Basketball Flicks to Click

5. The Air up There (1994): We’ll start with the Kevin Bacon Degree of Separation at zero.  I have no good reason why The Air up There should make the top-5, but I just have a greater emotional connection to it than the movies that ended up as Honorable Mentions.

4. He Got Game (1998): This was the movie where Spike Lee asked Ray Allen to go toe-to-toe with Denzel Washington in an acting showcase.  Ray Allen won.  He had to for this movie to work.  And Allen wasn’t just a good actor for a basketball player, he was a good actor, period.

3. Hoop Dreams (1994): This was the movie I saw last weekend that started this whole "Flicks to Click" fiasco.  Even with a three-hour run time, I was never bored by this movie.  There was so much up in the air at all times that no matter where they cut to, the action was always moving.  I feel like Hoop Dreams was a cautionary tale, but at the same time, I can’t really imagine the situation changing much even nearly twenty years since the film debuted.  Inner city kids still bank on basketball as their ticket out of the ghetto.  It’s like St. Joseph’s coach Gene Pingatore said, ''One goes out the door, and another one comes in the door.  That's what it's all about.''

2. Blue Chips (1994): What intrigued me about this movie going in was that it was Shaquille O’Neal’s acting debut.  That’s all I knew about it; Shaq was in it.  I had no idea that I was in store for such gripping drama about a Division-I college basketball recruiting scandal.  (Those are the type of movie experiences I treasure most—when I go into a movie with absolutely no expectations and am completely blown away.)  Nick Nolte plays an old school coach pressured to regain his former winning ways, but the new school of recruiting has passed him by.  Nolte must adapt or die trying.  I encourage you to check it out.  Also of note, Shaq is joined onscreen by his then Orlando Magic teammate, Penny Hardaway.

1. Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. The New York Knicks (2010): Although 2010 was a big year for documentaries with titles like GasLand, Waiting for ‘Superman,’ and Inside Job floating around, I didn’t really see any of them.  My few experiences with 2010 documentaries came through ESPN’s “30 for 30” series of thirty filmmakers telling thirty personal, undersold stories of the past thirty years.  Dan Klores’ Winning Time chronicles the NBA’s lean years between Michael Jordan’s first retirement and return.  There was a void in the basketball landscape to which the rivalry between Reggie Miller’s Indiana Pacers and John Starks’ New York Knicks provided operatic drama.  Klores’ documentary told their trash-talkin’ story and also wove in threads about Spike Lee, Patrick Ewing, and Reggie’s sister, Cheryl Miller.  I’d say you wouldn’t have to know much about sports at all to be engaged and entertained by this film, a triumph for any sports documentary.

Honorable Mention: Kobe Doin’ Work, Celtic Pride, Space Jam

Off: Hoosiers, Eddie

What do you think?  How did I do?  What other basketball movies should I see?

--from Eric

(images in order come from imdb.com, itpworld.wordpress.com, listal.com, twynkle.com, and popmatters.com)