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Grant Hill is a seven-time N.B.A. All-Star, Chris Webber a five-timer and Penny Hardaway a four-timer. Allan Houston was selected twice, Jamal Mashburn once.<\/p>\n
But back in 1992, they were just a bunch of college students playing a scrimmage against the U.S. men\u2019s national basketball team, otherwise known as the Dream Team, which included Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing and six other future Hall of Famers. The odds that Hill and company could topple a squad that went on to destroy every opponent at the Olympics by an average of 44 points<\/a> seemed vanishingly thin.<\/p>\n The HBO documentary \u201cWe Beat the Dream Team,\u201d which premiered on Monday and is streaming on Max<\/a>, recounts the day in June 1992 when that shocker actually happened \u2014 when the Select Team, as this collection of youthful sparring partners was called, stunned the game\u2019s biggest players.<\/p>\n Bobby Hurley, the Select Team\u2019s point guard, pushed the pace and shredded the Dream Team defense with pinpoint passes. Houston buried threes. Webber was a force inside. Their elders looked complacent and sloppy, turning over the ball and even missing dunks as the game slipped away. The scrimmage lasted about 20 minutes, but the Select Team finished with a solid 62-54 triumph.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Because of a rule change made by the International Basketball Federation, the 1992 Barcelona Games were the first Olympics in which N.B.A. players were permitted to play. For the college players, who were a bit resentful because they had hoped to represent the U.S. at the Games, the scrimmage victory was the ultimate vindication. (A few celebrated with perhaps a bit too much trash talk.)<\/p>\n But as the documentary makes clear, their victory was essentially buried. The coach of the Olympic team, Chuck Daly, made sure the scoreboard was shut off before reporters came into the gym. No one really talked about it in the media that day. (Daly had allowed only one camera to record the game.)<\/p>\n \u201cWe had this incredible experience that virtually no one knew about,\u201d Hill said last week in a joint interview with the film\u2019s director, Michael Tolajian.<\/p>\n The next day, the Dream Team took revenge and destroyed the youngsters, 102-55, which the Select Team accepted as fitting. What Hill and Tolajian want the film to do, they say, is set the record straight about the win. As details about the scrimmage have emerged over the years \u2014 notably in a 2012 documentary, which first made the game footage public<\/a> \u2014 so has a counternarrative. In that film and since, Mike Krzyzewski, who was an assistant to Daly in 1992 (and Hill\u2019s and Hurley\u2019s coach at Duke), has said that the game was thrown. He likened the Select Team to children who believe in Santa Claus.<\/p>\n In the Select Team\u2019s defense, \u201cWe Beat the Dream Team\u201d marshals testimony from all the living members of the Select Team \u2014 Hill, Webber, Hardaway, Mashburn, Hurley, Houston and Rodney Rogers \u2014 but also stars from the Dream Team, including Jordan, Johnson and Barkley. Those players shoot down Krzyzewski\u2019s claim.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n