1992 Dream Team, Pippen, Mailman are Hall of Fame Finalists

The 1992 U.S. Men’s Olympic Basketball Team, better known as the Dream Team, the first Olympic team to include NBA players, are one of the finalists for the team category for induction into the Jame Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.


The powerful, star-studded team cruised to victory in both the Tournament of the Americas and Barcelona Olympics with an average victory margin of 43.8 points.

Eight members of that legendary team, that played 14 games in 1992, are already in the Hall of Fame as individuals, and will likely to be joined by at least two more – Scottie Pippen and Karl Malone, who are amongst the individual finalists this year. The remaining players from the Dream Team that have yet to be inducted are Chris Mullin and Christian Laettner.

Karl “the Mailman” Malone was the NBA’s MVP in 1997 and ‘99 and finished his career as the league’s number two scorer with 36,928 points behind only Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Arguably the best power forward in NBA history, he still never won a title despite joining a star-laden Lakers team in 2004.

Another reason Malone never got a championship ring was because Pippen’s Bulls teams blocked the path both times the Utah Jazz made it to the finals. Pippen teamed up with Michael Jordan to win six championships in the 1990s.

Malone and Pippen would also play on the 1994 U.S. Team, or Dream Team II – a team that also featured original Dream Teamers John Stockton, Charles Barkley, and David Robinson, as well as Shaquille O’Neal, Reggie Miller, and Hakeem Olajuwon.

Returning finalists include fellow Dream Teamer Mullin, Boston Celtic’s guard Dennis Johnson, coach Don Nelson and four-time WNBA champion Cynthia Cooper from the now-defunct Houston Comets.

First Bank, First Deepwater rivalry good for Nigeria basketball Coach Aderemi

Head coach of Nigeria and Africa champions Club for Women, First Bank Basketball Club of Lagos, Adewumi Aderemi, is looking forward to another intensive rivalry between his team and NBBF/ Zenith Bank Womens League runner-up First Deepwater Basketball Club of Lagos when the new season dunks off.

First Deepwater, who in her first season in the elite womens basketball league last year, ended the Elephant Girls seven-year unbeaten run in the local scene, winning 80-72 at the National Stadium, Lagos, on the last day of the 2009 season,.

But the highly experienced First Bank got its pound of flesh back when it walloped First Deepwater by 88-48 in the quarter-finals of the FIBA Africa Champions Club for Women in Benin Republic, on its way to winning the title.

Coach Aderemi believes the rivalry is good for the development of the game in Nigeria.

He said, 'The First Deepwater issue last year was very good; I liked the way they took the league by storm, challenging every team. We witnessed one of the best leagues last season and because of them, the standard of the womens league was very high last year. Its a welcome development.

'What helped us (First Bank basketball club) was that we won the first and second phase, which put us in good stead to win the league, and that is exactly what we are going to do this year again, the coach popularly called 'owolo' said.

On preparations for the new season, Coach Aderemi said his team was not under pressure to defend its titles in 2010