The Other Dream Team

It's fair to say that my two biggest passions in life (at least when it comes to pop culture, hobbies, etc.) are movies and sports. I'm a big fan of music, books, and eating large amounts of fatty foods, too, but they don't quite compare to the level of affection I hold for movies and sports, particularly basketball. The combinations of those two passions often feels like someone in the world is secretly reading my hypothetical diary at night and creating programming just for me. Such is the case with The Other Dream Team, a powerful and insightful documentary that I imagine will stick with me for quite some time.

For many basketball fans, the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain are considered special, maybe even sacred, as the team assembled to represent the US Men's Olympic basketball team was unquestionably the greatest collection of talent in the history of the sport. Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and eight other legendary players (plus Christian Laettner!) came together to form the Dream Team, annihilating every opponent that stood in the way of earning the gold medal and spreading the gospel of basketball to the world along the way. But while the Dream Team captivated a worldwide audience, there was a much more dramatic and significant story unfolding in the background. A group of players representing the small country of Lithuania which had only recently regained its independence in the fall of the USSR worked their way into the third place game and faced off with the Unified Team, the remnants of the squad they had been forced to compete with during the Communist reign. Weaving together the happenings on the basketball court with the rebirth of a small nation, The Other Dream Team expertly displays the importance of sport and the ways it can be used to inspire.

Going into this film, I had a basic understanding of what took place on the basketball court throughout this story. Like many other men my age, as a kid I was fascinated by the Dream Team. We'd never seen anything like that team and we never will again; they were literally that good. The Lithuanian team, though, always stuck out to me partly because they appeared to actually be good at basketball (whereas some of our other opponents looked like a bunch of middle school girls) and partly because their top two players, Arvydas Sabonis and Sarunas Marciulionis, were tremendous talents. In this summer's Olympics, virtually every team that qualifies to play will have at least one or two NBA-caliber players but in '92, that wasn't the case. Sabonis and Marciulionis, along with Croatia's Drazen Petrovic, were undoubtedly the best players in the tournament who weren't on the Dream Team.

I did not know, however, the tumultuous background from which these players came from. At the time of the Olympic Games, Lithuania had only been an independent nation for two short years, two years which were trying to say the least. Amazingly enough, it's tough to get a new country off the ground when you've spent 46 years under Communist reign (shocking, I know). The Other Dream Team heartbreakingly digs into the deeper elements of this fight for independence and paints a dark (and truthful) picture of what it was like to live through this period, both before and after Lithuania received its freedom from the Soviets. There are some truly devastating visuals and descriptions at play here and the film pulls no punches in ensuring that the audience understands not only what the players were going through but what every citizen of the country was going through. As such, the Lithuanian basketball team is simply the medium in which the filmmakers work to bring their story together.

By showing us the awful conditions which the players (and by proxy, their countrymen) lived through while under Soviet control and the immense struggle that was the fight for independence, director Marius A. Markevicius sets us up for a dramatic and deeply satisfying third act. Defeating the Russians to win the bronze medal was nothing compared to the hope their triumph gave a young nation and this is illustrated exquisitely through a mix of tear-inducing behind-the-scenes footage and touching interviews with both players and spectators. This is one of the more genuine sports documentaries I can remember and one that seems to really understand the significance of the subject matter it concerns itself with. It is a touching, at times quite funny, and beautiful example of the power of sport that will absolutely hit home for sports fans and non-fans alike.

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I had the great expectations from this movie and I waited for it very long time. As a basketball and documentary aficionado I have to say that the film is pretty good. Montage, archive footage, interviews, good music...and on top of all it's very touching.

However I have one remark. We all know that Lithuania is great basketball country but there was one other with similar path. Shattered small state in independence war. That country is Croatia. It was great rivalry between them and I, as a Croat, think that documentary should have mentioned it. Dražen Petrovićs, basketball's Mozart first and last Olympics as a Croat. It is not all about dream teams and US-a.

Maybe too much information for average viewer in the beginning but then; the rest will flow. Congratiulations to Lithuania for this national project. One more great sports (and more) documentary.

Everyone who likes basketball knows Lithuania and its fans. This small (Lithuania has population as little as 3 mln.) yet basketball mad country since Barcelona won 3 Olympic medals in a row which is really incredible.

This movie is not about basketball it's about FREEDOM, about fight with repressors in one of strangest of ways - basketball game.

, The Other Dream Team' movie shows everything: passion, devotion, freedom from repression and power of will. It's about ordinary Lithuanian people who were extraordinary in basketball court and near it. Each victory of Lithuanian basketball was victory of whole nation in pacific yet most effective war against Russia (SSRS).

This game is not about money - it's about freedom.

This is an interesting documentary. In my opinion, the title of this documentary should not be called "The Other Dream Team" but rather it should be called "The Real Dream Team". This documentary talks about the story behind the Lithuanian's '92 Olympic Basketball team and it is a real moving story of triumph.

In '92, the US Dream Team is really just more or less a commercial dream whereas the Lithuanian dream team carry with them the dream of freedom, the dream of recognition from around the world, the dream of independence and most of all, the dream of a nation.

Basketball fan everywhere should watch this documentary; but I am sure even non-basketball fan should find this inspirational.

"The Other Dream Team" is about Lithuanian basketball from the mid-1980s to today--with a particular emphasis on how this all relates to Lithuanian independence from the old Soviet Union. It seems that this tiny nation was the backbone of the 1988 gold medal basketball team. But what would happen when the USSR fell apart? And, how would this new team help to unify the nation? The film consists of tons of interviews, film clips and photos. Together they tell an inspiring story.

In many ways, this is highly reminiscent of another film---one about Lithuania's neighbor, Latvia. In "The Singing Revolution", it talks about this same time period--when these people in a tiny nation stood firm against their Soviet overlords. However, instead of basketball unifying the country, it was their heritage of music. Both are simply terrific films--the sort of well-crafted documentaries that leave you choked up. Great films about freedom and the human spirit.