Fansided

Ranked by greatness: The 1992 Dream Team

By Matthew Miranda

1992: Michael Jordan (L), Magic Johnson (M) and Clyde Drexler (R) of Team USA, the Dream Team, sit on the bench during the men's basketball competition at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. (Photo by Icon Sportswire)
1992: Michael Jordan (L), Magic Johnson (M) and Clyde Drexler (R) of Team USA, the Dream Team, sit on the bench during the men's basketball competition at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. (Photo by Icon Sportswire) /
facebooktwitterreddit
Prev
11 of 13
Next

3. Magic Johnson (23.9 pts, 13.1 asts, 9.6 rebs, 3.4 stls)

How bottomless was the talent was on the Dream Team? Magic Johnson, who’d be on most people’s short list for greatest basketball player ever, is (arguably) only the third-best player on this team. But if ever third deserves gold rather than bronze, it’s here, in the case of the eternally illuminant Magic.

Fear and ignorance of HIV cost the NBA four full years of Johnson, years he would have been transitioning from late summer to the early autumn of his career. Even with all that lost time, in fact in the face of that lost time, his achievements resonate even more than they already should. Magic won three MVP awards, and finished in the top-three in voting for nine consecutive years. He led the league in steals twice and assists three times; he averaged 10+ assists for nine consecutive years. Five times his team won it all, and three of those times he was named Finals MVP. The last year he played before retiring due to illness, he’d led Los Angeles to their ninth Finals during his reign.

The ’92 Olympics was supposed to be Magic’s swan song, but he returned in the 1996 season and reinvented himself as a low-post threat, still able to eviscerate teams with his passing. It would have been cool to get to see Magic reinvent himself while reinventing himself. It would have been cool for him, for us, for everybody.

Home/NBA