In the opening frame of The Redeem Team, a 90-minute Netflix documentary that drops Friday, slightly younger versions of Kobe Bryant and LeBron James each take a seat on a red couch ahead of the 2008 Olympics.
It’s there that they field questions from interviewers about the upcoming Games in Beijing—ones that will present the Americans with an opportunity to avenge their embarrassing defeat in the 2004 Olympics. In light of that, Kobe gets asked: What would it mean to win a gold medal? And in what ways would that differ from perhaps winning an NBA championship?
Bryant’s response—that a restoration of national pride took precedent over everything else, and that he sensed even Celtics fans wearing Kevin Garnett jerseys could put their allegiance aside to root this once for the famed Laker—immediately sets the tone for the doc in more ways than one.
