We long ago stopped calling them “Dream Teams”. And you can only use “Redeem Team” once. The USA Basketball men’s team has to persist without a good nickname now, but it’s been a long time since they were without a gold medal.
It’s been 20 years since the USA men last failed to conquer the Olympics. They’ve earned gold medals in eight of the nine Games in which NBA players were permitted to compete.
This era of Olympic basketball was not precipitated, as many erroneously believe, by the United States’ failure to win gold with a college-based team in 1988; the U.S. actually was one of the few countries that voted against allowing NBA players to compete.
It came about because the rest of the world could see their best players eventually would be wearing NBA uniforms, and they wanted Pau Gasol, Dirk Nowitzki, Tony Parker and, ultimately, Nikola Jokic to be able to play for their national teams.
No one has been able to consistently defeat the best U.S. teams. But what if they played each other? Following Saturday’s stirring gold-medal victory over France, and Steph Curry’s spectacular shooting display, it felt like time to examine which of the USA Basketball squads of this era ranked as the the best, and which was the least.
(That last one is like the SAT giving you 400 points for putting your name on the form).
Here they are, in ascending order.
MORE: Ranking USA's NBA-era players, from 1-108
Ranking USA's men's basketball teams since 1992
9. 2004
Record: 5-3
Leading scorer: Allen Iverson, 13.8
Average margin: 4.6 points
Closest victory: Quarterfinal vs. Brazil and Semifinal vs. Lithuania, 8 points
Medal: Bronze
There isn’t much suspense regarding the identity of this choice, so best to go ahead and get it out of the way. It maybe wasn’t Larry Brown’s fault that 75 percent of the team that qualified the United States for the Olympics by comfortably winning the 2003 Tournament of the Americas chose not to participate in Athens, the majority of them citing security concerns at the Games. It was Brown’s fault that he chose not to play all his best players.
LeBron James was coming off a rookie season in which he averaged 20.9 points and 5.9 assists for the Cleveland Cavaliers and finished ninth in the NBA MVP voting. Carmelo Anthony was coming off a rookie season in which he averaged 21 points, 6.8 rebounds and was 14th on the MVP ballot. Only one other player on the squad, second-place Tim Duncan, got MVP votes in 2003-04.
Together, James and Anthony averaged 18 minutes a game. They had no impact on the outcome.
Playing the team’s veterans did not make them any better defensively (opponents shot 48 percent from the field) or help with shooting (the U.S. ranked last in 3-point percentage at .314) or team offense (they generated assists on only 47 percent of their baskets).
The problems were evident immediately, as the U.S. was destroyed by Puerto Rico by 19 points in their opener, still the most lopsided loss in the program’s history. They never were resolved. They finished only fourth in their six-team pool and are responsible for half of the defeats in United States men’s Olympic history.
8. 2020
Record: 5-1
Leading scorer: Kevin Durant, 20.7
Average margin: 20
Closest victory: Final vs. Brazil, 5 points
Medal: Gold
The 2020 Olympic team faced a similar problem to the 2004 team: getting players who were willing to travel. The fact the 2020 Olympic team played its tournament in 2021 ought to tell you something.
This time it was a product of the COVID-19 pandemic. Coming off a season in which attendance was limited across the league, players faced even more stringent restrictions for the trip to Tokyo.
USA Basketball was particularly fortunate Kevin Durant agreed to compete, especially coming off a season in which he was limited because of a hamstring injury.
The only players on the roster who earned MVP votes were Damian Lillard (eighth) and Jayson Tatum (12th) – and Lillard struggled throughout the tournament with his jumpshot. There was a variety of young, promising players but some (Keldon Johnson, JaVale McGee) were either not ready to help or well past it. And the NBA’s extended schedule took the NBA Finals well into July; Devin Booker, Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday hopped on a private plane when that series was done and headed to Tokyo for the first game five days later. They’d missed all of training camp.
The Americans lost their first pool game, 83-76, to France. The ease of facing Iran and the Czech Republic helped them establish a more functional approach which was, mostly: Get the ball to KD. Lillard adjusted to more of a supporting role, and Tatum stepped forward to help Durant. The two scored 48 of the team’s 87 points in a 5-point gold medal victory over France.
