These top 10 basketball movies are slam dunks
You don’t have to know what teams are still standing in the NBA playoffs to like a good basketball movie. Heck, you don’t even have to like basketball to like a good basketball movie. The game’s got all the ingredients of great storytelling: drama, suspense, competition, victory, defeat.
So even if you can’t tell the Spurs from the Warriors, these 10 basketball movies will entertain you.
10. ‘Teen Wolf’ (1985)
Nobody’s arguing this is a great movie. But if you were an ’80s kid with a TV, chances are you saw this movie so many times you still have stretches of it memorized (guilty). It’s got a tragically bad synthesizer score, ridiculous werewolf transformation effects and a lot of lazy ’80s filmmaking tropes. But it’s also got the endlessly charismatic Michael J. Fox at the height of his charm as a lycanthrope baller, and that alone is worth the price of admission.
9. ‘The Basketball Diaries’ (1995)
This is one of the earliest films to make the case for Leonardo DiCaprio as a serious actor and not just another teen heartthrob. In this adaptation of an autobiography of the same name, DiCaprio plays Jim Carroll, a teenager, budding basketball star … and heroin addict. The dark and unforgiving drama chronicles Jim’s harrowing descent into the depths of addiction. Drug-addled basketball is not for the weak of stomach.
8. ‘Coach Carter’ (2005)
It’s based on a true story so you know you’re in for an inspirational ride. Luckily in this case, Coach Ken Carter really is an inspiration. Samuel L. Jackson plays the nononsense coach of a highschool basketball team in a poor area of Richmond, Calif., where post-graduation prospects for students are dim. Submission to defeat is unacceptable to Carter, who benches his entire team for failing to keep their grades up. Not everyone appreciates his tough-love approach – but it is love. The end result proves the best coaches don’t just care about the game, but about their players.
7. ‘Glory Road’ (2006)
Josh Lucas plays Don Haskins, the newly appointed men’s basketball coach at small, cashstrapped Texas Western College in El Paso. He hasn’t got much to work with, so he goes out in search of the best, rawest talent across the country to build a team worthy of the national championships, and comes back with seven black players. Only problem? It’s the 1960s, and 1960s Texas doesn’t look too kindly on integrated college basketball. Inspired by a true story, the film’s got a message, but it doesn’t feel like a message film.
6. ‘Blue Chips’ (1994)
Thirty thousand dollars in cash. A house with a yard. A shiny Lexus. A new tractor. That’s what it takes for Western University’s struggling basketball coach Pete Bell (Nick Nolte) to bribe to best young prospects onto his team – but the cost ends up being so much more. The film is packed with famous coaches and players, most notably Shaquille O’Neal, who is, rather distressingly, required to actually act. It’s a tolerable weakness in this otherwise underrated William Friedkin picture.
5. ‘White Men Can’t Jump’ (1992)
This is as much an early ’90s time capsule as it is a film, from the title to the hip-hop-heavy soundtrack to the unfortunate wardrobe (especially Woody Harrelson’s “Parental Advisory” T-shirt). Most of its value is as a cultural touchstone, but it also sparkles with personality. Streetballers Sidney (Wesley Snipes) and Billy (Harrelson) become unlikely partners when they realize Billy, a dorky looking white dude, makes for the perfect ringer as they hustle courts across LA. Snipes and Harrelson have a fun and prickly rapport that keeps the hustle humming, and Rosie Perez is particularly fun as Billy’s “Jeopardy!”-obsessed girlfriend.
4. ‘Love & Basketball’ (2000)
From childhood, sporty neighbors Monica (Sanaa Lathan) and Quincy (Omar Epps) are pursuing twin loves: for basketball, and for each other. Things come easier for Quincy, who has star power and professional pedigree, while Monica struggles hard to establish herself with less supportive parents in a male-dominated field. Director Gina Prince-Bythewood keeps her athletic romance centered on her richly realized characters, exploring with emotional depth the personal sacrifices that go into pursuing professional sports.
3. ‘He Got Game’ (1998)
Writer/director Spike Lee doesn’t have a creative regulator, so like most of his work, “He Got Game” is frequently overwrought. Just consider the outrageous premise: a governor authorizes the clandestine, temporary release of a convicted murderer (Denzel Washington) so he can convince his estranged superstar son Jesus Shuttlesworth (NBA star Ray Allen, in a decent dramatic turn) to play for the governor’s alma mater. But that also means it’s overflowing with heart, full of deep ruminations about fathers and sons, and the importance of basketball as a familial, cultural and social connector.
2. ‘Hoosiers’ (1986)
A lot of movies have been made in its image, but “Hoosiers” remains the apotheosis of the triumph-of-the-underdog sports flick (no wonder it’s from director David Anspaugh, the same guy who gave us “Rudy”). With an alcoholic Dennis Hopper as his wingman, a disgraced Gene Hackman overcomes local prejudice and coaches a smalltown 1950s Indiana team to the championships. The team’s rise to greatness is perfectly predictable, but in a comfort-movie sort of way; it’s the cinematic equivalent of eating a big piece of mom’s apple pie.
1. ‘Hoop Dreams’ (1994)
How could a threehour documentary about a pair of high-school basketball players be so riveting? What was initially intended to be a 30-minute short film for PBS transformed into an engrossing epic and (relative) box-office hit, following two disadvantaged black teenagers — William Gates and Arthur Agee — as they’re chewed up and spit out of the system while they chase their quickly dwindling dream of landing a career in the NBA. It ends up an intimate examination of the heartbreaking inequalities that hobble the American Dream for so many. THE SHACK