It’s almost unfair to call “Survive and Advance” a documentary.

The story that’s being told is that of a Disney movie. How the 1983 NC State team won the NCAA Tournament is the type of stuff Hollywood producers turn down because it’s too cliché. “Underdog team overcomes a million obstacles to win a national title …” Come on. That’s not real life.

“Survive and Advance” told the story of something that didn’t feel real. It happened 7 years before I was born, so for those of us who didn’t experience it, it does feel like a Disney movie.

So here’s my attempt to document a documentary of the most improbable run in college basketball history.

Why did I choose this doc?

That’s a pretty easy question to answer. Given the fact that we’re all missing college basketball right now, there are few ways I’d rather spend my time than reliving this. I say “reliving” because I’ve seen “Survive and Advance” about 4 times already. I don’t think I can put many in the ESPN “30 for 30” collection above this one.

My mind went in a few different places while rewatching this. As I often do, I thought about the sliding doors.

Like, what if Norm Sloan hadn’t gotten into a contract dispute and stayed at NC State instead of going back to Florida? That was the only reason that a 34-year old Jim Valvano ever got hired at NC State. Forget whether we would’ve had the 1983 national championship run for the ages. Valvano’s success on that stage gave him a platform to start the V Foundation, which raised hundreds of millions of dollars for cancer research.

(And in a totally different ripple effect, Sloan’s NCAA violations during his second stint at Florida made it a challenge for Lon Kruger, and he ultimately left for Illinois after 6 seasons in Gainesville. The Gators took a chance on a 30-year old Billy Donovan, which worked out pretty well.)

But besides those sliding door moments, I like picking up on little things that I tend to forget about. For example, there was no shot clock in college basketball yet. Stunning, I know. All of those times when NC State had to come back in games late was done without a shot clock. I forgot that it was Valvano who pioneered the “late-game foul” strategy. More on that later.

And even more stunning was the use of the 3-point line during the 1982-83 season. The ACC and a few mid-major conferences had it in the regular season for the first time. But then it was gone for the NCAA Tournament (even though they still had a 3-point line on the floor during the Final Four). Why this wasn’t a universal thing was beyond me.

So yeah, that 30-footer that Dereck Whittenburg put up in the national championship was worth exactly the same amount of points as Lorenzo Charles’ buzzer-beating dunk. What a different time.

3 Things I Liked

1. The NC State players reuniting to tell the story

A round of applause is in order for director Jonathan Hock. The decision to get the players on that ’83 team back to retell this story was straight out of the “Friday Night Lights” playbook (the book). It couldn’t have been better. You had guys just shootin’ the you-know-what in a relaxed atmosphere that made you feel like you were sitting at the end of the table with them. Like, when they busted out laughing at Terry Gannon’s tackle of Clyde Drexler in the title game, so did I.

This is such a difficult thing to pull off logistically because obviously we’re talking about a dozen adults meeting when they all live in different areas of the country. As we found out in the early minutes of the doc, it was Charles’ tragic death that led to them reuniting at his funeral in 2011. Whittenburg said something that any adult with a group of longtime friends can relate to.

“Guys, if we don’t get together at least once a year, we’re only gonna see each other at each other’s funerals.”

He has a point.

The way that this was filmed, that commentary was excellent. You still got the talking head moments to fill in the gaps, but given how tight-knit this group was, it seemed only fitting that they were together to tell their story.

2. The cut-ins of Valvano speaking

Everyone knows how incredible Valvano was as a speaker. At the 1993 ESPYs, he delivered what’ll go down as one of the most influential speeches in sports history:

It’s a little dusty in here.

What’s fun to watch was how Valvano spoke at engagements before he had terminal cancer. The charisma was off the charts. They did such a good job of documenting that. You obviously couldn’t have a talking head with the late Valvano, so seeing those prime moments from his speaking engagements were the next best thing. That was such a crucial thing to show. How he inspired and captivated an audience — like the time he hung up on the White House after winning the national championship — was illustrated beautifully.

My favorite story was the one he told about his father. Every year that Valvano was a head coach, his dad would say “my bags are packed.” That is, packed for when his son played for a national championship. He’d say that even when Valvano was in his early-30s coaching at Iona. “My bags are packed,” Valvano learned, was his dad’s way of saying how much he believed in him.

That was the thing about Valvano. He could make you cry and laugh in the same story. I’m convinced the guy could have done standup comedy for a living and been wildly successful. His players even said when he first arrived at NC State in 1981 that “he looked more like an entertainer than a coach.”

