Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley weren’t fond of Kobe Bryant saying his 2012 Olympic squad would beat the 1992 Dream Team.
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The 1992 Dream Team is perhaps the greatest collection of talent the basketball has ever seen. Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird on the same roster is grounds for being the greatest trio of all time. On top of those three, guys like John Stockton, Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley, amongst other Hall of Famers were brought into the fold.
Kobe Bryant on the other hand, didn’t have too shabby of a squad on his hands either in both 2008 and 2012. The 2012 Olympic squad had guys like Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Durant, Dwight Howard, and of course, LeBron James.
The Dream Team was the first to score a 100 points in each and every one of their games in Barcelona and had an absurd average margin of victory of 43.8. Charles Barkley led the team in scoring average with 18 points per game while Michael Jordan recorded the most assists in an Olympic game at the time with 12.
Kobe Bryant believed he could best Michael Jordan and the Dream Team.
The ‘Redeem Team’, as they would dub themselves in 2012, steamrolled through their competition, winning every single one of their 8 games with an average ppg of 115.5. Kobe Bryant was asked about his Redeem Team and how it would match up against Michael Jordan and his Dream Team to which he said:
“It would be a tough one, but I think we would pull it out. People who think we can’t beat that team for one game are crazy, to sit there and say we can’t, is ludicrous. We can beat them one time. They are the better team the question was, ‘Can we beat them?’ Yes we can. Of course we can”
Charles Barkley and Michael Jordan scoffed at the notion that Bryant thought this, with the former saying, “For him to compare those two teams is not one of the smarter things he could have done.”
