Legendary NCAA coach Mike Krzyzewski shared his view on which was the better Olympic team.
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Mike Krzyzewski is a college basketball coach. He’s been the boys’ head basketball coach at Duke since 1980. During his term as head coach at Duke, he’s led the Blue Devils to 35 NCAA berths in 36 years. He has taken his program to postseason play in 36 of his 39 years at Duke.
He has the most wins among active coaches in men’s NCAA Tournament play with a 97–30 record for a .764 winning percentage. Mike’s Duke teams have won 15 ACC Championships, been to 12 Final Fours, and won five NCAA tournament National Championships.
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The legendary Duke coach made an appearance on JJ Redick’s podcast ‘The Old Man and the Three’. Redick brought up a topic quite different from all the LeBron and Jordan topics we see today.
He asked Coach Krzyzewski whether Michael Jordan’s Dream Team or LeBron James’ Redeem team will win in a 7 game series, given all players are in their prime.
“The 1992 Dream team, no doubt”: Coach Mike Krzyzewski
Mike Krzyzewski was an assistant coach for the 1992 Dream team. He also was the USA basketball Head Coach for the 2008 Redeem team, so he knows both of these teams well. Mike says the ’92 Dream Team would absolutely dominate in the series and went on to say:
“In their prime you’re talking about 11 Hall of Famers and the greatest team,” he started.
“That was the first time the NBA came to the Olympics and there was a visionary moment by [then league commissioner] David Stern and the NBA. It was an atomic bomb for the global world of basketball.”
“Those guys were rock stars there. They were such gentlemen. They represented us so damn well. The NBA of the ’80’s built the NBA of who you are today. We didn’t have a culture for USA Basketball. They brought their culture to USA Basketball for that moment, and it didn’t stay after that. It was a moment in time.”
While the Redeem team brought back glory to the USA basketball team, who won Bronze in the 2004 Olympics, they just wouldn’t match up to the level of the ’92 Dream team.
The 1992 Dream team was made up of 11 Hall Of Famers, who in their prime were unstoppable forces on the basketball court. Moreover, it was the impact of the Dream team off the court that really made them stand out. Michael Jordan and co. were on a mission to put basketball on the world map, and they succeeded in doing that by displaying other worldly skills.
Basketball became more of a global sport after that Olympics and thus in terms of overall impact and stature, the ‘Dream Team’ stands way ahead of the ‘Redeem team’
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