Kobe Bryant caught a firestorm of flack after he admitted in a recent interview that he thought that the 2012 Olympic team could beat the brakes off of the 1992 Dream Team. Now, LeBron James has added in his two cents and agrees with his teammate Kobe, that they would beat the team that made headlines 20 years ago as the best team to ever play together. Check out what Lebron said below:
“Kobe is a teammate of mine, and I support him,” said LeBron. “As a competitor, you never want to say that you will lose, no matter who you’re going against.The ’92 Dream Team paved the way for all of us. The set a standard in the Olympics and basketball in general that’s very high. As a competitor and as a fan of those guys you try to live up to that. You try to be better than them so people start talking about your team, the 2012 team. So we understand what they did for our game, but we also are big time competitors as well. So if we had an opportunity to play them, in a game, we feel like we would win too.”
The 1992 team was the first U.S. Basketball team to consist of active NBA players, and was made up of 11 future Hall of Famers, including Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley, Scottie Pippen, Karl Malone, David Robinson, John Stockton, Clyde Drexler, Chris Mullin, and legendary coach, Chuck Daly.
The 2012 USA Basketball team is made up of Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Durant, Tyson Chandler, Anthony Davis, James Harden, Andre Iguodala, Kevin Love, Chris Paul, Russell Westbrook, Deron Williams, and coach, Mike Krzvzewski.
So, which squad do you think would win if there was a way to time travel and pit these two teams against each other?
Make sure you check out the USA Basketball team’s first Olympic game against France tomorrow (July 29).