.
PG: Jason Kidd
SG: Kobe Bryant
Science fiction: LeBron James
PF: Carmelo Anthony
C: Dwight Howard
Key players off the bench were Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade, Deron Williams, Chris Bosh and Tayshaun Prince.
2008 Beijing starter average BPM: +5.1 (All-Star candidate)
2008 Beijing bench average BPM: +3.9 (best NBA starter)
Total BPM: +9.0
This team was roughly on par with the 2012 London team in the BPA, and while they made up for the loss of starters with added bench depth, overall we see this as a team that still trails in talent and depth in 2024. Naturally, all of this leads us to…
1992 Barcelona “Dream Team”
What else is there to say about the Dream Team? This lineup completely changed the course of international basketball as the United States fielded a team made up of the greatest players of all time. They were the foundation of the sport and played during an era when the NBA was catapulting its popularity internationally into the stratosphere.
The core of this team was Michael Jordan at the peak of his power, and they were joined by superhuman performances from Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, and Chris Mullin. What made the ’92 Dream Team so unique was that they always fielded different starting lineups throughout the game, but there was one guy who was the most consistent: the five.
PG: Magic Johnson
SG: Michael Jordan
Science fiction: Charles Barkley
PF: Karl Malone
C: Patrick Ewing
The key players off the bench were David Robinson, Larry Bird, Clyde Drexler, and Scottie Pippen. Let’s take a look at how well this team performed.
Average BPM of 1992 Barcelona starters: +7.12 (All NBA seasons)
1992 Barcelona bench average BPM: +6.0 (All-NBA level)
Total BPM: +13.12
This isn’t a surprise at all: The 1992 Dream Team ranks #1 among the best Team USA of all time in both starter BPM and bench BPM. Even if most people forget that this was towards the end of Larry Bird’s career, he was struggling to walk the court, and Magic Johnson was past his prime, there’s a reason this team is legendary.
And yet this team embodied American exceptionalism in the Olympics’ most famous team sport, paving the way for what remains to this day as a yellowing poster on every barbershop wall.
So who will win?
This is Really It’s hard, and in fact, next to impossible to truly equal, so if the Paris 2024 team wins gold, they’ll have beaten a much better field than the Dream Team has ever faced — and at least done it with a team in the same zip code as those Barcelona legends.
When trying to create a head-to-head fantasy matchup, it’s really hard to decide. The thing about the 1992 Dream Team is that they weren’t very good at three-point shooting. Jordan made just 4 of 19 three-point shots in the game, none of Team USA’s big men attempted a single three-point shot, and the best deep shooter on the 1992 team was Chris Mullin.
Basketball has changed so much that it’s hard to imagine the Dream Team’s big men being able to mitigate the stretch play of the 2024 team. Conversely, outside of Joel Embiid, LeBron and Bam Adebayo, it’s hard to imagine anyone else on the 2024 team being able to counter the kind of physical defenses allowed in the early ’90s.
When the dust settles, this Paris 2024 team will be seen as a modern-day Dream Team. They may not be revered or fondly remembered, but if they can win a gold medal in this field, they will qualify to be talked about as one of the greatest teams of all time, alongside the 1992 team — or at the very least, significantly better than any team the U.S. has sent to the Olympics since Barcelona.
