These guys would have made a great team, too bad they never tried... wait a second.
NBA legends like Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan have grilled LeBron James for his decision to join Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh on the new-look Miami Heat. They have said that they would never dream of playing together, because of their strong desire to beat each other. Many people have gone into depth about how all of those legends were blessed to play alongside other legends, thereby making their arguments invalid. However, the picture above made me think they are hypocrites on a much grander scale than even I gave them credit for.
Let me get this straight old-timers. When the United States finally lost an Olympic game fair and square in 1988 in route to a bronze medal, the country lobbied to allow professionals to play in the Olympic games. The USA then proceeded to assemble a "Dream Team" that beat the opposition by 43.8 points per game. If Miami has committed a sin against the spirit of the NBA, what kind of crime did USA basketball pull against the sanctity of the Olympic games, which were meant to be an amateur competition and still remains an under-21 competition in soccer, as an example.
America's desire to pile up easy gold medals at the Olympic games has compromised the competitive balance at the Olympics games as well as weakened FIBA's World Championships to a point where it has no chance of comparing to soccer's World Cup. If creating an NBA Dream Team was a punk move, as Charles Barkley has coined it, then the original Dream Team are the biggest punks the game has ever seen.
Thankfully, the world embraced that 1992 Olympic team in spite of it being "unfair" to the competition. Likewise, this Heat team will be embraced by the world, because fans outside of this country want to see beautiful basketball. No matter what anybody says, Miami still has a lot of work ahead of them if they want to win a championship. They have absolutely zero chance of winning every game in blow out fashion.
If and when "The Heatles" do embarrass a team like the 1992 Olympic team did, they will be crushing a city's fan base and not an entire nation. LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade simply took the Dream Team concept and transferred it to a domestic league, but somehow the original Dream Teamers take offense? Pay them no attention, they are so caught up in their own glory that they are unable to maintain perspective.
Was the change to form the dream team a decision made by the players or the commissioner?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure exactly where the change came from specifically. I doubt the players started it, but the point I am trying to make is that when they decided to play together and beat the world by 40+ ppg, they were out to prove that the USA was way better than everyone else.
ReplyDeleteLBJ/Wade/Bosh got together and are going to blow teams out in order to prove that the class of 2003 are better than everyone else.
Jordan, Magic and Bird knew any one of them could have led team USA to the glory, but they shared the stage and put on a show and did in style, proving that star players are even better when they play together within a team concept.
Why is it such a crime for the same kind of behavior to happen within the context of a league? Why can't they look at the positives? It seems whatever they did in their days was good for the game, but whatever the youngsters do is a disgrace to the game... even if they are really just taking one of the greatest things to happen on a basketball court "The Dream Team" and trying to translate that to the NBA.
The legends are too stuck on the past to see the future... well, except Pat Riley.