Michael Jordan Laughs Off Kobe Bryant's Olympics Claim on 1992 'Dream Team'
Basketball legend Michael Jordan is laughing off the claims of fellow NBA star Kobe Bryant, who boasted that this year's U.S. Olympic basketball team could beat Jordan's "Dream Team" of 1992.
Jordan reportedly "absolutely laughed" and claimed there was "no comparison" between this year's Olympic team and the Dream Team.
"For him to compare those two teams is not one of the smarter things he ever could have done," Jordan told The Associated Press before beginning a celebrity golf tournament in Charlotte, N.C.
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"Most of us were in the prime of our careers, at a point where athleticism doesn't really matter. You have to know how to play the game," Jordan added.
Jordan also noted that he was merely 29 when he played for the 1992 U.S. Olympic team, while fellow players Charles Barkley and Chris Mullin were also 29 years old. Bryant is 33 years old.
The controversy began when Bryant told Yahoo News that he believed this year's team could beat Jordan's 1992 team.
"Well, just from a basketball standpoint, they obviously have a lot more size than we do -- you know, with (David) Robinson and (Patrick) Ewing and (Karl) Malone and those guys," Bryant said while attending Team USA's training camp in Las Vegas earlier this week.
"But they were also – some of those wing players – were also a lot older, at kind of the end of their careers. We have just a bunch of young racehorses, guys that are eager to compete," he continued. "So I don't know. It'd be a tough one, but I think we'd pull it out."
Other team members have also gotten in on the debacle, including Charles Barkley, who played on the 1992 Olympic team when he was 29 years old.
"How old is Kobe Bryant? He's 34? And he's calling us old?" Barkley said in an interview with The Mike Missanelli Show on 97.5 The Fanatic Philadelphia.
"At the time, we were only like 28, 29. Michael Jordan and me were the same age.... Other than Kobe, LeBron and Kevin Durant, I don't think anybody else on that team makes our team," he added.
This year, the U.S. Olympic team includes such notable names as Kobe Bryant, Lebron James and Kevin Durant.
The 1992 U.S. Olympic Team was known as the Dream Team because it won all six Olympic Games by an average of 43 points, eventually winning the gold medal for the U.S. that year.
Additionally, 11 of the players on the 1992 team went on to be future Hall of Famers.
