We Beat the Dream Team (dir. Michael Tolajian)

By: Adam Freed

In the illustrious history of competitive sport there has never been a team more dominant than the 1992 USA Men’s Olympic basketball team.  Following a change in Olympic law that allowed professional athletes to compete in basketball, the United States assembled what is, without question, the most awe-inspiring collection of athletes in basketball history.  Headed by a ferociously competitive Michael Jordan in the prime of his career, as well as legends like Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley and Larry Bird, the 1992 Barcelona summer Olympics didn’t stand a chance at preventing Team USA from grasping global gold.  But according to director Michael Tolajian’s playful and entertaining MAX sports documentary We Beat the Dream Team, the red white and blue were not quite as invincible as the world may have thought, especially at the onset of their assembly.  As Tolajian’s documentary asserts, it turns out that the Dream Team’s closest competition wasn’t a group of proud Spaniards or plucky Lithuanians, but rather a collection of up and coming amateur Americans whose Olympic dreams had been dashed with the decision to permit professional athletes into the 25th Olympiad. 

With so many names and stories compiling the rosters and coaching staffs of both the future gold medal roster and the collegiate “Select Team” roster, sifting through perspectives and storytellers could’ve resulted in a nightmarish “he said, he said” account of a long lost training camp scrimmage.  Fortunately Micahel Tolajain (The Last Dance) allows for his film to be narrated by current managing director of USA Basketball and former college legend Grant Hill.  Hill, a member of the amateur Select Team in 1992, went on to be a gold medalist himself, but for the sake of We Beat the Dream Team, the well decorated former athlete plays the role of the teenage underdog to perfection.  33 years later, Grant Hill still joyfully bangs the drum of competitive fervor with ease, making his addition to the film by far its most influential, even amongst the Jordans, Johnsons and Birds, who not so fondly recount their woeful scrimmage from many decades ago.  

As a storyteller, Michael Tolajain takes his time in establishing its stakeholders, but once the stage is set, We Beat the Dream Team unveils a delicious small serving of single camera footage of the long lost NBA legends once again on their beloved hardwood, promoting a feeling of finality as if this may be the very last of the untold stories and unseen footage about the team that made basketball the global game that it is today.  The tale of Coach Chuck Daly’s indestructible collection of talent has been told to exhaustion, but We Beat the Dream Team allows new audiences a small semblance of the joys of discovery in unearthing a hidden history buried deep within the long shadow of the greatest team ever assembled.  Bolstered by willing interviewees from both Daly’s gold medal side and the Select Team, this is a documentary tailor-made for nostalgic basketball fans.  For younger fans uninterested in basketball history, perhaps Michael Tolajian’s documentary has its greatest impact in establishing that the last six NBA most valuable player awards have been earned by players born outside of the United States, a reality that would be impossible without the influence of what occurred in Barcelona, Spain in the summer of 1992, and to a much smaller extent the eager amateur athletes who lit the Olympic fire under those legendary global ambassadors.  

Target Score 7/10 - Although the story of the 1992 Men’s Olympic “Dream Team” is one that has been sufficiently covered by sports historians, the underdog story of the team of amateur collegiate athletes that once defeated them in a pre-Olympic scrimmage is delightful new ground.  Director Michael Tolajian weaves a plentiful collection of interviews with archival footage in this fun and seldom told sports legend.