Basketball: A Cinematic History | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

Bas­ket­ball: A Cin­e­mat­ic History

02 Jul 2025

Words by Taylor Burns

A collage of basketball players in movies with a blue and orange colour gradient.
A collage of basketball players in movies with a blue and orange colour gradient.

Amer­i­ca’s favourite game involv­ing high-stakes hoops has a rich and var­ied pres­ence on screen.

Few sub­gen­res are more mal­leable than the bas­ket­ball movie. Be it the hard­wood gleam of a sta­di­um game, the slick black­top of ama­teur street­ball, or the grub­by busi­ness behind-the-scenes, Hol­ly­wood has always been home­court for this most cin­e­mat­ic of sports. It’s a matchup that dates back to the Silent era, when MGM put out The Fair Co-Ed, a vehi­cle for star Mar­i­on Davies. She plays a female play­er who joins the col­lege team to get clos­er to her coach, a set-up which marked the genre ear­ly as one fit for oth­er for­mu­las: in this case the screwy roman­tic-com­e­dy, a des­ig­na­tion that led to pro­duc­er William Ran­dolph Hearst denounc­ing it as cheap. But the film was a hit, and the cin­e­ma of bas­ket­ball has been com­ing at a steady clip ever since. 

The sport has been espe­cial­ly preva­lent at the cin­e­ma in the recent past, with High Fly­ing BirdThe Way Back, Uncut GemsHus­tleSpace Jam: A New Lega­cyCham­pi­onsAirThe First Slam DunkRise, and a White Men Can’t Jump remake all being released since 2019. As a list, it’s one of vari­able qual­i­ty but mul­ti­fac­eted method, from Soderbergh’s con­tin­ued exper­i­men­ta­tion with form – High Fly­ing Bird was shot on an iPhone 8 fit­ted with an anamor­phic lens – to Air, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s two-hour advert for a shoe (an enjoy­able film that is also evil garbage). 

Com­bine that list above with the pan­dem­ic lock­down-influ­enced spike the sport received with The Last Dance, and you have a genre fash­ion­able like it was in the 1990s, when a Jor­dan-inspired Chica­go Bulls pro­pelled bas­ket­ball back into the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion. Back then, in a stretch rough­ly syn­chro­nous with the Bulls’ peri­od of dom­i­nance, a seri­ous list of bas­ket­ball films were released, all of which resist­ed the easy rags-to-rich­es pre­scrip­tion of the organ­ised-sports pic­ture: White Men Can’t JumpBlue ChipsHoop DreamsAbove The RimThe Bas­ket­ball Diaries, and He Got Game

Received wis­dom has it that sports films have to fol­low a for­mu­la, though, and this is still true of a great many bas­ket­ball movies: The Way Back is Coach Carter is Glo­ry Road is Hoosiers. All of these films hew to a hero­ic struc­ture when the teams in ques­tion start win­ning bas­ket­ball games under the tute­lage of a flawed but inspi­ra­tional leader. 

But for every against-all-odds depic­tion of local sport­ing tri­umph, there is an exam­ple of the genre bend­ing to accom­mo­date some­thing greater. Indeed, the game’s recruit­ment method – most­ly young, black, poor ath­letes lured to elite col­leges under the aus­pice of mak­ing the NBA, some­times known col­lo­qui­al­ly as Nev­er Broke Again – ensures that the bas­ket­ball movie is a nat­ur­al artis­tic instru­ment for exam­in­ing race and wealth in Amer­i­ca. The best exam­ples are exco­ri­at­ing about it. Take that 90s list: Hoop Dreams is bleak on the path African-Amer­i­can teenagers are required to tread at most­ly-white schools if they want to even be in earshot of the NBA. It played at Sun­dance and caused a mini con­tro­ver­sy when it wasn’t nom­i­nat­ed for the Acad­e­my Award for Best documentary. 

