After winning every Olympic gold medal in basketball until 1972, when the Soviet Union controversially stole it, the United States men’s basketball team entered a rough patch: no gold in 1980 due to the political boycott and no gold in 1988 due to … well, there are a lot of reasons, perhaps, why the Americans lost their grip on the hoops world. Either way, the end result was the 1992 Dream Team, which we’ve discussed before.

Starting with the Barcelona Games, here are the basketball results in Olympic competition for the U.S.:

  • 1992, 1996, 2000: Gold
  • 2004: Bronze
  • 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020/2021: Gold
  • 2024: TBD

So much for “buying” the expected domination promised by the Dream Team, eh? What happened in 2004? Well, despite a team that featured Tim Duncan, Allen Iverson, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade, and many others, the team struggled in terms of international experience: a first-game loss to Puerto Rico by 19 points was horrific to behold, in truth. In fact, the U.S. lost twice in round-robin play.

Once into the medal round, a loss to Argentina in the semifinals doomed the Americans to the bronze-medal game, where they avenged that second round-robin loss with a victory over Lithuania. Still, it’s crazy to think that much talent, albeit a lot of it young, could end up losing three times in one olympiad. But it did happen, and soon thereafter, a re-focused commitment to “patriotism” launched the U.S. men to more gold.

The Americans have only lost one more time (the first game of the 2020/2021 Games), and again, they were able to avenge that random loss to France in the gold-medal game. If you’re counting at home, that means, the U.S. men have lost just 6 games in decades of Olympic basketball play, dating back to 1936 when the sport was first contested in Berlin. As this week progresses, we will know what happens in Paris 2024.

[We already examined the roster, somewhat, for these Games: for the sake of Stephen Curry, we want gold!]