Whether documentary or fiction, the sports movie template is so well-worn — we were underdogs, then we won, and it was amazing — that it’s rare to execute a new twist on the formula. And in some ways, “We Beat the Dream Team” (streaming on Max), directed by Michael Tolajian, follows that recipe. Its title suggests the ultimate underdog story: In June 1992, a group of elite college basketball players was recruited to scrimmage the United States men’s basketball team before the Barcelona Olympics. But on the first day, kind of by accident, the underdogs beat the so-called Dream Team.
It was the first year that pro basketball players were permitted to compete at the Olympics, and so that team consisted of a murderer’s row of N.B.A. players: Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, Scottie Pippen, John Stockton, David Robinson, Patrick Ewing, Karl Malone, Chris Mullin, Clyde Drexler and, of course, Michael Jordan. One solitary college player, Christian Laettner, joined them.
“We Beat the Dream Team” focuses on the story told by the other guys. They’re the college students who — as several of them point out repeatedly during the film — would have been the Olympic team, if the eligibility rules hadn’t changed. Instead, as then-college player Grant Hill says, “We were the crash test dummies.” Arriving at the training facility feeling both salty and star-struck, they were ready to hit the court and aware they were specifically there to lose.
To tell the story, Tolajian assembled those players, many of whom (including Hill, Chris Webber, Allan Houston and Penny Hardaway) had their own starry N.B.A. careers since that summer over 30 years ago. They are visibly full of fire as they recall the moment. Interviews with the players and coaches are mixed with archival footage from the games to give you the sense of the proceedings, focusing on the day that the younger guys beat their heroes on the court — and what happened next.
I’m old enough to remember that first Dream Team. I recall how, in the early 1990s, basketball dominated popular culture, led by the superstardom of Michael Jordan. But I didn’t know this story and, as it turns out, lots of people don’t, for reasons that the documentary eventually makes clear.
So I don’t want to spoil it, except to say that this is where the film diverges from the deeply dug ruts of its genre. The results are delightful: It’s rare to see a documentary airing out a long-running beef as beautifully, good-naturedly and enjoyably as this one. “We Beat the Dream Team” plays like an oral history, which means it can feel repetitive; something happens, and then all the guys talk about how it happened in only slightly different phrases.
But that means when they disagree, it stands out — and the ways our memories of the past tend to conform to the stories we tell about ourselves is actually the topic of this film. They did beat the Dream Team. But what does it mean? Everyone’s answer is a little different. What they do agree upon, the college and pro players alike, is that the experience was a surprise for everyone involved.