Lakers News: Netflix's "Redeem Team" Reveals The Laker Whose Star Shone Brightest For Fans In Beijing
Your Los Angeles Lakers boasted the two best players on a stacked 2008 Olympic U.S.A. men's basketball team, at or near the peak of their powers.
On a club featuring eight future Hall of Fame players for its 12-man roster, then-Cleveland Cavaliers small forward LeBron James (now with the Los Angeles Lakers) and then-Lakers shooting guard Kobe Bryant stood out. Bryant had just won his only MVP award and returned to the NBA Finals for the first time since teammate Shaquille O'Neal was traded away to the Miami Heat, while James, then just 23, had already dragged a pretty sorry Cavaliers team to a Finals appearance the year before.
The new Netflix documentary "The Redeem Team," which debuted on the streaming platform this past Friday and covers the journey of the U.S. men's team to return to Olympic gold medal glory in 2008, shines a light on a unique phenomenon: players who scale the ultimate pinnacle of international NBA superstardom. Though it remained a fairly open question as to which was the better player at that moment in the league, there was apparently no question as to which player was more popular when the team touched down in Beijing for the 2008 Olympic games.
"Normally, wherever we go, it's the Olympic team," then-Miami Heat All-NBA shooting guard Dwyane Wade remarks. "We're [all] a big deal. And some players are more popular than others, but it's still the Olympic team. When we got to China, it wasn't even close. It was, 'Kobe, Kobe, Kobe, Kobe.'"
Power forward Carlos Boozer, then an All-Star with the Utah Jazz, makes a big comparison when discussing Bryant's celebrity status in Beijing. "Kobe's celebrity was like Michael Jackson about to go on tour back in the day," Boozer opined. "I mean a girl fainted right in front of us trying to get to Kobe."
