The Top Ten List: Films About Basketball Games

By Chris Barrymore


As I have admittedly been distracted by the Stanley Cup Playoffs, I have been remiss in not posting The Top Ten List for films about basketball. So in an effort to be timely with the Lakers finishing off the Celtics this week, and before people start talking about football again (the kind on the gridiron, not that other kind), I am going to sneak this list in.

This is a rushed list, so there's no time to forecast which of these films will be replaced on the List by the inevitable Hollywood debut of LeBron James. Thanks go out to friend of the blog, Roger Ebert, for his contributions and for those of his colleagues.

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That Championship Season (1982) Starring Bruce Dern, Stacy Keach, Robert Mitchum, Martin Sheen, Paul Sorvino

"A brittle but emotional saga of how significant moments in life can have considerable impact later. Based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, this film showcases Jason Miller's brilliant screenplay about friendship, but it's the incredible performances that make these characters real." - Diana Saenger, ReelTalk Movie Reviews

Teen Wolf (1985) Starring Michael J. Fox

"This film is an unexpectedly charming little movie about learning how to get through high school with your self-esteem intact. Fox's teen character is, you know, going through changes, he says, his voice cracking. Hair is growing in places it wasn't before. When his dad reveals that the men in the family tend to get a lot more hair growing in a lot more places than other men, Scott is devastated .... and then elated, when his new feralness makes him the star b-ball player and the hit of the school." - MaryAnn Johanson, Flick Filosopher

Hoosiers (1986) Starring Gene Hackman, Barbara Hershey, Dennis Hopper

"I was a sportswriter once for a couple of years in downstate Illinois. I covered mostly high school sports, and if I were a sportswriter again, I'd want to cover them again. There is a passion to high school sports that transcends anything that comes afterward; nothing in pro sports equals the intensity of a really important high school basketball game. This film knows that." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

White Men Can't Jump (1992) Starring Wesley Snipes, Woody Harrelson, Rosie Perez

"This film supplies the predictable sports formulas leading up to the big game. But even here it has surprises - and the payoff isn't exactly what we suspected. Here is a comedy of great high spirits, with an undercurrent of sadness and sweetness that makes it a lot better than the plot itself could possibly suggest." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Blue Chips (1994) Starring Nick Nolte, Mary McDonnell, J.T. Walsh, Ed O'Neill, Alfre Woodard, Bob Cousy, Anfernee Hardaway, Shaquille O'Neal

"The movie contains a certain amount of basketball, but for once here's a sports movie where everything doesn't depend on who wins the big game. It's how they win it. This film is a morality play, that projects a certain cynicism even in the midst of its bedrock morality. The message seems to be that although one man can take a stand, the system has been too corrupt for too long to change. The underlying theme, I think, is that since top-level intercollegiate athletic programs are profit centers for their universities and feeding programs for the pro leagues, maybe the players should be paid, and the pretense of amateurism dropped. Look at the once-amateur Olympics." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Hoop Dreams (1994) Starring William Gates, Arthur Agee

"The sports stories develop headlong suspense, but the real heart of this film involves the scenes filmed in homes, playgrounds and churches in the inner city. There are parallel dramas involving fathers: Arthur's leaves the family after 20 years, gets involved with drugs, spends time in jail, returns, testifies in song at a Sunday service, but does not quite regain his son's trust. William's father has been out of the picture for years; he runs an auto garage, is friendly when he sees his son occasionally. The mothers are the key players in both families--and we also glimpse an extended family network that lends encouragement and support." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

He Got Game (1998) Starring Denzel Washington, Ray Allen, Milla Jovovich, Rosario Dawson, Ned Beatty, Jim Brown

"This is not so much a movie about sports as about capitalism. It doesn't end, as the formula requires, with a big game. In fact, it never creates artificial drama with game sequences. This film is about the real stakes, which involve money more than final scores, and showmanship as much as athletics." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Michael Jordan to the Max (2000) Starring Michael Jordan

"This film documents how Chicago Bulls No. 23 gave his all and then some, whether for the good of the team or for first-time visitors that had never seen him play in person. In Jordan's professional career, he missed 13,156 baskets and, by example, he showed how not to let past failures hinder his future performances. He was the first one to practice and the last one to leave as he struggled to make his weaknesses his strengths. This exploration of Jordan's superhuman focus gives a keen insight into his psyche as he uses discipline, determination, dedication, teamwork, fear, disappointment and failure to make himself and those around him both physically and mentally strong." - Dwayne E. Leslie, Box Office Magazine

Coach Carter (2005) Starring Samuel L. Jackson

"This film gives full weight to public opinion in the communities where they're set - places where the public's interest in secondary education seems entirely focused on sports, where coaches are more important than teachers, where scores are more important than grades. Coach Carter wants to change all that. He walks into a gymnasium ruled by loud, arrogant, disrespectful student jocks, and commands attention with the fierceness of his attitude. He makes rules. He requires the students to sign a contract, promising to maintain a decent grade-point average as the price of being on the team. His most dramatic decision was to lock the gymnasium, forfeit games and endanger the team's title chances after some of his players refused to live up to the terms of the contract. The community of course was outraged that a coach would put grades above winning games; for them, the future for the student athletes lies in the NBA, not education. Given the odds against making it in the NBA (dramatically demonstrated in the great documentary Hoop Dreams), this reasoning is like considering the lottery a better bet than working for a living." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Glory Road (2006) Starring Josh Lucas, Jon Voight

"This film is about racism in American sports, and how coach Don Haskins and his players on the 1965-66 basketball team from Texas Western University made a breakthrough comparable to when Jackie Robinson was hired by the Brooklyn Dodgers. In Texas at that time, we learn, college basketball teams had been integrated, but there was an informal rule that you never played more than one black player at home, two on the road or three if you were behind. After Texas Western won the 1966 NCAA championship with an all-black team on the court, defeating an all-white Kentucky team, the rules were rewritten, and modern college and professional basketball began." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

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