The 1992 U.S. men’s basketball team is considered one of the best sports teams ever assembled. Led by Michael Jordan alongside Charles Barkley, Scottie Pippen, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, the U.S. were dominant in Barcelona as they went undefeated on their way to gold.
The Team USA of these Games is also stacked, drawing comparisons to the legendary 1992 squad. LeBron James will appear at his first Olympics since 2012. With him are a host of other NBA superstars, such as Kevin Durant, who could win a record fourth gold medal in Paris, and Steph Curry, who will make his long-awaited Olympic debut.
The rest of the world will be chasing down the Americans who are once again the favorites for gold, but with basketball going increasingly global, there are many more international NBA stars competing against Team USA than there were in 1992.
France took silver in Tokyo and will be able to call upon last year’s first overall draft pick, Victor Wembanyama, and NBA veterans Rudy Gibert and Evan Fournier. Serbia’s Nikola Jokic and Greece’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, who between them have won the NBA MVP award in five of the last six seasons, are also at the Games — Team USA’s opener is against Jokic’s Serbia today.
“Our game is global now, man. So all these guys are huge stars in their own ways,” Durant said ahead of the Games. “They’re all the best of the best in the world.”
Indeed if Team USA are to win a fifth straight gold medal at these Olympics, they are going to have to be at the top of their game. The team are fresh from two exhibition games in London, and they were far from perfect.
They narrowly escaped a huge upset against South Sudan before coming from behind at the end of the third quarter to beat Germany in their final warm-up game. Those games proved a timely reminder that gold in Paris is not a given and that the rest of the world is snapping at the U.S.’s heels.
