Speaking as someone who is terrible at basketball, I think I am completely entitled to throw my opinion into a basketball discussion. Especially considering the irrelevancy of this particular basketball topic. Apparently over the last day or two, the 2012 men's Olympic basketball team and the 1992 men's Olympic basketball team have been trash-talking each other over which is/was the better team. Yup, a bunch of old, retired basketball guys are arguing with 20-somethings about something that will never, ever happen unless some form of time travel occurs.
Here's the breakdown of the situation: The '92 Olympic team has been considered the single greatest collection of basketball talent ever. They were given the moniker "The Dream Team" for that specific reason: Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Patrick Ewing, Karl Malone, Charles Barkley, John Stockon, Scottie Pippen, David Robinson, Clyde Drexler, Christian Laettner, and Chris Mullin. Basically Superman times twelve. During their run for the gold, they outscored their opponents by about 44 points per game, as if they were playing against sixth-graders. In the gold medal game, they won by a 32-point margin.
Just so we're clear, '92 team = Gods.
But that was 20 years ago, and now a completely new group of players fills the roster for this year's team. They're also basically gods. LeBron James, Kevin Durant, and Kobe Bryant are a few of the players that make up the team. This is a really, really good roster. Barring some sort of catastrophic event such as a bubonic plague outbreak or the Monstars sucking up all their talent, this team's going to win gold this year.
But then somebody had to open their big fat mouth.
I don't know who started the trash-talking, but someone (I think it was Kobe's ego) said that their team was better than the other and would beat them, temporal physics notwithstanding. And of course members of the other team shot back, giving relevance to this pointless claim. Now there's trash-talking back and forth, and the basketball media is rolling with it because it's July and, aside from Dwight Howard acting like a whiny little shit, there's nothing to talk about.
"I know what we can talk about! Young people standing on some old guys' lawns and the old guys yelling at them to get off! Think of the ratings!" - Someone at ESPN, probably.
That's my "media critique" of this situation. Being a journalism major, I am completely entitled to offer my vastly knowledgeable opinion on the media that I've gleaned from the handful of classes I've taken over the past few years. I do have to say that I haven't turned on the TV today (OK, that was a lie, I watched some Breaking Bad and Community; but I don't have cable), so I don't know if ESPN devoted any coverage to it. My gut says they did, as there are stories about the feud on its website, and I've seen a number of ESPN people tweet and/or retweet things about it all afternoon and evening. (Looking through online stories at its website, ESPN appears to have devoted some time to the story through the airwaves. Links to segments on PTI and SportsCenter are available to view).
But this is a non-story. Here's why: There's no way you can ever definitively prove which team is/was better. Unless the TARDIS appears or someone from Starfleet decides to violate the Temporal Prime Directive, this matchup will never happen. Sure, you can run projections and get an idea of what might happen, but that's it. It's not trash-talking that bothers me in this whole story, it's the fact that people are actually debating who would win. I know I sound like a fun-killer for saying that, but let me clarify: Debating this amongst your friends is fine. I'd sure like to have it with my friends and see where the discussion goes. But having this debate on SportsCenter or PTI? That's my problem.
Why are you wasting my time on this by letting anchors and analysts try to give a definitive answer to a question that doesn't have one? We're talking about two different eras of basketball: Different styles of play, different officiating/rules, different league configurations, etc. This is essentially comparing apples to oranges, and it's just not a feasible comparison. Also, aren't there other, more pressing news stories you could devote your time to instead of this? Like, say, the whole Penn State report that just came out. I hear that's KINDA A BIG DEAL. Or maybe not.
If ESPN does want to have this debate, give it to Bill Simmons. This is exactly his domain. He's probably the most knowledgeable basketball guy at ESPN, and people (by "people" I mean the totally not pretentious-sounding descriptor "media watchdogs") will know exactly where he's coming from: He's not the voice of an objective reporter, he's a sports fan who somehow gets paid to write about sports by ESPN without having to always be objective (which is basically my dream job). People know this and understand this when they read his columns, and his take on this debate, including a definitive answer on who would win a best-of-seven series, is 1000 times more relevant than the guys on SportsCenter who aren't talking about legitimate news stories.
So yeah, that's the end of my little rant. More like nit-picking, though. I might come down a little hard on ESPN, but this isn't that big of a deal. It just seems ill-timed in the light of the new information about the Penn State report. And let's face it, ESPN can't exactly do any more damage to their credibility anymore, because that assumes there's still something left to damage. ZIIIING!!!
Oh, and I'll take the '92 team any day. Duh.
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