7. 2000
Record: 8-0
Leading scorer: Vince Carter, 14.8
Average margin: 21.6
Closest victory: Semifinal vs. Lithuania, 2 points
Medal: Gold
This was the year when all who assumed that every American NBA-centric Olympic team would cruise to Olympic gold learned otherwise.
The squad did not include many of the league’s top players: Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, Grant Hill and especially Shaquille O’Neal. Instead such players as Vin Baker and Antonio McDyess filled the big-man spots. There were four players with MVP votes: No. 2 Kevin Garnett, No. 3 Alonzo Mourning, No. 10 Vince Carter and No. 11 Jason Kidd.
They cruised through pool play with an average margin of 29.2 points, but they barely escaped with a 2-point win against Lithuania in the semifinals. Maryland product Sarunas Jasikevicius had a chance to win the game from 3-point range at the buzzer, but his shot missed and probably came a tick late.
It was the first time in three Olympics with NBA players that anyone had come within 22 points of the United States. That Lithuania team didn’t even have NBA regulars Arvydas Sabonis or Zydrunas Ilgauskas.
The margin in the gold medal game against France was only 10 points. A lot changed in this tournament.
6. 2016
Record: 8-0
Leading scorer: Kevin Durant, 19.4
Average margin: 22.5
Closest victory: Group vs. France, 3 points
Medal: Gold
The Redeem Team glow had faded by 2016, which was to be the final Olympics of Mike Krzyzewski’s rejuvenation project at the Olympic level. Durant’s embrace of USA Basketball became especially important with James passing after another NBA Finals run, Steph Curry absent because of injury and Chris Paul deciding his body no longer could withstand an offseason filled with international ball. Durant and Carmelo Anthony became the only players to return from the prior Olympics.
The U.S. turned to Harrison Barnes (after he’d scored fewer than a dozen points a game in the NBA) and DeMar DeRozan (a great player but odd fit in international play because of meager shooting).
And it mattered.
In the final pool play game, when the U.S. allowed France and point guards Thomas Huertel and Nando de Colo to recover from a 12-point deficit after three quarters to fall by just three points. Spain’s Pau Gasol scored 23 as the Americans won by just six points in the semis. It all just seemed easier because the Americans ran not-ready-for-prime-time Serbia off the court in the final by 30 points.
5. 2024
Record: 6-0
Average margin: 22
Leading scorer: Stephen Curry, 14.8
Closest victory: SF vs. Serbia, 4 points
Medal: Gold
Only three top-10 MVP choices were on this team, but some of that was because others were scattered among their competition: Serbia’s Nikola Jokic, Canada’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Greece’s Giannis Antetokounmpo. The only highly ranked American on that list who was missing was Jalen Brunson, whom USA Basketball chose not to include.
The other major NBA star absent from this squad was Kawhi Leonard, who arrived at the July training camp but was sent home because of concerns about his knee.
A team with Durant, James and Curry – even with each one moving toward the end of his career – has a lot going for it. The U.S. excelled in pool play, winning their three games by an average of more than 20 points, but they nearly missed the chance to play for a medal as their reliance on center Joel Embiid – despite massive defensive deficiencies – got them into all kinds of trouble early in the game against Serbia. They had to recover from a 13-point deficit in the fourth quarter. Embiid helped with that by finally committing to defend shooters, but James’ four assists and Curry’s five points in the final 2:30 were the greatest difference.
4. 2008
Record: 8-0
Average margin: 27.9 points
Leading scorer: Dwyane Wade, 16.0
Closest victory: F vs. Spain, 23 points
Medal: Gold
The Redeem Team not only revived the men’s national team program – remember, the 2004 Bronze was preceded by a sixth-place finish in a FIBA World Cup played at home – but also wound up as the subject of a terrific documentary. So that’s victory all around!
This group had to go through a couple of episodes to completely find themselves. First, there was value to the semifinal loss to Greece in the 2006 FIBA World Championships, when the opposition turned around the game in the fourth quarter with a steady stream of high ball screens which the U.S. defense never solved. This taught the players what was possible if they were not at the top of their games and genuinely connected, and it helped the coaches recognize they needed to be more open to tactical adjustment if the situation called for it.
