Kobe Dreaming? Part 1:Centers of Attention

George | July 12, 2012 | 2 Comments

Kobe Bryant recently made news by saying he thought this year’s olympic squad could take on and beat the 1992 Dream Team. He also went on to say that every great player thinks he can win, why wouldn’t he say he thought they could win? Yet, the headline makers have keyed on only half of his statement. ESPN’s crawl and talk shows are riddled with the idea of these two teams facing each other. They have went as far as inputting the information into a computer with the 1992 team coming out on top just over 50% of the time.

The teams would certainly be a great match up. Both squads would provide difficult match-ups. I think the only true way to compare the teams is to look at the rosters NBA regular season stats leading up to the Olympics, to see how they would matchup. We will make a 5 part matchup comparing each team at each position. First we will look at the beasts down low.

Centers

1992 Team

David Robinson
7’1″ 240lbs
23.2 pts
12 reb
4.5 blk

Patrick Ewing
7’0″ 240 lbs
24 pts
11.2 reb
3 blk

2012 Team
Tyson Chandler
7’1″ 240
11.3 pts
9.9 reb
1.4 blk

Advantage: Not Even Close. I think we sometimes forget how great Ewing and Robinson were. Consider that these two are arguably top-10 centers of all time. The best today’s team had to offer was going to be Dwight Howard prior to his injury. Even trying to compare Howard (20 pts, 14 reb, 2 blk) against either of these two would be unfair. As much attention as he is currently receiving he has an inadequate offensive game against very weak center competition and was smaller than both the Admiral and Ewing. Some will try to say today’s team still has size at Forward to make up this short coming in the post, but none of the players are true post players from Griffin to James to Durant.

Tomorrow we will take a look at the Forwards and how they match-up. We will separate the 3′s and 4′s to determine a better outlook.

1992 Team: 1
2012 Team: 0