They're calling it Dream Team V, and they are, of course, incredibly drunk when they do so.

The latest edition is nobody's dream, though. The only people who could have thought it up were the ones who did -- USA Basketball.

	Andre Miller found out it's not easy to get past Yao Ming.

It has none of the eye-watering pizazz, the ear-burning gift for gab, or the hostility toward tall, thin Angolans that Dream Team I had. It is merely the best national team in the world, and since the world remains the NBA's Christmas stocking, you can only decide among yourselves what that means.

They are the best of a competitive field for the upcoming World Championships in Indianapolis, which is frankly the point anyway. We saw Dream Team I beat the bone marrow out of the world in the 1992 Olympics, and most of us thought it was overkill even by own our historically generous standards.

Now people are looking at this USA roster, which ranges in talent and pedigree from Michael Finley on the long end to Jay Williams on the young and precocious end, and they don't like what they see, either.

Which is their problem. This is a good team, a workmanlike team, a team that plays hard defense and still can hold the rest of the planet at arm's length. So even though that is our stated goal at any time on any topic, we cannot have it both ways.

We surely cannot compare the fifth version of the NBA's contribution to USA Basketball to the first version. So let's do it anyway.

First, the '92 team: Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley, Scottie Pippen, John Stockton, David Robinson, Karl Malone, Clyde Drexler, Chris Mullin and Christian Laettner.

Now, this one: Finley, Williams, Baron Davis, Antonio Davis, Shawn Marion, Reggie Miller, Andre Miller, Elton Brand, Jermaine O'Neal, Paul Pierce, Ben Wallace and Raef LaFrentz.

You can see the conceptual problem here. Very good in the latter case, ridiculously unfair in the first one.

Which is why the '92 team needs to be pulled off the wall, now and forever. That was the NBA's gift to international basketball at the time -- a smile, a T-shirt, and a knee to the nethers. The entire atmosphere of the Olympic tournament that year could be found in the single phrase, "Thank you, sir, may I have another?"

It is also why the '02 team will not be recognized for what it is heavily favored to do -- whip up on the world yet again. We as a nation have decided not to care all that much about the World Championships for the same reason that kids lose interest in Christmas when they open the big box first. They saw what happens when the NBA takes off its shirt and goes into full flex -- the games suffer.

And they also know why the best players in the league today don't bother, either. They have nothing to gain, and nothing to care about. So they left it to the next ring around the planet -- the Finleys, Millers and Davises, all worthy of more recognition than they're going to get.

This is not a purely American phenomenon, either. Many players and observers at the recent World Cup soccer tournament said the level of play was distinctly poorer because the demands on the great players between club matches and national team matches were oppressive, and given the choice between the two, most players would opt for their clubs. Their clubs pay, and big.

The '92 team was the most American of novelties, definitively answering the question, "So just how hard can we kick your ass?" We got the answer, and we don't need to see the math again.

And this leaves the '02 national team where, exactly? Well, let's put it this way. Most of the sellout crowd in Oakland on Thursday night came not to see their nation's representatives, but China's best representative, Yao Ming. Not because they wanted to see him face up to Ben Wallace, but to lavish conjecture on the idea of him facing up to Shaquille O'Neal in December.

So let's cut the Americans a hunk of rope here, and not call them Dream Team V. There was one Dream Team, and the Angolan with the Charles Barkley-autographed dent in his sternum knows it as well as anyone. This is a basketball team. It's up to you to decide what you'd rather watch.

Ray Ratto is a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to ESPN.com