On This Day In NBA History: August 8 - The "Dream Team" Wins Olympic Gold
Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, David Robinson, Scottie Pippen, John Stockton, Karl Malone, Clyde Drexler, Patrick Ewing and Charles Barkley are some of the greatest players in NBA history.
The one thing they all share in common, besides being in the Hall of Fame, is that they won the gold medal in the 1992 Olympics for the United States of America.
On this day in 1992, USA defeated Croatia 177-85 in the gold medal game at the 1992 Olympics, forever immortalizing themselves as the “Dream Team.”
The main reason why the Dream Team is such a big deal, besides the fact that they won a gold medal in the Olympics and were comprised of some of the best basketball players in the world, is because they were the first USA Olympic Men’s Basketball Team featuring NBA talents.
Prior to 1992, professional athletes in all sports were not allowed to partake in the Olympics Games due to the reason that this competition between countries around the world was supposed to happen with “amateur” athletes.
When this restriction was lifted and professional athletes were allowed to play, basketball was one of the first sports heavily influenced by this change of the rules.
Sending the best-of-the-best from the NBA to Barcelona marked a historic point in the USA Olympic Men’s Basketball Team history.
Since winning gold in the 1992 Olympics, the United States has won six of the last seven gold medals at the Summer Olympics, claiming the bronze medal in 2004 after being shocked by Argentina in the Semifinals. This team led by LeBron James, Tim Duncan and Allen Iverson went on to beat Lithuania in the Bronze Medal Match.
The Dream Team continues to reign as the most dominant basketball team ever assembled in the world, as they defeated their opponents in Barcelona by an average of 44 points per game en route to their gold medal.
This team was inducted collectively into the U.S. Olympics Hall of Fame in 2009, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2010 and the FIBA Hall of Fame in 2017.
Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, David Robinson, Scottie Pippen, John Stockton, Karl Malone, Clyde Drexler, Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley, Chris Mullin and Christian Laettner made up the Dream Team’s 12-man roster and all of them except for Laettner have been inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame individually. As for the coaching staff of Chuck Daly, Mike Krzyzewski, P.J. Carlesimo and Lenny Wilkens, all of them except for Carlesimo are in the Hall of Fame.
You cannot talk about basketball at the Olympic Games without mentioning the Dream Team and while this was an actual team that was assembled, it was also a philosophy for how franchises in all sports began to assemble their rosters.
Teams in every sport nowadays look to pair All-Stars and the best-of-the-best with one another in search of a title and we have seen this a lot in the NBA through the years.
The Dream Team was a very special group of men that helped revolutionized and usher in a new era for the United States of America at the Olympic Games.
