The U.S. men's basketball team is halfway to its goal of a fifth straight gold medal, having largely breezed through group play against Serbia, South Sudan and Puerto Rico. 

And so, naturally, the rumblings have begun, the question the same as always: How does this group compare to the Dream Team, the team that has stalked every one of its successors for more than three decades now, always taunting, always just a little bit out of reach. Draymond Green says this version is even better than the '92 squad. Older heads think there's not a chance in hell. Charles Barkley says not so fast. And around and around we go, the same arguments fitting the same contours, only the names changing. 

Which is all well and good; I'm certainly not above getting unduly worked up about sports, and the comparison is a juicy one, involving some of the biggest names in the history of American sports. But this dance we do every four years feels a bit like missing the forest for the trees, a disservice to the players actually playing the actual games at the actual Olympics, pulling them out of their moment in time and making them stand-ins for something else entirely. Maybe this 2024 team would beat the Dream Team if they could meet, five-on-five. Maybe it wouldn't. But instead of that unanswerable question, let's pose a different one: If this U.S. team does finish off its march go gold, where would that stack up to what the Dream Team achieved? What would it mean for the game in this country, now and moving forward? How would this team be remembered?

Dream Team vs. 2024 Team USA: Roster comparison

Of course, we aren't above a little comparison; it's impossible to figure out what sort of history the U.S. is playing for in Paris without some baseline understanding of how they fit in with the best teams that have come before them. So let's take a look, side by side, with the Dream Team:

On first glance, this doesn't feel too dissimilar. LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry are three future inner-circle Hall of Famers, and they're surrounded by plenty of MVPs who will likely one day join them in Springfield. Both teams have just about everything; if there's an edge for the 2024 squad, it's likely 3-point shooting, which has more to do with how the game has changed than anything else. The '92 team has a bit more size with Ewing, Malone, Barkley and Robinson, but this year's team is loaded on the wings.

Dream Team vs. 2024 Team USA: Statistical comparison

How has the 2024 team's performance stacked up through three games of group play?

It's easy to look at those numbers, scoff and say that obviously 2024 can't touch the Dream Team; just look at that margin of victory, the sheer number of MVPs and titles. But that's a pretty misleading comparison, which is sort of the point: Yes, the U.S. men's basketball team was in a different place in 1992, because basketball was in a different place in 1992.

The NBA was just becoming a preeminent sport in America, a few years removed from its Magic-Bird, Lakers-Celtics heyday. It hadn't yet gone global, and accordingly, the caliber of team the U.S. faced in Barcelona that summer wasn't nearly as formidable as what Team USA has faced and will face in Paris in 2024. Heck, many of them were more interested in getting autographs than trying to beat the Americans on the court; imagine Shai Gilgeous-Alexander or Giannis Antetokounmpo pulling that today.

Instead of viewing 1992 and 2024 as opposed to one another, a debate with a clear winner, maybe instead they're two points on the same continuum. The Dream Team was a seminal moment in the history of the game, the announcement of basketball's preeminence in the culture and America's preeminence in basketball. Kids around the world who would be born in the coming years would grow up in a world where playing basketball was about the coolest thing you could do, everybody wanting to be like Mike.

Those kids and those countries are all grown up now, and the fruit of the Dream Team's labor has been realized in what is the deepest field of talent the men's basketball tournament has ever seen. Comparing the Dream Team and the 2024 team to each other is fruitless because they exist in different moments in time, and the mountains they're trying to climb are necessarily different. Just look at the potential U.S. path to gold: Nikola Jokic or an Australian team with an entire NBA starting five in the semis, then Victor Wembanyama and France, SGA and Canada, Giannis and Greece or Franz Wagner and Germany in the gold-medal game. Brazil aside, every potential opponent is stuffed to the gills with talent good enough to play in the league. 

The 2024 team isn't here to stamp America as an indomitable force; they're here to thrive in the environment the Dream Team created, to accept the challenge that's been handed to them and announce to the world that, no, America is still the best basketball nation on Earth. Whether they'd beat the Dream Team or not, that's as worthy a continuation of the Dream Team's legacy as you could imagine, a picking up of the baton that would have its very own place in history right alongside the titans that came before them.