After Redemption

'The Redeem Team' was less a rewriting of the United States senior men's basketball program than a narrative device for a single summer.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

The Redeem Team, a new documentary from Netflix directed by the great Jon Weinbach that tells the story of the 2008 United States senior men’s basketball team, is definitely worth watching for modern NBA fans. As someone who followed the ‘08 team closely — albeit from a laptop several time zones away from Beijing — the narrative thrust generally matches what we knew back then. There’s not much new material here, and how could there be? But the interviews, done in full service to those being interviewed to be sure, are additive to the nostalgia. The doc is honest and entertaining. What more can you ask for from a sports documentary?

I do have a few quibbles with the focus and content. Mike Krzyzewski’s role in the Redeem Team and reimagining of USA Basketball’s men’s program overall was, to be honest, quite controversial among fans and writers. There were various critiques. I considered it an insult to experienced NBA coaches that Jerry Colangelo would hire a college coach — albeit a famous and good one — to run a team filled with pros. Myself and others reacted to Coach K’s naked militarism and disciplinary streak, the latter a red flag after the Larry Brown debacle. Along the same lines and following from the failures of Brown and George Karl to coach teams to first-place finishes earlier in the decade, ego — placing the coach central and above the players — was a concern. None other than Adrian Wojnarowski, then of Yahoo! Sports, had a long-running critique of Coach K that he used the pros playing for Team USA to essentially burnish his recruiting edge and image at Duke, and called on players to walk away until Krzyzewski did. Coach K stayed on through the 2016 Olympics, a full decade in charge.

Largely, all the critiques didn’t matter: Coach K was enough of a winner and had enough buy-in from the best players that his reign was a success. Kobe Bryant’s role here shouldn’t be understated. Kobe famously considered attending Duke before declaring for the NBA draft in the ‘90s. He was bought-in for Coach K, and it seems the other players followed. In that sense, it’s logical as to why the documentary didn’t really delve into what a continuing controversy Krzyzewski’s presence at the head of the program was. The controversy was outside the program, not internal. But the doc would have been better reflective of the situation had it been discussed.

There’s also the matter of the use of militarism — injured war veterans at practice, pep talks from armed forces commanders — to try to instill the millionaire players with a certain sense of patriotism in the United States in service of … winning at basketball. It was queasy back then and it’s even queasier seeing the footage now. A few minutes are dedicated to uncritically showing how far down this path Coach K went with no acknowledgement of the fact that in 2007 and 2008, when this was happening, true horrors of the United States’ invasion of Iraq were coming to light and a substantial backlash to the nation’s military excursions in the Middle East were reorganizing the future of American politics.

The game highlights in the documentary are expertly woven, and the interviews with the players — including Pau Gasol, maybe especially Pau Gasol — are wonderful. (Word to Carlos Boozer’s tailor, Chris Bosh’s laugh and Carmelo Anthony’s joie de vivre.) If this were a 3-hour two-part doc, I would have liked to spend a little more time in the somewhat controversial roster construction discourse: Dwight Howard was the only true center, forcing Chris Bosh and basically all the forwards to play up a position before that became the NBA norm. The center position would become a bugaboo for Team USA under Coach K and beyond. One other omission that I think was wisely absent from the documentary was the aftermath of ‘08 as it pertains to The Decision and team-up of Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and LeBron in Miami. It’s simply a Pandora’s box that would subsume what’s important specifically about ‘08.

But here’s my biggest takeaway from the documentary: the Redeem Team was merely a moment in time, not some new era of American basketball dominance. Redemption is not a program: it’s a mission, and that mission ended when the job was completed. In 2008. A long time ago. And after that, the Team USA senior men’s basketball program essentially returned to its rudderless norm.

This whole episode concocted by Colangelo and Coach K was a momentary correction of the major flaws of how the USA Basketball program put together its senior men’s rosters. But it did nothing to address the long-term issues facing USA Basketball, precisely that there will never be much player continuity and that the rest of the world is truly catching up to the United States in terms of top basketball talent.

Here’s what I mean. International players can devote every summer of their entire careers for a shot at one Olympic or FIBA World Cup medal. In most cases, with Team USA, spending a single summer with the program will get you a medal, probably gold. Keep in mind that LeBron, Carmelo Anthony and Dwyane Wade had two major tournament bronzes before walking in the ‘08 Olympic Parade of Nations. Steve Nash was a two-time NBA MVP at the time and had won no medals for his Canadian team. Dirk Nowitzki, a recent MVP circa ‘08, won a bronze at the ‘02 FIBA Worlds, a silver in European competition; that’s it. How many gold medals do decorated American basketball players really need? (Don’t ask Sue Bird or Diana Taurasi.) That has to cut some dedication from the best players to give up repeated offseasons. If you’re an elite 30-something Spaniard looking for that first Olympic gold, you’re going to more inclined to opt in than if you’re an American with three golds hanging in the trophy case.

