Review: The Redeem Team
Jayson McGaffin
Senior Editor
[email protected]
Netflix’s newest documentary “The Redeem Team” was released October 7th. The film is about the journey of the 2008 United States Olympic Basketball team.
The USA olympic basketball team had started to use NBA players on their roster starting in the 1990’s when they had “The Dream Team” for the 1992 Summer Olympics.The US would dominate the next two Olympics in 1996 and 2000. But the following Olympics in 2004 brought a great disgrace to the team. They were upset in the tournament and brought shame to their country for having an army of superstars on their roster.
After the team continued its struggles for the next few years in the FIBA basketball competitions, they decided to refresh their system and organization.
Managing Director Jerry Colangelo decided to bring the head coach of the University of Duke, Coach K. Colangelo also brought in young and rising NBA stars like Lebron James, Dwayne Wade, and Carmelo Anthony. He also brought in Kobe Bryant, who fans thought wouldn’t work well with this team since he was known as a non-team player.
Coach K ends up making the players work together and grow stronger and stronger for the next year running up to the Summer Olympics in Beijing.The team then entered the Olympics bringing respect and love from United States basketball fans again.
The documentary consists of many player interviews. I enjoyed watching the journey of the team coming back from past failures and bringing dominance back to the Olympics. The interviews helped the viewers understand multiple points of views from the team and how they all ended up getting along and on the same page. I would rate this a 9/10 because I wish it could have been longer and consist of multiple episodes instead of just one movie.