In light of the Dream Team documentary, we will take a closer look at the 12th spot on the squad, a player no one had talked about; Christian Laettner. Before the stars aligned for the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, the summer games were about letting amateur athletes nd represent their country. After a controversial rivalry with the U.S.S.R., FIBA was encouraging countries to put their best athletes, whether it was professional or amateur on the Olympic roster. The United States assembled a team of legends but they left one spot on the team for an amateur, that man was Christian Laettner.
Duke’s Christian Laettner was coming off back-to-back national championships and was one of the best centers at the college level. He had a great balance of speed, size, poise, intelligence and 
he could hit a jump shot. Laettner is remembered for his shot against Kentucky in the National Championship. It was a turnaround jumper with less that 2 seconds left to win the title. Laettner had little-to-no impact on the dream team and he is the forgotten one when this team was talked about. Laettner was great in college, don’t get me wrong, he was still deserving of the “amateur” spot on this team, but just think of who else could have been on it at this time…
Alonzo Mourning was arguably the best collegiate center from 1988-1992. ‘Zo was one of the first players to score 2,000 points and record 1,000 rebounds in college basketball while at Georgetown and he was the first player to tally 1,000 career blocks. Alonzo played like a vereran even though he was very young, he could post up and he was a polished free-throw shooter and later became one of the best defensive NBA players of all time. A lanky 6’10 player with his anticipation was lethal on the defensive end and he could have possible helped the United States hold their opponents to even fewer than what they did.
In 1992 Shaquille O’neal was still at LSU. In college, Shaq was electric and monstrous and easily would have created a matchup nightmare for any country in the U.S.A.’s path. The future legends still would have had the majority of the playing time but Shaq could have relieved Barkley, Malone and Ewing on the blocks and would have not only brought personality and swag but strength and power. It would have been great to see Stockton throw alley-oops to the Shaqtus or watching him dunk on a whole team of Angolans.
A player that developed the name Big Shot Rob is hard to pass up on the list of people that could have replaced Laettner. Horry was a four-year player at the University of Alabama and was a great shooter for a guy who stood in at 6 feet 10 inches. Horry could knock down shots from anywhere on the floor and performed best when the spotlight was on him. At his size he could have played virtually any position for the National Team and his defensive skills would have assured him playing time.
There is nothing we can to about the Dream Team now but it is absurd that we could even think about replacing someone on that team. 11 of these players would become Hall-of-Famers and Christian Laettner (not in HOF) still had one of the greatest careers in college basketball to this date. No story will ever come close to the one of the Dream Team and this is one of the greatest events in sports. Thank you to Earvin “Magic” Johnson, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, David Robinson, Chris Mullin, John Stockton, Karl Malone, Scottie Pippen, Clyde Drexler, Patrick Ewing and Christian Laettner for the greatest team and ever assembled in sports.
AlexFarnworth 