And that has been borne out. Hell, it was immediately borne out! Despite Colangelo and Krzyzewski’s claims that the Olympic team was a 3-year commitment, zero of the Redeemers played on the 2010 FIBA Worlds team in Turkey, and the best Redeemers (including LeBron, Kobe and Chris Paul) still got included in the 2012 Olympic team. They just become supplemented by the fresh blood like Kevin Durant who went and claimed a mostly thankless, mostly uncelebrated gold at FIBA.

“The Program” continued to spiral even as Team USA continued to win. After a bunch of stars declined, only half of the 2014 FIBA Worlds team had NBA All-Star appearances on their resumes. (This was the summer where Paul George snapped his leg in a warm-up game before the tournament.) James Harden and Anthony Davis were the only holdovers from the 2012 Olympic team … and they didn’t really play much on the 2012 Olympic team. And yet, Team USA still dominated. Even with a Plumlee and Kenneth Faried on the roster.

The 2016 Olympic roster saw just two former Olympians — Carmelo “FIBA Melo” Anthony and Durant — come back. Other than having a consistent coach and a general manager in lieu of a committee, the program is basically no different than it was circa 2002 and 2004. Star players are tough to come by. The program’s director chooses from a coalition of the willing — not necessarily the best the country has to offer. Success is determined by the whims of individual star basketball players, not any blueprint. But Team USA won out in Coach K’s final tournament, giving this whole thing the imprimateur of a grand plan that went right.

And as soon as that imprimateur disappeared with Coach K, in the 2019 FIBA Worlds, disaster struck again: the United States had a roster with two former NBA All-Stars and finished seventh place in the tournament. The whims of individual star basketball players had saved Coach K, and they failed Gregg Popovich. And then in 2021 for the next Olympic tournament, the whims flipped again! Durant came back, and Jayson Tatum had matured significantly as a player, Popovich and Colangelo had won commitments from key defensive players like Jrue Holiday and Bam Adebayo, and Team USA won gold over France. But those who watched will remember that it was REAL FREAKING CLOSE — the gold medal game was even tighter than the famous Spain game in ‘08. Team USA came really close to missing out on Olympic gold for the first time since Colangelo’s program began — they didn’t only because 1) Kevin Durant decided on a whim to go for a third gold medal (they were dead without him, no question) and 2) Rudy Gobert is a helluva player who can’t shoot free throws.

The Olympic roster, by the way, featured a 33-year-old JaVale McGee and a 21-year-old Keldon Johnson. Those aren’t exactly ‘08 names.

Meanwhile, as the United States quite obviously falls back into its old problems — problems temporarily solved by the program that gave us the Redeem Team — the rest of the world is truly catching up. Three of the best seven players in the world, including No. 1, play for European teams in FIBA competition. (That’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, Nikola Jokic and Luka Doncic.) A fourth, Joel Embiid, is currently deciding whether he will join the French or American program. Should he join Les Bleus, they would have a center battery of Embiid, Gobert and Victor Wembanyama. Mon dieu. If you consider the other three of those current top-7 to be Durant, Stephen Curry and LeBron … the odds of any three of those playing in another Olympic tournament seems slim.

There are plenty of amazing young American NBA players who can help new coach Steve Kerr and Team USA win gold in 2023 and 2024: FIBA veteran Tatum, Ja Morant, Zion Williamson, Tyrese Haliburton, maybe Embiid, Adebayo, maybe AD comes back, Cade Cunningham, Keegan Murray (BELIEVE THE HYPE). And it’s worth noting that all three of Giannis, Jokic and Doncic fell short in the recent EuroBasket tournament as some — not all, but some — other national teams fall victim to the lack of continuity and familiarity that has plagued Team USA in the past.

In 2008, Team USA both brought its best American players and faced near-defeat. That tournament was a sign that the United States still had the best base of talent in the world and could assemble a gold medal roster any given summer. But it was also a sign that even those gold medal rosters would be challenged — it wasn’t merely the less-than-stellar creations that would be susceptible to defeat, like the ‘02 and ‘04 teams. Every American team stood a chance of being beaten in a tournament like this given the elevation of the international game.

There’s no reversing this trend. The rest of the world shocked Team USA into self-reflection in the early ‘00s and they’ll do it again. The question isn’t whether USA Basketball can rewrite its own redemption arc without hitting rock bottom (i.e. bronze) in an Olympic tournament again. That era is done. The question is whether enough American basketball players will show up in any given summer to stop one of these other nations from claiming gold.

---

Back tomorrow with some links and whatnot. Be excellent to each other.