Eight Great Basketball Movies
Glory Road tells the story of Texas Western’s 1966 college basketball team. Akin to 2000’s feel-good football flick Remember the Titans (also a Disney product – imagine that), the movie is loosely based (read: very loosely based) on a true story and lightly addresses issues of racism in America. Roger Ebert, who surely has never been guilty of hyperbole, claims that this team “made a breakthrough comparable to when Jackie Robinson was hired by the Brooklyn Dodgers.” WellâÂ?¦
The importance of this team’s achievement aside (not to mention the ripples of Texan outrage from those who thought the film a knock on the Lone Star State), a critical look at the film shows a nicely shot, minimally written, straightforward sports movie. It’s a bit of matinee entertainment, something to look at in the off-season, an easy excuse to munch some popcorn. And as almost always, seeing a movie will spur discussion on comparable works.
Without further ado, then, let’s begin the greatest argument starter since you were asked to name the starting five on your All-Time Dream Team. I submit the following for your consideration, listed diplomatically in alphabetical order:
The Basketball Diaries – Basketball acts primarily as background here, despite its prominent placement in the title. Check out the compelling and surreal story of real-life author, poet and rocker Jim Carroll (perhaps his most well-known song is his bizarre Oingo Boingo-esque “Some People who Died”). The Basketball Diaries is a bizarre tale of a basketball- and poetry-loving boy hooked to heroin at age twelve.
The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh – The Godzilla vs. Monster Zero of sports movies: So bad it’s good. The fruity so 70s plotline centers on the Pittsburgh Pisces, the worst team in the NBA, whose owner gets the crazy idea to call in a psychic to sort things out (Isiah Thomas, are you listening). The them assembled is a standard cast of wacky characters, but I ask you, who wouldn’t want Dr. J, Meadowlark Lemon and Chris “Set Shot” Mullin (okay, so it’s really some dude named Jack Kehoe, but if they’d made this flick in 1992, it would have been Mullin) on their squad? Flip Wilson is coaching and Stockard Channing as the team psychic is positively yummy. Plus, Laker haters will appreciate the purple and gold guys are the antagonists.
Forget Paris – All right, so technically this is not chiefly a b-ball flick, but how many other films about sports can you safely watch with a date? Check out the mind-blowing concept at center: The NBA referee is a good guy. Crystal as said referee romances Deborah Winger after a chance meeting in the titular city in a film that has received inevitable comparison to When Harry Met Sally but is not at all similar. Plus, anything with Charles Barkley in it is good. Anything. Period.
He Got Game – Since everyone has forgotten, it should be restated: Spike Lee is a genius. No one has noticed the generally excellent work he’s been doing since the earth-shattering experience known as Do the Right Thing and the huge biopic Malcolm X. But please, check out the ridiculously-underrated Clockers and Crooklyn; one of the finest scripts Oscar ever ignored in low-budget Get on the Bus; the all-out creepy Summer of Sam; the unforgettably haunting 25th Hour with the greatest addressing of the psychological damage done New York City post-9/11; and He Got Game. Fueled by a soundtrack by Public Enemy, Spike takes a look at roundball through the shattered relationship of a might-have-been (Denzel Washington) and his will-be son (Ray Allen). It’s deep, smart, serious and wonderful. I, too, wanna be like Spike.
Hoop Dreams – A no-brainer. Some critics called this the best film of the 1990s; they may be on to something, Pulp Fiction or no. Perhaps the single best documentary ever made (apologies to Michael Moore), this three-hour-plus (it goes by like sixty minutes) near-epic follows two young men making their way through the Chicago high school system. Starting with a dude who gets paid to scout ten-, eleven- and twelve-year-olds (!) on inner-city playgrounds and finishing with a little display of shaky university recruitment ethics, Hoop Dreams tells the brass-tacks facts about the basketball industry in America today through the lives of those it affects most. The movie is poignant, optimistic, depressing, uplifting, 100% true and brilliant story-telling. Reality TV producers wish they could make something one-tenth this good.
Hoosiers – Corny than the Kansas in which it is set, this cheesy sentimental movie is still worth watching and makes virtually every movie fan’s best sports films list. This one is perhaps the best of the feel-good genre and is again loosely (see above) based on a true story, that of a tiny-town high school team that wins the state championship. Excellent score, quick action, believable characters (though laden with some silly dialogue at times) and Dennis Hopper’s big screen comeback. Watch it with your kids, and save Forget Paris for the wife.
White Men Can’t Jump – The best film by Ron Shelton, scripter of Bull Durham, Tin Cup and the absolutely criminally unknown The Great White Hype. Starring the eminently likable duo of Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson (plus that bubbly sex bomb Rosie Perez), White Men allows its excellently-cast cast some unbelievably uproarious dialogue. Indeed, the first twenty minutes of this film about basketball are made up of about 97% trash talking and 3% hoops. And o, how glorious it is. If there were an Oscar for Best Dialogue, Shelton would have at least one trophy on his mantle. Brilliantly funny, excellent soundtrack and great b-ball scenes.
And how can we forget The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s IslandâÂ?¦? Okay, okay, this list ends here.
