Thursday, February 9th, 2012 at 4:12 pm  |  104 responses

Big O: West, Chamberlain, Russell, Baylor Would Beat ’92 Dream Team


The media loves to ask old-timers how they’d fare against today’s players, and the legends (competitive as ever, still) never seem to give an inch. Oscar Robertson tells the Miami Herald that his contemporaries from the 1960s and 1970s would wipe the floor with arguably the greatest basketball team ever assembled: “On the quality of play in today’s NBA: ‘I think the athletes have gotten better, but that doesn’t make you a better basketball player. The only play most teams run is the high pick with the center. Is that really basketball? There are no reverses, no backdoors, double-screens, weakside cuts from the strong side. They don’t have any of that anymore.’ On the celebrated 1992 Dream Team, which won gold at the Barcelona Olympics: ‘If we would have put myself and Jerry [West] in the backcourt, with Wilt [Chamberlain] and Bill [Russell] inside with Elgin Baylor, they never would have beat us. How could they?’”

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  • Justin G.

    Chief, perhaps YOU need to do some research. I’ll say it in Caps Lock because you obviously missed out nbk pointing it out already. HAKEEM DIDN’T PLAY ON THE ’92 DREAM TEAM!!!

  • jimmer

    Yeah, Hakeem didn’t get U.S citizenship til ’95. Sorry dude.

  • http://facebook.com/tronjohnson Chief

    That is correct I was more incensed about the Hakeem and Robinson nah line then if he was actually on the team. I feel that Hakeem is undervalued by the current generation of NBA fans as he was one of the best big men ever.

  • http://www.facebook.com/agrapsas Andreas Grapsas

    totally disagree…first of all it’s so stupid and unfair to compare playersfrom so diffenrent eras based on athletisim.i am 100% sure that athletic(in their era-60′s)players like wilt,russell,elgin,oscar,thurmond,bellamy,gus johnson…would be like todays lebron,dwight,kobe…with today’s training technic,nutriens-steroids…wilt was 280-300 lb and lift more than 500 lb while dwight doe n’t more than 400,wilt also was champion when was young in hihg jumping.there are also videos in youtube that show there were many thletic players back then.u should also consider that nba mesure players barefoot until 80′s,that means osacr would be 6.6 today!as concern 3pt line,all it’s a matter of training,players with the talent of oscar,west,baylor were great shooters to.in general i think every great player of each era would dominate every era with the conditions of that era.

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