The Other Dream Team( Marius Markevicius, 2012): USA

Reviewed by Nathan Chinchilla at the Lobero Theatre, Santa Barbara

For everyone who saw the Olympics in the early 1990’s believed that the dream team was the USA and that may be correct but at the same time there was the 92′ Lithuanian team that was facing more challenges than anyone else. I love the sport of basketball and seeing this film greatly made me love the sport more. The team of Lithuania had to truly face a lot more challenges than anyone else because of the war that was going on during the early 1990’s and the oppression of the USSR.  They had to overcome the hardships of being killed and being forced to play for the USSR even though they were from a completely different country. Lithuania has never had much opportunity to express their culture but they knew that basketball was their sport for the world to see how great they can be besides all the criticism and hardships.

The communism that overcame the entire country of Lithuania caused for the country to fall into a depression that their country seemed that will never come out of. They had to face the challenges of being killed each day and they wanted their own independence from the USSR because of how bad it was.  Basketball became the next big sport to over rule the country because of good they were at it. They took basketball to a whole new level and changed it for the better. It became Lithuania’s sport that would allow the world to see that they are different from the world. Each player faced their own individual struggles to just play basketball but as a team they were able to overcome all that and make their country proud by taking the team all the way to the Olympics.