Basketball is one of the most spectacular games in the world. Yet, during the pandemic, there are not as many amateur games on as usual. If you want to feel the amateur basketball atmosphere, you can go to Playamo now or watch documentaries on this topic. These 3 basketball documentary films will surely satisfy your hoop cravings. It is worth noting, we didn’t count the Jordan documentaries Airtime or his latest Netflix The Last Dance as they are in a stratosphere of their own like all of Jordan’s accolades!
Hoop Dreams, 1994
This movie shows the game as the only means for most African-American teenagers to get out in public. The game itself, though it takes up most of the film, increasingly recedes into the background, giving way to social problems and an incredibly colorful portrayal of the unhappy realities of poor neighborhoods. It is no coincidence that Hoop dreams was very warmly received by critics, winning more than one prize and being included in lists of the best documentaries.
Reality and cinema merged into one. The brutal reality documented in the film didn’t leave the guys in life either. After the shooting, Ajie had his half-brother and father killed, and Gates had his older brother killed. When the movie came out, both were already in college, and the NCAA prohibited their families from receiving filming royalties, threatening that otherwise they would lose their scholarships and amateur status.
Fab Five, 2011
The film covers two years of the Fab Five, a University of Michigan brigade that became a true phenomenon in the cultural life of the USA.
Fab Five is the highest-rated documentary in ESPN history. The resonance of the film was enormous. But the most unexpected consequence was that Kendall Gill and Stephan Bardot disagreed that it was the Fab Five who changed basketball fashion. In their opinion, it was they who did it, playing for the University of Illinois team.
Chris Webber refused to take part in the shoot without explanation, which spawned more than one version. As Jalen Rose said, everything that happened at the university still gnaws at him so much that he refuses to address it in any way. Webber also didn’t attend the 2013 NCAA Finals, where the University of Michigan went after all these years.
Once Brothers, 2010
Drazen Petrovic RIP, and Vlade Divac. The unique development of the relationship between these two NBA stars, superimposed over their country’s history, was itself destined to become a movie phenomenon. For Divac himself, the most important thing in the film is not so much its philosophical message, but simply its message of life: after so many years, it was important to close the infamous flag moment and reconcile with the Croats, who hate him almost more than they hate Serbian politicians.
Silly conventions did get in the way of what was most important. The significance of the story was mostly felt by those to whom it was not addressed. In Croatia, the film was looked at very critically. Firstly, they began to look for factual inaccuracies. Secondly, they started looking for facts that would debunk the whole Divac legend. For example, one version claimed that his friendship with Petrovic ended not because of the flag incident and subsequent comments, but because Divac stepped over Drazen in the Lakers vs. Nets game. In fact, they were never really best friends at all.
Don’t miss these other top basketball movies, like He Got Game or White Men Can’t Jump….
