Photo courtesy of the NBA/Getty Images
Since the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, the International Olympic Committee has allowed the participation of professional basketball players. That summer, the United States rolled out the “Dream Team,” which included Larry Bird, John Stockton, Clyde Drexler and Michael Jordan among a long list of other Hall of Famers. The Dream Team steamrolled the competition to a gold medal as they defeated opponents by an average of 44 points.
Since that time, the U.S. has won gold in four of five Olympics, save a third-place finish in Athens, Greece in 2004. But now the U.S. men’s national team is back on top and blowing competition out of the water with far superior talent to the rest of the world, to the point that I’m bored watching games after 10 minutes. This makes me wonder if the IOC should consider changing the rule back to allow only amateurs play basketball in the Olympics.
Currently, the U.S. roster is filled completely with NBA talent, which is obvious since there is a massive pool of talented players to choose from. Even with the U.S. star-power depleted (no LeBron James, Stephen Curry or Russell Westbrook) this year due to various concerns in Brazil, the Americans continue to blowout the competition. The rest of the world has the ability to field NBA players, but some countries still struggle to field a competitive group with the players playing for their native country.
France and Spain have well-documented success in international play as both squads may boast four to five NBA-caliber players in their starting lineup in any given year. However, other nations (Venezuela with Greivis Vasquez comes to mind) will struggle to get more than one or two NBA players on their entire roster.
By taking professionals out of the Olympics and creating rosters full of amateurs, the playing field would level out and games may be more entertaining to watch. Think a condensed, international March Madness.
However, UVU head basketball coach Mark Pope points to the fact that we have the opportunity to witness the top basketball players in the world play together on one team while the rest of the world works to catch up to the domestic talent pool.
“I think it’s probably, over the next several Olympics, it’s going to get closer and closer and closer,” said Pope. “But right now it’s a fun watch because you get to see all these guys on the same team, but I think they walk in as the heavy, heavy favorites … These ‘Dream Team’ series of teams have just been legendary, so I think that’s fun for fans to watch. But it’s also fun to watch really, really competitive games and I think those will probably come sooner rather than later.”
Despite the 40-plus-point blowouts, there is still entertainment value to go along with the team the U.S. trots out every four years. Fans are able to truly appreciate the product that the NBA puts on the floor every season compared to the rest of the world.
As nice as it would be to have more competitive games with college basketball players, let’s be honest, we Americans just really like to win.
