Jordan: “Dream Team would have no problem vs. London Gold Medalists”

“I know Kobe said some things early on and I responded to those — where the  ’92 Dream Team, I felt, was a more well-rounded basketball team,” Jordan said.  “He felt we were a little old, but we only had two players that were over 30 at  the time — that was Magic [Johnson] and Larry [Bird]. Everybody else was 29 or  below [Clyde Drexler, Patrick Ewing and John Stockton actually turned 30 shortly  before or during the Olympics], so I think that the team itself would have been  well-rounded defensively, offensively, inside,Part of that balance for the Dream Team was having players such as centers David Robinson and Ewing to stop the sort of penetration that occasionally plagued the ’12 crew. If the two teams could magically play on a court as opposed to a console, Jordan would want to exploit that weakness.

“I just felt like we had enough size that we could contend with the 2012 team,” he said of the team that was without elite shot blocker Dwight Howard and relied heavily on the Knicks’ Tyson Chandler at center. “I think one of the things the 2012 team lacked was size, you know? We probably would have attacked them from inside and outside, and I think that would have been pretty much solidified [for the ’92 team’s defense] with shot-blockers as well as perimeter defensive players.

“In [terms] of how the game is played from an offensive standpoint and a defense standpoint — from a team standpoint — I feel like we were much more solid defensively. We could definitely guard the perimeter and force them to penetrate to shot-blockers, which I felt like would’ve made a big difference with this team in 2012. They only had one shot-blocker. Granted, I know LeBron [James] and some of those guys can still block shots. It’s not the same defense and it’s not the same intensity.”

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