by Samuel Nichols, Contributing Writer
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, sports fans were given a treat to watch at home. Michael Jordan’s long-awaited documentary series, The Last Dance, chronicling MJ’s final season and championship with the Chicago Bulls was a smash success. According to ESPN, the show averaged 5.6 million viewers on live release and 12.8 million time-shifted or on-demand viewers, which are staggering numbers for the time. Jordan’s openness about his experience during that 1997-1998 season is what makes the show rewatchable. Not long after its release, there were other shows and films that tried to capitalize on The Last Dance’s success by giving sports stars opportunities to be honest about their careers. In my personal opinion, Netflix’s recent documentary The Redeem Team is the best of these pieces to follow in The Last Dance’s wake, but it also suffers from some of the same pitfalls as The Last Dance.
In 2004, the United States Men’s basketball team lost in the Olympic tournament semi-final and ended up taking home the bronze medal, disappointing the nation who had come to expect them to win gold every year. With a weight on their shoulders, team USA re-oriented and fiercely began preparing to return themselves to glory. Coach Mike Krzyzewski took over the team and immediately began recruiting high-profile stars to bring home the gold. The team included all-star players such as LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony, Dwight Howard, Chris Bosh, Chris Paul, Jason Kidd, and Deron Williams. During their time training for and participating in the Beijing Olympics in 2008, they grew together as a team and that growth allowed them to eventually take home a coveted Gold medal.
On a technical side, this movie is cut together very well. The combination of highlight reels of the ups and downs of this team with their interviews or personal moments off the court gives us a full picture of all they went through. Particularly, I enjoyed seeing actual in game footage of the team playing against their international opponents. One of my biggest gripes with sports movies is how terrible the in game scenes can be. Typically, they rely on standard action camera work with quick cuts and cameras not far enough away from to capture the full scope of the game being played. Utilizing that footage from the 2008 games lets us see just how dominant this team really was.
One of the struggles of following professional basketball is that the players are under such a microscope. Any public comment they make feels synthetic and so worked over that all authenticity is gone. This happens because these athletes want to protect what little privacy they have and avoid creating controversy. Getting stars like James, Wade, and Anthony to speak candidly about their time on that team is what drives the success. Because as a basketball fan I know what happened. I know they trained in Las Vegas, learned to workout early in the morning instead of partying late at night because of Bryant, and beat Spain in the final. But hearing these stories from my childhood heroes helps make the story more relatable. As an NBA fan, getting this inside scoop is exactly what I want.
But that drip of basketball insider knowledge has to be tempered with the knowledge of what this movie can be perceived as: propaganda. As time goes, we forget the controversy and the failures of the careers of great athletes. But the triumphs and joys remain. The more we go back to the well with these important stories like winning an Olympic medal, we forget where they fell short in their career. For someone like Wade, Bryant, or Anthony, who had great success, but the end of their careers were filled with mediocre or poor seasons, The Redeem Team reminds us of what they were once capable of. The Last Dance did the same thing with Jordan. Sure, he is honest about tragedies in his personal life, but where is the documentary about his two ill gotten seasons as a Washington Wizard or the movie about his first retirement? Both of these projects exist to bolster our perceptions of these stars. Therefore, they have to be taken with a grain of salt. We cannot see the redemption of something if we are not allowed to see more of its falls and failures.
Score: 7/10
PS – Since we now have documentaries about the original Dream team and the Redeem team, next up we’ll get one about the 2024 team, The Extreme Team!!! This roster will be a group of players with no defined position who only shoot threes or layups, play mediocre defense, and were drafted after 2008. So James Harden might fit in really well!
You can follow Samuel Nichols on Twitter