From the Dream Team to the squad the U.S. is sending to Paris, we looked at each USA Basketball team over the last eight Olympic Games.
The United States has owned men’s basketball at the Olympic Games. Going back to the first time that the sport happened at the Olympics in 1936, the Americans have won 16 gold medals and 19 medals in total — the only time they were kept off the podium was in 1980, when the United States boycotted the Olympics altogether.
The tournament changed altogether in 1992, when NBA players became eligible to participate at the Olympics for the first time. Of course, that summer ended up being pretty notable, as the Dream Team went to Barcelona, steamrolled the competition, and became a cultural phenomenon. Since that time, the United States has only failed to win a gold medal once in men’s basketball.
Now, the rest of the world is starting to catch up to America in the sport, and while the 2024 team is loaded, the men’s basketball competition in Paris this summer is shaping up to be perhaps the greatest international basketball tournament of all time. Before that begins, we wanted to look at the eight teams the U.S. has sent to the Olympics since 1992 (including this year’s squad) and rank them from worst to best.
They came in third. Every other team that the U.S. has sent to the Olympics has won gold. Putting them last is pretty easy, even if it’s fun to look back on their roster — which featured Tim Duncan, Allan Iverson, and each of LeBron/Melo/Wade coming off of their rookie seasons — and wonder how they struggled as much as they did.
