NBA Rumors: Ending Olympic "Dream Teams" Would Be Great for the Game
It appears that the 2012 Olympic Games in London will be the last time we see a group of NBA stars take the court to represent the United States, and while the NBA's motives for making the change are far from altruistic the end result will be good for both "The Association" and the Olympics.
NBA commissioner David Stern has hemmed and hawed about sending NBA players to the Olympics past this summer's Games for some time now, but a report by Yahoo! Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski claims that multiple sources have relayed that 2012 will be the last hurrah for the "Dream Team" in the Olympics.
"Stern says the NBA will take time to deliberate how it will proceed in the future, but multiple league and international sources insist there’s little chance the league will ever send its best players to the Summer Olympics beyond the 2012 London Games. The NBA has long wanted to best protect its financial investments in players by better controlling the medical and training staffs used in international competition.
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It's understandable that the NBA has grown leery of watching its best players risk injury and increased fatigue by competing in the Olympics every four years, especially given the monstrous guaranteed salaries that many of these players command.
Also, in all honesty the "Dream Team" concept has passed its expiration date anyway. When it began in 1992 the "Dream Team" was alleged to be a response to (as Wojnarowski calls it) "the behest of the rest of the world’s desire to compete against the NBA’s best players."
In reality, it was a response to the fact that the United States failed to win the gold medal in the 1988 Games in Seoul, which was unthinkable at the time. As an answer to that perceived humiliation the United States assembled the greatest basketball team ever put together, jackstomped the rest of the world into a pile of goo and reclaimed its (perceived) rightful perch atop the basketball world.
Since then much has changed, both in the NBA and in international basketball. As the NBA has evolved into a global phenomenon, European and South American teams with NBA players of their own have steadily closed the gap between themselves and the U.S. This was proven in 2000 as once again the "unthinkable" happened, and Argentina won the gold at the Athens Games.
This led to another minor uproar in the United States, renewed dedication to building another squad featuring "the best of the best," and once again the Americans redeemed themselves with a gold medal in the Beijing games four years ago.
Enough of this nonsense. It's been 20 years, and it's safe to say that the United States has shown with certainty that the birthplace of basketball has demonstrated that it produces the best players in the world.
All continuing to send veteran NBA players to the Olympics now does is needlessly risk an NBA team's season of being completely destroyed by a major injury (ask the Chicago Bulls how fast that can happen) and serve to further undermine the last vestiges of amateurism that still remain at the Olympics.
If the best collegiate players in the United States aren't good enough to bring home the gold then frankly we have only ourselves to blame, and maybe the outcry from a few disappointing Olympic performances will be enough to spur an overhaul of the laughable "one and done" system that currently sees players barely spend enough time in college to unpack their suitcases before bolting for the pros.
How to overhaul that system is a debate for another day, but not only might the absence of NBA players in the Olympics spur that debate along but it will also afford a number of excellent college players who may not have the skills to be stars in the NBA a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to represent their country.
Hey, some of those kids can even play defense and hit jump shots, skills that come in very handy in international basketball and that were conspicuously absent from several of the so-called "Dream Teams" that have been assembled over the past two decades.
Of course, Stern and the NBA haven't completely turned their backs on the international game given that there may be money to be made. In fact, there are rumors circulating that the NBA has its eyes on effectively taking over the World Championships altogether by starting a "World Cup of Basketball," an idea that Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban believes has substantial merit.
""The question is: Why would we partner with a current tournament rather than start our own?" Cuban said. "If done correctly, it can be NBA-owned and operated and have the potential to be just as large as the World Cup of soccer. That is a product, in my opinion, we want to own, not share."
"I do know that USA Basketball should have no say in the matter," Cuban said. "It’s completely separate from the NBA. They are a different financial entity. There’s no more reason to deal with USA Basketball than there is to work with the Peruvian Basketball or Kazakhstan Basketball Committee."
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So while the NBA machinates a way to make millions by usurping the World Championships and Cuban takes the time to insult three amateur athletic organizations (including one in his own country) it appears that after this summer the U.S. Olympic "Dream Team" will be no more.
That may well result in fewer gold medals, but the ones the U.S. does win will have more meaning, and NBA fans won't have to worry about watching their favorite superstar tear his Achilles against Angola.