The doc did such a nice job of sprinkling in those moments of Valvano speaking. They were almost used as introductions for each chapter of NC State’s journey.

And if it didn’t make you go down a rabbit hole of old Valvano speeches like it did for me, well, good for you. You have better focus than I do:

3. It documented every time NC State’s run should have ended

It’s not easy to show the improbability of an underdog’s run. It really isn’t. There are only so many times that you can say “this team barely made the NCAA Tournament” or “they won a lot of close games.”

They had such good, in-depth breakdowns of all the “backs against the wall” situations that NC State was put on. I actually tried to count all the times their run should have ended … but I lost count. So let’s attempt to do that right now.

  • 1st time: Whittenburg’s broken foot

As the No. 19 team in the country in mid-January, NC State was about to make a major leap. The Wolfpack had a halftime lead on No. 2 Virginia thanks to 27 first-half points from Whittenburg, who was loving the new 3-point line. But when Whittenburg came down funny on a jumper in the 2nd half, he broke his foot. Subsequently, the wheels fell off. In addition to losing that game, a 2-6 stretch had NC State searching for its 10th win in February. He was still on crutches at that point. Usually, 9-7 teams with their best scorer on crutches are pretty much cooked.

  • 2nd time: First round of ACC Tournament vs. Wake Forest 

Whittenburg did come back when he was, as he said, 70-75% healed. That was the good news. The bad news was NC State still had 10 losses going into the ACC Tournament. Without winning the whole thing and getting that automatic bid, NC State’s chances of getting one of the 52 NCAA Tournament bids were slim to none. Keep in mind that the ACC was, as Mike Krzyzewski said in the doc, “as good as any conference has ever been at any specific time.”

Before NC State could tackle the mammoth UNC and Virginia hurdles, Wake Forest stood in the way. Charles, of all people, hit a go-ahead free throw with 3 seconds left to survive.

  • 3rd time: Defending national champ UNC in ACC semifinals

In a tie game in the final seconds, Sam Perkins had a buzzer-beater 3-point attempt that looked like it was dead on. As NC State’s Thurl Bailey said in the doc, it was “1/4 of an inch” from sending the Wolfpack home. That might have been an exaggeration. I think it was 1/16 of an inch. Seriously, how did that shot not go in?

Instead, it forced overtime, where UNC jumped out to a 6-point lead. Without a shot clock against a Dean Smith-coached team, that should have been the dagger. But some guy named “Michael Jordan” fouled out (and shouldn’t have), and Valvano made the then-unconventional decision to start fouling UNC players to send them to the charity stripe. Missed free throw after missed free throw resulted in a 13-point swing, and somehow, NC State moved on to the title game.

  • 4th time: No. 2 Virginia in ACC Championship

Win and in? Easier said than done. Especially when you’re down 8 in the second half to Ralph Sampson, AKA the most decorated player in the country. But Valvano’s brilliance struck again. NC State put on the Triangle-And-2 defense, and Virginia didn’t have an answer. ACC Championship, NCAA Tournament bid, team of destiny status … clinched.

  • 5th time: Pepperdine in 1st round of NCAA Tournament

Down 6 with a minute to play in a time without a shot clock or a 3-point line and NC State … won? There was even this clip of the announcer saying when NC State guard Sidney Lowe fouled out with 45 seconds left that “his career is over.” Pepperdine was celebrating like it won it all, because 84% free-throw shooter Dane Suttle was at the line after an intentional foul.  The guy missed not once but TWICE on the front end of a 1-and-1.

NC State rallied and won in double overtime because of course they did. Yes, the Wolfpack should have had a long trip back from Corvallis.

  • 6th time: UNLV in 2nd round of NCAA Tournament

Down 12 with 11 minutes left? Obviously the dream dies in that spot because again, NO SHOT CLOCK, NO 3-POINT LINE. Nope. Down 1 with 3 seconds left, Bailey sank a put-back shot off the glass to win it. Adios, first weekend.

  • 7th time: Virginia in Elite 8

Surely NC State won’t beat Sampson in consecutive games, right? Down 7 with 7 minutes left, that appeared to be the case. After rallying back (again) to tie it, Virginia was content to hold it for the last shot. Valvano, once again elected to foul intentionally … in a tie game.

