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Originally Posted by Jurassic Referee
Are you serious? In the 2004 Olympics, the USA started Tim Duncan, Allan Iverson, Carmelo Anthony, Lebron James and Dwayne Wade. They brought Carlos Boozer, Amare Stoudemire and Shawn Marion off the bench. If those are journeymen, then the NBA must have one helluva lot of great players that I've never heard of. All that got them was third place and losses to Puerto Rico, Lithuania and Argentina.
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In 2004 Shaq and Kobe played for the NBA Finals that year and were not on the USA team for the World Championships (they did not commit at all to the team anyway). Carmelo Anthony was a very new player and hardly played. Lebron hardly played and had similar NBA experience as Melo. Carlos Boozer has improved greatly since then and was not the player he is right now. The same could be said for Shawn Marion at that time. Also keep in mind that many of the players on that team played similar positions and they had almost no pure shooters on that team either. If memory serves me, right Ray Allen was left off the team and he was not only an All-Star but one of the best shooters in the USA (I will have to look this up).
My point is this was not the Dream Team by any stretch. Yes you had some All-Stars, but there were players on the team that hardly started on their NBA team. Or some of the players had marginal careers. And Gilbert Arenas was also left off the team and he is one of the most popular players today but was even at that time not very well thought of.
Peace