The B-ball version of a timeless Hollywood favorite formula: "Tough Teacher Takes On Tough School" (based, as as ever, on "Actual Events"). Samuel L. Jackson is pitch-perfect as a coach returning to his inner city alma mater, where he still holds on-court records, and demands that his players work as hard in the classroom and in life as on the court.
Where most entries in this genre end with redeemed kids winning the big game, Coach Carter seperates from the pack by allowing the players to lose a few of their battles, both with life and on the court, before the movie delivers its more subdued but still happy ending.
Gather round, and try not to look away from this howling freak-show of the grotesque and the ghoulish! No, not the teenager who turns into a wolfman—the idea that non-canine transformed Michael J. Fox, 5' 4" and Canadian, is a basketball star.
The non-wolf Fox hops in place as he dribbles to his shoulder, hits the championship-winning free throw as a jump shot (against the rules), and shoots with a stroke that looks like a cross between a right hook and a man pushing the "popcorn" button on a microwave. Thank goodness this YouTube video exists to meticulously catalogue Fox's statline for the final.
Spike Lee's expansive take on the virtues and sins of basketball in Black America. Jesus Shuttlesworth, played by NBA star Ray Allen, is a can't-miss prospect from New York's projects, coveted by hangers-on and colleges alike. Shuttlesworth's absent convict father, Denzel Washington, is released early from prison by the Governor, who wants Jesus at his alma mater.
We discover that Denzel is not guilty of the crime that sent him away (is he ever?), but that his real transgression is his broken relationship with his son. Bonus: An endless stream of NBA and college game luminaries make entertaining cameos.
An equal-and-opposite (if accidental) companion movie to He Got Game, Love delivers exactly what its title promises—a charming, simple, full arc of a love story draped with care over a basketball plot. Omar Epps and Sanaa Lathan grow up neighbors (child actors cover the film's first quarter), sharing a love of basketball at first and each other over time.
They take scholarships to USC, where their relationship ebbs and flows. In the final sequence, one of them has made the pros, and the stories converge in a delightful bow.
The true story of the 1966 Texas Western team, the first school to win a NCAA championship with an all-black starting lineup. The real Texas Western team (which later became UTEP) was a shock to college basketball's slow, deliberate, dunkless game dominated by white players. Texas Western's players dunked so much, and to such great effect, that dunking was subsequently banned for nine years. What's that old saying, "If you can't beat 'em, make 'em illegal." Or something like that.
Josh Lucas stars as coach Don Haskins, who becomes a controversial and inspirational figure in this uplifting account. Cool cameo alert: Former Lakers, Knicks and Heat coat Pat Riley, the All-American guard on the all-white Kentucky team that lost to TW in the finals, is one of several real-life players interviewed during the end credits.
It's no surprise that Semi-Pro didn't bring the crowds like Will Ferrell's Talladega Nights and Blades of Glory. It's darker, curse-laden and lacks the daffy innocence of Ferrell's other sports movies. Still, it's often hilarious and full of knowing winks to basketball fans.
Ferrell owns, coaches and stars for the fictional Flint Tropics, in the final days of the ABA (a real-life '70s rival to the NBA). The "Trops" opponents are all authentic, down to their vintage uniforms. But it's less about authenticity than laughs. Semi-Pro's "invention" of the alley-oop is no more realistic than its bear wrestling scene, but both succeed in setting up Ferrell for comedy dunks.
No matter how clever the script or editing, there was no hiding the giant hole in the middle of this otherwise-excellent basketball flick: Wesley Snipes is a terrible basketball player! With an awkward, galloping dribble, a graceless jumper and—with no CGI around to help—no hops, it sometimes seems that Snipes is trying to hustle us. Woody Harrelson, on the other hand, appears to have a sweet jump shot.
But never mind reality, White Men is a well-written, funny take on the gritty, city game. And Rosie Perez is especially fun as Harrelson's street-smart girlfriend.
A great basketball movie for one big reason: great basketball action. Stars Shaquille O'Neal, Penny Hardaway and Matt Nover, fresh off their real college careers, are recruits for a fictional college team coached by Nick Nolte.
Getting all method with his coaching madness, Nolte followed hoops icon Bob Knight for a year to prepare for the role—and it worked. Making things feel even more realistic, for the big game versus Knight's Indiana Hoosiers, director William Friedkin recruited an array of early-'90s college stars to play at full-speed. And hoop heads, don't miss the sight of Duke-legend Bobby Hurley playing in an Indiana uniform!
The most beloved team-sports drama of all time, Hoosiers follows fictional Hickory High's team from its claustrophobic gym in small-town 1950s Indiana to a state title behind its relentless coach, Norman Dale, played by Gene Hackman.
Basketball culture long ago paid Hoosiers its highest compliment, ingraining nearly every key scene and many of the characters into the game's most repeated clichés: Dale's sideline eruptions, discipline and commitment to fundamentals; Jimmy Chitwood's perfect, lethal jump shot; the tape-measure mind-trick on the championship court. Those scenes, and many more, still echo in the fabric of today's game.
If you watch college basketball's glossy championship Final Four, remember that you are being presented just the final, highly-processed entrée from the Big Time Sports kitchen. Hoop Dreams, the most important sports documentary ever made, takes you inside the sausage factory that grinds behind the hype.
The film follows two very good, but very poor, high school basketball stars for four full years. We're there when the street hustlers, self-interested coaches and family members—both well-meaning and not—fall upon them. Sadly the vicious system Hoop Dreams exposed almost 20 years ago has only gotten worse. Enjoy the games!