This time, however, it looked like the strategy backfired. At least temporarily. Virginia made the front end of the 1-and-1 but missed the second. So of course, down 1 with 23 seconds left, the least-experienced free-throw shooter on the floor for NC State was Charles. He got fouled and then drained both to take the lead. Virginia couldn’t get the ball to a triple-teamed Sampson for a final shot, and a jumper fell short. On to the Final Four.

  • 8th time: Phi Slama Jama in the national championship

Houston, with Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler, spearheaded what many believed was one of the great college teams of all-time. The ever-cliché David vs. Goliath matchup even prompted a columnist to write a story with the headline “say a prayer for poor ol’ NC State.” Down 7 with 10 minutes left, that should have been all she wrote for Cinderella. Houston had its momentum back after a sluggish start. But a gassed Olajuwon was sidelined because of the altitude, which prompted the Cougars to slow down the pace and ultimately allow NC State back into the game.

In a tie game with 45 seconds left, Valvano ordered another intentional foul. If freshman Alvin Franklin makes a free throw in that spot, it changes everything. But, as NC State opponents always did, Franklin missed it, and allowed NC State to hold on for the last shot.

Well, you know the rest:

All the goosebumps.

As amazing as that was, I listed at LEAST 8 times from the doc in which NC State should have been dead and buried. They had such in-depth accounts of why they prevailed in those situations. Hearing those guys talk about those plays 30 years after the fact was incredible. I imagine those moments are as unforgettable as they come.

A couple things I didn’t like

1. The cut-ins of Valvano’s battle with cancer

While telling the story of this against-all-odds postseason run, they jumped to the June 1992 announcement of Valvano’s cancer. It was introduced to the viewer roughly halfway through the doc. It broke up some of the drama of NC State’s run, and I suppose it was meant to show the parallels of Valvano’s battle with cancer with the “survive and advance” mantra of the ’83 squad.

It almost felt like they brought it in when they did because it was the elephant in the room. Could they have instead spent the final 20 minutes digging into Valvano’s NCAA investigation/fallout at NC State and cancer diagnosis? Perhaps. I think I would have preferred that instead of jumping around at such a key part of the 1983 story, but it didn’t necessarily take away from the climax.

I’ll say this, though. I like that they actually told us about his post-1983 struggles and not just some of the details about how sick he was before his ESPYs speech and the 10-year reunion to honor the 1983 team.

They outlined the NCAA violations that led to his resignation in 1990. They even interviewed the NCAA’s lead investigator for the case, who explained how the things Valvano was accused of doing in the book “Personal Fouls” were sensationalized, but that they still found him guilty of having a lack of institutional control. The NCAA investigator found that NC State players sold complimentary tickets and team gear. They attributed Valvano’s role in allowing that to the increased speaking engagements and celebrity status he earned after the 1983 run.

Those details aren’t making the cut in an ACC Network or SEC Network documentary. That’s the beauty of having an independent network tackle a story like that. In my opinion, though, those humanizing details help tell the life story of the main subject. That context is important, and Hock did the viewer a favor by not leaving that stuff out just because they didn’t exactly line up with this fairytale story.

2. That it ended?

I don’t know, man. I’m struggling here. It’s awesome. Just go watch it.

My grade — 3.8 stars out of 4

Yeah, we’re adding decimals here. I might not give many grades higher than this one. It checked so many of the boxes that I look for in a documentary. It told the whole story, it didn’t need a narrator because of how many quality interviews it had and when it was over, I spent far too much time on the internet finding stuff out about the people in it.

(I couldn’t figure out why Thurl Bailey looked so familiar. I knew I didn’t necessarily recognize him from his playing days in the NBA. Then I did some lazy internet research and saw that he was in the classic Disney Channel Original Movie “Luck of the Irish” as Mr. Holloway. Mystery solved.)

As I said, I loved the players sitting at the table retelling old stories. That added elements to this that you wouldn’t have gotten from just relying on archived footage and talking-head interviews. Even though I thought the Valvano cancer storyline could have been told differently and still been plenty effective, there wasn’t anything that I strongly disliked.

The only non-Valvano thing that bummed me out was thinking about the NCAA Tournament and which teams could have followed the NC State path in 2020. Then again, there’s a reason we haven’t seen anything quite like that in the nearly 4 decades since that magical run. If you’re desperate to fill the #NoSports hole in your life, go spend an hour and 42 minutes on “Survive and Advance.”

What appropriate words those are in desperate times like these.