And, they needed Kobe Bryant.
Bryant was not a part of the 2006 team, but joined for 2008 and introduced himself to the international game in an exhibition in Las Vegas in which he hunted his shot far too eagerly. (And his fans eagerly e-mailed to dispute my column about that.) He wound up leading the team in shots in the Olympics, at 13 per game, but he made 46 percent from the field, and his 20-point performance and dominance down the stretch in a highly competitive final against Spain were decisive.
3. 1996
Record: 8-0
Average margin: 23 points
Leading scorer: Charles Barkley, 12.4
Closest victory: Quarterfinal vs. Brazil, 23 points
Medal: Gold
They weren’t the first, and the competition was not yet up to the job, so the brilliance of the 1996 group often is forgotten. But even with Michael Jordan passing on participation, they still had MVP finishers 2 (David Robinson), 3 (Penny Hardaway and Hakeem Olajuwon), 5 (Gary Payton) and 6 (Karl Malone).
Not to mention Shaquille O’Neal, who was in the process of moving from Orlando to Los Angeles that summer.
Hardaway was at the height of his brilliance and the perfect distributor for the many stars around him. Olajuwon’s decision to play for the U.S. made them impossibly powerful on the inside. This became one of the best shooting USA Basketball men’s squads, hitting 39.3 percent of their 3-pointers.
The Serbia and Montenegro team that was beaten for the gold included Vlade Divac and journeymen Sasha Danilovic and Zeljko Rebraca, but most of the roster consisted of players who’d either been drafted by the NBA and never appeared (Dejan Bodiroga), appeared briefly and never returned (Zarko Paspalj) – or never got any real shot.
There was no one in Atlanta to give this bunch a true challenge. But I did cover an exhibition game in the Detroit area in which a team of collegians put this group down by 17 points in the first half and only lost 96-90 in the end. That’s when I realized how great Tim Duncan would become.
2. 2012
Record: 8-0
Average margin: 32.1 points
Leading scorer: Kevin Durant, 19.5
Closest victory: Final vs. Spain, 7 points
Medal: Gold
The Spain team the United States faced in the gold medal game might have been the best non-U.S. national team in history. Pau Gasol was in the heart of his tenure with the Lakers and not far removed from a period of three consecutive All-Star appearances. Marc Gasol had been an All-Star and received DPOY votes. Serge Ibaka had been first-team all-defense. Wing Rudy Fernandez was a rotation player in Denver before an injury ended his season. Juan Carlos Navarro and Sergio Llull were elite in the Euroleague and Spain’s ACB.
So yeah, it took a great team to beat those guys, and Durant’s perimeter scoring, Bryant’s take-no-prisoners approach, Carmelo Anthony’s deep shooting, Chris Paul’s playmaking and James’ all-around greatness were at the core of that. But they also had Russell Westbrook, James Harden and Kevin Love at his peak.
They beat a gifted Argentina team that was just slightly past its prime twice in a week, by a combined 53 points. Only that Spain squad made it close, but the LeBron/Kobe/Melo era of U.S. Olympians kept that great team from ever reaching the top of the podium.
1. 1992
Record: 8-0
Average margin: 43.8 points
Leading scorer: Charles Barkley, 18.0
Closest victory: Final vs. Croatia, 32 points
Medal: Gold
This wasn’t a foregone conclusion just because it was the original Dream Team. But here’s how amazing this group was: Larry Bird basically played his final competitive games here because of his back issues, and Magic Johnson had been inactive all year after testing positive for HIV – and still you had the reigning NBA MVP and eight others who ranked among the top dozen in votes. (And there was Duke product Christian Laettner, who’d swept the college player of the year trophies).
Nearly the entire team is in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame individually (and Laettner should be, for his college achievements). And of course they are enshrined as a group.
I’ll admit to still wondering how close a full Yugoslavia team would have been able to come to challenging this group; their squad began to fracture even before Yugoslavia eventually divided into multiple countries, as detailed in the brilliant ESPN documentary, “Once Brothers”. It probably would have been closer than the 32 points Croatia managed alone, but no international team was ready to beat this bunch.