The 2024 Olympic Games are almost here, and one of Team USA’s most-fascinating medal chances come in men’s basketball. A renewed, committed roster is looking to assert itself on the world stage, all in an attempt to prove that the United States is still the dominant force in basketball.
The best American ballers the NBA has to offer are heading to Paris where they’ll face the most diverse, difficult competition the sport has ever seen. Dozens of NBA players are on Olympic rosters around the world, with the global influence on the sport being on full display — whereas in 1992 there were only five international players that The Dream Team faced.
No longer a case of one or two legit players, and a bunch of locals on international teams — Canada, for instance, is a major medal threat boasting the likes of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jamal Murray, R.J. Barrett, Dillon Brooks, and Lu Dort (just to name a few).
This got us thinking: If this is the best team the USA had to offer, and this is about to be the best basketball competition in Olympic history, then where does the 2024 Paris team rank against the three prior teams lauded as legends of the sport? This includes the 1992 Barcelona “Dream Team,” widely hailed as the greatest basketball team ever assembled, the 2008 Beijing team who won gold, and the 2012 London team that boasted some of the greatest players of the modern era in their prime.
The roster and identity of the 2024 Paris team
When people speak to the strength of Team USA at these games it’s largely a product of extreme depth. Past iterations of the U.S. Olympic team have always had the best players in the world, but when you get past the starting five the drop off felt pronounced.
This year the paradigm is largely flipped on its head. The reigning MVP Nikola Jokic is playing for Serbia, runner up Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is on Team Canada, and the league’s top scorer Luka Doncic narrowly missed the games all together when Slovenia was eliminated.
Team USA have been trying a variety of rotations ahead of Paris, but right now it feels like Steve Kerr is going to kick things off with the following starters.
PG: Steph Curry
SG: Jrue Holiday
SF: LeBron James
PF: Kevin Durant
C: Joel Embiid
The big surprise here is running Holiday over putting in someone like Anthony Edwards or Jayson Tatum in the lineup. This is a pretty smart group though, that offers plenty of perimeter shooting, midrange scoring, and defense both in the paint from Embiid and on ball from Holiday.
In turn this means the USA can roll out a staggering second unit which would legitimately be a medal contender in its own right: Tyrese Haliburton, Devin Booker, Anthony Edwards, Jayson Tatum and Anthony Davis — and that’s still leaving Bam Adebayo and defensive specialist Derrick White on the bench.
Considering there is a lot of NBA competition in these Olympic games it actually makes it easier to project Team USA’s impact using Basketball Reference’s Box Score Plus/Minus (BPM). BPM is a basketball metric that uses box score statistics to estimate a player’s contribution to a team while they are on the court. This metric assumes a dead-average NBA starter finishes the season at 0.0, with the highest being a +10 or more, which represents a peak season from a legendary talent.
Average BPM of the 2024 Paris starters: +5.88 (All-NBA caliber)
Average BPM of the 2024 Paris bench: +4.23 (All-Star consideration)
Combined BPM: +10.11
We’re left with a team that is strong all the way down the roster, with a very small talent drop off between the starters and the bench. This is an incredibly well balanced team.
2012 London team
This was a simply mind-numbing team from a talent standpoint. The roster for London was littered with modern NBA legends, all of whom were playing in their peak. The starting lineup for the gold medal winning game vs. Spain would be on par with the 1992 Dream Team, if not for a lack of talent at center — which was this team’s achilles heel.
PG: Chris Paul
SG: Kobe Bryant
SF: LeBron James
PF: Kevin Durant
C: Tyson Chandler
The core players off the bench were Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Love, Russell Westbrook, and Deron Williams.
Average BPM of the 2012 London starters: +5.88 (All-NBA caliber)
Average BPM of the 2012 London bench: +3.2 (Good NBA starter)
Combined BPM: +9.08
Stunningly, the 2012 teams comes out dead-even in starting talent with the 2024 Paris squad, which is astonishing considering we had peak LeBron, Kobe, and CP3 in the starting lineup. However, we can see that the current Olympic squad is significantly better off the bench with its top rotation.
The London team’s bench had a lot of really brilliant players, but Harden, Russ, and Anthony Davis hadn’t reached their peaks yet — so it was early promise, rather than established production.
2008 Beijing team
This was a really fascinating team. Four years before London we had LeBron just entering the peak of his career, along with Melo, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh from the same class. Kobe was a little younger (and better), while Jason Kidd was playing point guard.
PG: Jason Kidd
SG: Kobe Bryant
SF: LeBron James
PF: Carmelo Anthony
C: Dwight Howard
The core players off the bench were Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade, Deron Williams, Chris Bosh, and Tayshaun Prince.
Average BPM of the 2008 Beijing starters: +5.1 (All-Star Consideration)
Average BPM of the 2008 Beijing bench: +3.9 (Good NBA starter)
Combined BPM: +9.0
This team was about on par with the 2012 London squad in BPA. What they lost from the starters they got back in better bench depth — but overall we still see a team that lags behind the talent and depth of 2024. Naturally this all brings us to …
1992 Barcelona “Dream Team”
What’s left to say about The Dream Team? This roster completely altered the path of international basketball with the United States sending a team made up of the greatest players of all time. They were the fabric of the sport, and played during an era that propelled the NBA in the stratosphere of popularity internationally.
The core of this squad was Michael Jordan at his peak, alongside herculean performances from Charles Barkley, Karl Malone and Chris Mullin. What made the ‘92 Dream Team so unique is that they consistently put out different starting lineups throughout the games, but we do have their most consistent five to go off.
PG: Magic Johnson
SG: Michael Jordan
SF: Charles Barkley
PF: Karl Malone
C: Patrick Ewing
The core players off the bench were David Robinson, Larry Bird, Clyde Drexler and Scottie Pippen. So let’s see how this team stacked up.
Average BPM of the 1992 Barcelona starters: +7.12 (All-NBA season)
Average BPM of the 1992 Barcelona bench: +6.0 (All-NBA caliber)
Combined BPM: +13.12
This really isn’t a surprise. The 1992 Dream Team finish first among the greatest Team USAs in history both in BPM of their starters and BPM of their bench. This team is legendary for a reason, even considering most people forget that this was at the very tail end of Larry Bird’s career when he struggled to walk around the floor, and Magic Johnson was getting past his prime.
Still this team forged the way to become yellowed posters on the wall of every barber shop to this day, because they represented American exceptionalism in the most notable team sport of the games.
So, who wins all this?
That’s where this gets really tricky, neigh impossible to really equate. If the 2024 team in Paris manages to win gold they will have beaten a much, much better field than the Dream Team ever needed to face — and did it with a team BPM that’s at least in the same zip code as the legends in Barcelona.
If we were to create a head-to-head fantasy matchup it’s really tough to decide. The thing about the 1992 Dream Team is that they were not good at shooting threes. Jordan went 4-of-19 from beyond the arc in the games, Team USA bigs didn’t attempt a single shot from three, and the best deep shooter on the 1992 team was Chris Mullin.
Basketball has changed to such a profound degree that it’s difficult to imagine The Dream Team bigs being able to mitigate the stretch play of the 2024 team. Conversely, outside of Joel Embiid, LeBron, and Bam Adebayo it’s tough to imagine anyone else on the ‘24 team being able to contest with the physical defense that was allowed in the early 90s.
When the dust settles we’ll likely see this 2024 Paris team as being the modern iteration of The Dream Team. Perhaps not as revered or nostalgic, but if they can win gold against this field they will have earned the right to be mentioned alongside the 1992 team as one of the greatest of all time. At the very least they will be substantially better than anything the United States have sent to the games since Barcelona.
