The 1992 Dream Team is, by all accounts, the greatest sports team ever assembled.

The ’92 USA Basketball Men’s National Team, made up of Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Karl Malone, Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley, Scottie Pippen, and of course, Michael Jordan, went undefeated en route to an Olympic gold medal in Barcelona, leaving an indelible mark on both basketball and the Olympics.

They were so dominant that they won by an average margin of 44 points, scored more than 100 points in every game (averaging 117.3 points per game) and never called a single timeout.

They also only faced 13 NBA players during that eight-game winning stretch.

MJ’s star-studded squad tipped the tournament off against basketball minnows Angola, who had no NBA stars among their ranks and were so in awe of the icons on the other side of the court that they asked for photos beforehand.

Their second game of Group A came against Croatia, who they also met in the gold medal game.

The Croatians were actually well ahead of their time and had five NBA players on their roster.

Drazen Petrovic, Toni Kukoc, Zan Tabak, Stojko Vrankovic and Dino Radja all played some part against the Americans over the two games in ’92.

Bird, Magic and Jordan’s third group game was against Germany, where they faced NBA pair Uwe Blab and Detlef Schrempf.

Team USA’s final group game in 1992 was against Brazil where NBA duo Joao Vianna and Rolando Ferreira featured.

5

5

Next opponents were host nation Spain, who had no NBA players while quarter-final foes Puerto Rico had two players in The Association – Jose Ortiz and Ramon Rivas.

The United States met Lithuania in the semi-finals, who also had an NBA pairing of their own – Arvydas Sabonis and Sarunas Marciulionis.

Compare that to 2024 and there will reportedly be around 30 non-American NBA players competing in the Paris Olympics.

Victor Wembanyama (France), Josh Giddey (Australia), Jamal Murray and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (Canada), Dennis Schroder (Germany), Rui Hachimura (Japan), Bol Bol (South Sudan) and Nikola Jokic (Serbia) are some of the international names looking to spoil the US party in the French capital.

Simply, basketball wasn’t the global sport in 1992 that it is today.

In fact, Steve Kerr’s Olympic basketball team has faced 22 NBA players in just five exhibition games – the latest of which came against South Sudan and Germany at the 02 Arena in London – nine more than MJ faced in eight games at the ’92 Olympics.

Last season, NBA rosters featured a record 125 international players from 40 different countries.

Five of the last six MVPs winners were born overseas, while the other, Joel Embiid, was born in Cameroon and only became a US citizen in 2022.

5

5

It’s night and day to ’92, when there were fewer than 20 international players in the NBA, and the cream of the crop were players like Schrempf and Kukoc. 

They were excellent players for their time but the likes of Luka Doncic and Giannis Antetokounmpo have taken the game to new heights.

Kerr knows the international basketball scene in 2024 is one of parity and competitiveness and thinks it’s a major difference to the era Jordan played in.

“I think from the standpoint of career achievement, this team is probably as decorated as any since the ’92 Dream Team,” Kerr told a room of reporters including talkSPORT.

“The difference is in 1992, the world wasn’t anywhere close to as good as it is now in terms of basketball popularity and globalisation of the game.”

“Obviously, Serbia and Croatia had been separated at that time, but prior to that, Yugoslavia would’ve been the biggest challenge for the ’92 team, so all those players were separated when the Soviet Union was broken apart,” he went on.

“That USA team was never threatened, so the difference is that yes, we have a star-studded team filled with Hall of Famers, but we have an altogether different challenge with great teams like Serbia, France, Germany, and Spain, assuming Spain qualifies.

“This is an entirely different competition than it was in 1992.”