BEIJING -- Over here, they were called Dream Team 8. And two years ago in Japan, the locals referred to them as Dream Team 7.
The world might have caught up in basketball during the past decade, but it hasn't caught on to the notion that the American federation ditched the Dream Team nickname after the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 -- back when it started to realize that the true, original Dream Team that won the gold medal in Barcelona in '92 should have had the nickname retired in its honor.
"We're not the Dream Team," coach Mike Krzyzewski said over and over again during the past 2½ weeks when he faced questioning from several Chinese journalists who prefaced their questions with that phrase. "There was only one Dream Team, and there will never be another."
That might indeed be the case, but it's still a valid idea to compare this year's gold-medal winning Team USA to the one that set a standard that'll never be matched.
Both were dominant in their own way, the 1992 team squishing and squashing each and every last one of its opponents, beginning with a 79-point victory over Cuba in the first game of the '92 Tournament of the Americas and ending with a 32-point victory over Toni Kukoc and Croatia in Barcelona.
The 2008 team crushed the opposition in all but one game -- Sunday's 118-107 victory over Spain -- and set its high-water mark with a 68-point triumph over the U.S. Virgin Islands during the 2007 Tournament of the Americas in Las Vegas.
The world might have caught up in basketball during the past decade, but it hasn't caught on to the notion that the American federation ditched the Dream Team nickname after the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 -- back when it started to realize that the true, original Dream Team that won the gold medal in Barcelona in '92 should have had the nickname retired in its honor.
"We're not the Dream Team," coach Mike Krzyzewski said over and over again during the past 2½ weeks when he faced questioning from several Chinese journalists who prefaced their questions with that phrase. "There was only one Dream Team, and there will never be another."
That might indeed be the case, but it's still a valid idea to compare this year's gold-medal winning Team USA to the one that set a standard that'll never be matched.
Both were dominant in their own way, the 1992 team squishing and squashing each and every last one of its opponents, beginning with a 79-point victory over Cuba in the first game of the '92 Tournament of the Americas and ending with a 32-point victory over Toni Kukoc and Croatia in Barcelona.
The 2008 team crushed the opposition in all but one game -- Sunday's 118-107 victory over Spain -- and set its high-water mark with a 68-point triumph over the U.S. Virgin Islands during the 2007 Tournament of the Americas in Las Vegas.
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