When American sprinter Noah Lyles criticized the National Basketball Association (NBA) for calling their annual season winners “World Champions” back in August of 2023, he couldn’t possibly have fathomed what would happen next.
Almost right away, dozens of NBA players and pundits took to social media in a united sneer at Lyles. But an angry tweet wasn’t enough for LeBron James. In the following weeks, James announced his commitment to Team USA for the 2024 Paris Olympics and began recruiting the greatest players of this generation to join him.
The lineup that took the court this summer for Team USA was littered with legends, including LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Devin Booker, and Joel Embiid. Their eventual gold medal victory was inevitable.
So here’s the question: Was this the greatest basketball team of all time?
Yes, and it’s not even close.
Just a play-by-play of this team sounds too good to be true. A chase-down block by James is rebounded by Embiid, who outlets the ball to Jrue Holiday. Holiday kicks the ball cross-court to Curry for a 3-pointer to put Team USA up 9 against Germany in the second quarter. When else have you heard such a culmination of greatness?
The only real competition this team has for G.O.A.T. status is the 1992 Olympic “Dream Team” led by a young Michael Jordan and veterans Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. After all, their average margin of victory of 43.8 points per game remains the highest of all time.
Only looking at margin of victory, however, doesn’t take into account how much international competition has improved over the years. In 1992, Team USA faced only eight international NBA players on their path to a gold medal. In this year’s Olympics, they faced a staggering 61 international NBA players, including reigning MVP Nikola Jokić and MVP runner-up, Shai Gileous-Alexander.
Best put by @619Slipk in a YouTube comment, “The ‘92 team was like if they sent FBI agents to catch a guy stealing canned beans at the local market.”
On top of that, when adding up all the major NBA accolades of both teams, the 2024 team comes out on top with a combined 114 NBA awards. That beats out the Dream Team’s 109.
Honestly, though, greatness is subjective. What matters most is the story, and the storylines of this year’s team are enough to make a grown man cry.
Five words: LeBron James and Stephen Curry. After a decade-long rivalry, seeing them compete together on the world’s biggest stage was to die for. The two NBA legends gave us some pretty special moments in Paris.
Just as outstanding was the basketball played between the charismatic and young Anthony Edwards and his idol, Kevin Durant. Can you imagine catching a lob from your hero for a slam dunk in the gold medal game of the Olympics? Edwards sure can. Watching the two play and celebrate together was poetry.
The content of the games themselves was also unreal. A narrow semifinal victory over Serbia included an emotional double-digit fourth-quarter comeback, and pyrotechnics by Curry secured the gold medal victory over France.
Call it recency bias, call it blasphemy–I don’t care. The six games of basketball we watched this summer were mind-blowingly incredible. It was pure greatness.
We just witnessed the greatest basketball team of all time.
