Pretty emotional.
It largely focuses on how US basketball embarringly lost in the 2004 Olympics and only got bronze. Which is a rare disaster for the most talented national team in the world. So they return in 2008 to revenge the loss. This time they are not arrogant about it. Last time most of the big names dropped out as the team was not a huge thing like during the Dream Team days in Barcelona where US went professional in the Olympics as NBA wanted to put basketball on the world map. They also wanted to revenge the USSR loses. One loss was a game where USSR paid the refs to give them the win in the final so that after USA won the game USSR got to replay the last few seconds until they scored. This created the Dream Team with all the top players. Basketball got extremely popular worldwide because of this kind of outreach. Other national teams started to improve and beat USA. The Redeem Team was then created top-down where they had to play every summer together to become a real team as talent alone would not win you anything anymore. So they couldn't just get together and win easily anymore.
The doc largely focuses on Kobe and how hard he worked while the younger players partied. He and the coaching team got the team to really fight for it. The doc pays huge respect to him and his life and even shows his daughter at some points which is extremely emotional as he died with one of his daughters in a plane crash. It does get too melodramatic at times as they keep mentioning Kobe and his hard work rate.
It's also extremely shallow. Basically 90% of it is about the training camp and they never explain anything about basketball. They just claim they need to train hard and play hard. No tactics are explained, not tactical plays. It's just all "we need to get better". For someone who doesn't watch basketball this is all confusing. So it's not quite clear how the teams play tactically or even what the Olympic rules are. Which is a damn shame. The interviews are fun for sure, but they all sound fake to some degree. Knowing LeBron was one of the people behind this doc just makes it sound more fishy as he is a known liar who even lies about small things to make himself look heroic and smart. Shame they never explain tactical matters or how you build a team.
It largely focuses on how US basketball embarringly lost in the 2004 Olympics and only got bronze. Which is a rare disaster for the most talented national team in the world. So they return in 2008 to revenge the loss. This time they are not arrogant about it. Last time most of the big names dropped out as the team was not a huge thing like during the Dream Team days in Barcelona where US went professional in the Olympics as NBA wanted to put basketball on the world map. They also wanted to revenge the USSR loses. One loss was a game where USSR paid the refs to give them the win in the final so that after USA won the game USSR got to replay the last few seconds until they scored. This created the Dream Team with all the top players. Basketball got extremely popular worldwide because of this kind of outreach. Other national teams started to improve and beat USA. The Redeem Team was then created top-down where they had to play every summer together to become a real team as talent alone would not win you anything anymore. So they couldn't just get together and win easily anymore.
The doc largely focuses on Kobe and how hard he worked while the younger players partied. He and the coaching team got the team to really fight for it. The doc pays huge respect to him and his life and even shows his daughter at some points which is extremely emotional as he died with one of his daughters in a plane crash. It does get too melodramatic at times as they keep mentioning Kobe and his hard work rate.
It's also extremely shallow. Basically 90% of it is about the training camp and they never explain anything about basketball. They just claim they need to train hard and play hard. No tactics are explained, not tactical plays. It's just all "we need to get better". For someone who doesn't watch basketball this is all confusing. So it's not quite clear how the teams play tactically or even what the Olympic rules are. Which is a damn shame. The interviews are fun for sure, but they all sound fake to some degree. Knowing LeBron was one of the people behind this doc just makes it sound more fishy as he is a known liar who even lies about small things to make himself look heroic and smart. Shame they never explain tactical matters or how you build a team.