With Team USA heading to the Paris Olympics with one of the greatest squads ever assembled, people’s expectations from them are at an all time high. LeBron James, Stephen Curry, and Kevin Durant, all on the same team. What could go wrong? But Hall of Famer Charles Barkley fears two major factors could cause hindrance in Team USA’s pursuit for gold, which would lead to severe emotional distress for the 61-year-old.

Joining CNBC television for an interview amid the ongoing American Century Golf Championship at Lake Tahoe, Barkley revealed his expectations from Team USA ahead of their trip to Paris, “I think they’re gonna win the gold medal. I will be totally shocked and mad and disappointed if they don’t win the gold medal.”

Part of a legendary Olympics team himself, the 1992 Dream Team, Barkley knows exactly what it takes to win gold at the world stage. But he also understands that once your team reaches the knockout rounds and the outcome depends on a single game, the tides can turn either way. “Well, I hope it’s a no brainer… they gotta get to the knockout round, but in a one game scenario, anything can happen.”

Proving Barkley’s point, we see it almost every year in the NCAA tournament when an underdog stuns the world by knocking out a college ranked far above them. Even at the world stage, Team USA suffered a similar fate in their previous campaign to the FIBA World Cup, where they were humiliated by the Canadian team in the bronze medal match as SGA and Dillon Brooks combined for seventy points to send Anthony Edwards and Co. home without any hardware. While the Olympics squad is far more experienced than the one that went to the World Cup, they will still need to remain careful as any team could have one great game in Paris and end their gold pursuit.

Charles Barkley believes Team USA lacks what the Dream Team had

Fearing an emotional breakdown, Barkley pointed out two major reasons why Team USA could lose their edge in Paris. “There’s two things that go against them. They’ve lost their intimidation factor, because when I played in the first Olympics in ’92, those guys were so intimidated.” When Barkley stepped foot in Barcelona with superstars like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird as his teammates, the world had never seen a greater basketball team than that. And that definitely played to their advantage as many opponents lost hope even before the game began just looking at how dominant that team was. Magic Johnson described it best with his comment, “I look to my right, there’s Michael Jordan… I look to my left, there’s Charles Barkley or Larry Bird… I didn’t know who to throw the ball to!”

While the lack of intimidation factor was one issue, Barkley also revealed another weakness in this year’s team, “So, they’ve lost the intimidation factor, but also the big advantage we always had was depth.” Unlike the 90s, the league is now filled with star players from all over the world. While it is great for the global reach of the game, it could also be an issue for Team USA in the Olympics as now, even many other teams have multiple NBA players on their roster. With that, Chuck believes that even the bench players might have a tough time scoring the basket as they will be faced by highly talented bench players from other nations.

However, Sir Charles might be a little too concerned as Team USA showed how scary they can be during their first showcase match against Canada. While other nations will also have good players coming off the bench, its unlikely that they will be as good as Kevin Durant or Anthony Edwards, who came off the bench for USA against Canada. So, maybe Barkley should stop worrying too much and just enjoy Team USA’s journey as they hope to bring glory back to their nation.