Posted by Os Davis in basketball, films, history, Review, Sports | 1 Comment
Dreaming of 1992: An Olympic basketball movie trilogy
In 1992, the landscape of international basketball was changed forever. While most recall the dominance of the USA’s Dream Team – quite probably, BuckBokai asserts, the greatest squad ever assembled in any sport – the hoops in that famed Olympiad of 20 years ago were packed with dozens of compelling backstories, the least two of which were certainly not the silver- and bronze-medal winning Croatia and Lithuania teams.
On the eve of the opening of the XXX Olympiad and with that 20th anniversary observation firmly in mind, BuckBokai recommends a loosely connected trio of films that’ll make for fantastic viewing for the sports history nut. In the virtual screening room, we’ll run this trilogy in order of subject’s finish in the Olympic games.
Gold: The Dream Team
To say that this Spartanly-titled NBA-produced work is loaded with awesome basketball highlights would be jejune; to say that the editing is slick and production values high would be obvious. But whoa, do those statements make for a neat encapsulation of what Dream Team has to offer.
Just to name one highlight among 90 minutes of ‘em wall-to-wall: Footage of Dream Team scrimmages, including the much-ballyhooed loss to Chris Webber and the NBA Select Team in its first game. Other than this, there’s behind-the-scenes stuff, hype, great stuff from a 45-minute interview with present-day Michael Jordan, controversy (mostly involving Isiah Thomas) and Charles Barkley. What more do you want?
Silver: Once Brothers
While the Dream Team was a celebration of basketball itself, Team Croatia was closer to a living geopolitical statement in the midst of bloody internal conflict engulfing the former Yugoslavia. The country formerly known as Yugoslavia as an entity had effectively dissolved with the crumbling communist power structures and by 1991, Croatia was at war with Serbia – a war which would divide the team both figuratively and literally.
As Once Brothers (or Jednom braća)film director Michael Tolajian told Serbian media early in production, the Team Yugoslavia players who had been very close “stopped talking […] and the nationalistic rhetorics in both countries must have influenced them, just like many other friends and colleagues at the time, even family members.”
All nationalism and rhetoric aside, formation of Team Croatia was a way for the “new” country (the European Union and United Nations chose to recognize Croatia as an independent nation on January 15, just 6½ months before the Olympics’ opening ceremonies) to use basketball to carve out its place in international consciousness.
And carve they did. With a roster of Dražen Petrović, Toni Kukoč, Dino Radja, Žan Tabak, Velimir Perasović, Stojan Vranković, Arijan Komazec, Danko Cvjetičanin, Franjo Arapović, Aramis Naglić, Vladan Alanović, and Alan Gregov, Croatia proved itself to be the class of the second class at these Olympics. BuckBokai would dare say that the 1992 team remains Croatia’s finest to date, in fact.
And though we couldn’t realize it at the time, the gold-medal game would also be the last time Petrovic would play for Croatia…
The focus of Once Brothers is not on Team Croatia’s run to the 1992 Olympic silver medal, but the shadow of Petrovic looms as dominantly as The Basketball Mozart played. Once Brothers instead concentrates on Vlade Divac and other members of those great Yugoslavia clubs that later shaped Croatian and Serbian sides for the 1990s and beyond – and does so marvelously. One of the best basketball films BuckBokai has ever seen; and if you already saw it as part of ESPN’s “30 for 30” documentary series a couple years ago, see it again to remind yourself that Team USA didn’t corner the market on all-time greats in ’92.
Bronze: The Other Dream Team
Meanwhile, finishing third that season was Team Lithuania, playing as such in its first Olympics since 1936. Even before this team became fully assembled, Lithuanian NBAer Sarunas Marciulionis knew he would have to deal with financial realities. What he ultimately crafted was an amazing fusion of pop cultural zeitgeist, drumming up financial support for the would-be Olympic Team by means of the Grateful Dead and two generations of San Francisco hippies.
Today, we can look back on the campaign as genius in marketing and representative of NBA basketball’s brand new internationalism in the post-communist 1990s. Back then, it made for some bitchin’ tie dye shirts, clearly one of the dopest wardrobe items of ’92. The relationship between the ‘Dead and Team Lithuania would continue into the 1996 Games, even taking up countercultural Bay Area hoopsters Bill Walton and Chris Mullin along the way.
But in 1992, the main thing was just for this basketball-mad culture to see their boys playing under their own colors, rather than those of an unwanted oppressor which would never properly acknowledge the contribution by the USSR to Soviet sport. If the USA’s ’92 squad was a fantasy team, Lithuania’s first modern roster was a dream-come-true team – this feeling itself is the hero of the Sundance Film Festival fave The Other Dream Team.
Originally marked for wide release in parallel with the Eurobasket 2011 tournament hosted by Lithuania, the date was pushed back to 2012; Lithuanians will reportedly get to see the film this week, while a US release is scheduled for September.
Happy Olympics, everyone!
People give you what you ask for via transmission of energy or what you broadcast out. “Well, that’s because Scorpio teaches you something you need to learn. They spend a lot of time and money on it so she will really appreciate it when you tell her how much you like it.”