Ashworth: Does Redeem Team compare?
The Dream Team had more talent and bigger margins of victory, but the Redeem Team faced a tougher challenge.
By Ben Ashworth (Contact)
Monday, August 25th, 2008
The Redeem team probably does not care about comparisons. They are halfway across the world, sporting smiles the size of the large gold medals plastered upon their chests. This Redeem Team is finally enjoying standing up straight after having a large monkey on its backs for the last three years. However, back home, the comparisons cannot help but be echoed by most basketball enthusiasts.
Is the Redeem Team better than the Dream Team? The answer is quite simple: probably not. One-fifth of the NBA’s All-Time Top 50 players contributed to the outright shellacking of their hapless opponents at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.
But alter that question to ask, what feat was more impressive? And you may find a more diverse set of answers.
The world is getting better at basketball. This much is obvious. Teams other than the United States are stacked with NBA ability. Dirk Nowitzki led the German team, former number one pick Andrew Bogut played center for the surprising Australians, and the Spanish team contained a bevy of talent, including NBA All-Star Pau Gasol. Compare that to the competition that the 1992 Dream Team faced. Toni “The Croatian Sensation” Kukoc and Detlef “I don’t have a nickname, but I do have a cool name” Schrempf of Germany were two of the only notable players who represented their countries.
This time, Spain had not only certifiable NBA talent, but they’re young enough to be favorites to return to the medal rounds in 2012. The Gasol brothers are both big men with a variety of low post moves, Rudy Fernandez was draining three-pointers in Kobe Bryant’s face, and Juan Carlos Navarro was making floaters look as easy as passing KU’s bowling class. The Redeem Team was still able to look in the face of this upgraded competition and find a way to win at all costs.
The pressure on the United States to win this year was enough to make lesser men not want to get out of bed in the morning. The term “win or go home” has become one of the most clichéd phrases in sports, up there with “nobody believed we could do it.” But the Redeem Team truly was in a “win or go home” situation. Anything less than a gold medal would have meant a complete failure. Anything less than a gold would have meant that after three years of hard work, the future of American basketball in international play would have once again gone into disarray.
The Americans were fed up with losing. We all watched as a Carlos Arroyo-led Puerto Rico squad beat us by 19 in 2004, followed by a disappointing loss to Manu Ginobili and the Argentines in the semifinals. Carlos Arroyo was a backup point guard on the Utah Jazz. Meanwhile, Tim Duncan and Allen Iverson were NBA superstars. It boggled the mind.
The 2008 American team not only had to prove to itself that it was a different team than those in years past, but it also had to prove it to the entire country. With the weight of the United States on its shoulders, it was able to take the gold.
In 1992, opponents were awed just to play the Dream Team. In 2008, opponents knew they could win and gave everything they had every night. In the end, the result was the same. The Redeem Team was able to fight doubts, pressure and increased difficulty to become the world champion and that achievement trumps the Dream Team’s domination.
- Edited by Arthur Hur
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