Blue Chips is a fic­tion­alised account of the lar­ce­nous back­door nego­ti­a­tions involved when top insti­tu­tions want to sign the hottest tal­ent, with Nick Nolte play­ing Pete Bell, a once-great coach try­ing to resist the ille­gal urge to bribe and poach prospect play­ers. Rival uni­ver­si­ties are leav­ing him behind, see, and doing so by offer­ing the best youth-lev­el play­ers unimag­in­able wealth and a way out of their work­ing-class home­towns. One espe­cial­ly uneasy scene sees a room of white rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the best bas­ket­ball col­leges open­ly auc­tion a young black play­er, the hor­ri­ble par­al­lels of which do not need expli­cat­ing here. Bell vio­lent­ly resists – there is a clas­sic Nolte melt­down upon a play­er telling a staff of old school coach­es that thir­ty-grand should secure his ser­vices – then caves, then expos­es the cor­rup­tion at great per­son­al cost. 

Two men taking on a basketball court, surrounded by trees.
Paramount
Nick Nolte and Larry Bird in Blue Chips (1994)

White Men Can’t Jump is about as grace­ful as pop film­mak­ing can be. On the sur­face it’s a touch for­mu­la­ic – the bas­ket­ball movie as bud­dy com­e­dy, with Woody Har­rel­son and Wes­ley Snipes bick­er­ing in pur­suit of street­ball great­ness. But there’s a unique grace to the game’s form that makes it per­fect when trans­plant­ed to the cin­e­ma, and despite its intend­ed stand­ing as com­e­dy box office fare, the film is the purest dis­til­la­tion of the flu­id beau­ty of basketball’s move­ment that I can name. The con­fig­u­ra­tion of a clas­sic jump­shot; pirou­et­ting cir­cus pass­es; lay-ups that kiss the back­board and fall through the net, bare­ly both­er­ing it: bas­ket­ball just looks right when it’s pro­ject­ed big in a way that oth­er sports don’t. You only need to look at any instance of foot­ball on screen to under­stand that sim­ply repli­cat­ing the action in film form won’t cut it; there is yet to be an accu­rate depic­tion of the game in over a cen­tu­ry of cin­e­ma. But basketball’s action can be iso­lat­ed, as in White Men Can’t Jump, where Snipes and Har­rel­son trade sim­ple, per­fect-form jumpers for five min­utes, the cam­era God’s‑eye as it watch­es the ball arc through emp­ty air and into the clank­ing met­al of a chain­mail net. 

Else­where, you only need to read the title to under­stand that White Men Can’t Jump is a provo­ca­tion act­ing as a joke, and while the film does cli­max with Har­rel­son even­tu­al­ly dunk­ing the ball to win the game, it remains that woven with­in the cliched archi­tec­ture of the film is a loaded back-and-forth – deployed as rapid repar­tee between the leads – about the race rela­tions that dom­i­nate any seri­ous off-court dis­cus­sion about bas­ket­ball. The remake is of course risible.

Not all of the 90s out­put was as vital and sav­age, how­ev­er; if it seemed harm­less at the time – and was a child’s gate­way to the game in the man­ner of Air Bud and Like Mike after it – Space Jam pre­saged so much about where both bas­ket­ball and cin­e­ma were going, a puerile endeav­our more con­cerned with mon­ey and merch, that even­tu­al­ly reached its nadir with Air, which knows how con­temptible its fawn­ing over naked avarice is because it feels the need to add a note at the end stat­ing that Phil Knight has donat­ed $2 bil­lion of his sneak­er mon­ey to char­i­ty. (What it leaves out is that this is most­ly to his own char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tions and that it comes in the form of appre­ci­at­ed Nike stock.)

If this train­er-talk seems beside the point, then know that the mod­ern game is reliant on its appar­el endorse­ments, and that wrong deci­sions of this sort can be bad for your career, as shown in Lenny Cooke – the bas­ket­ball film the Safdie broth­ers made before Uncut Gems – where we see Lenny show up at an Adi­das train­ing camp in a pair of Jor­dans. This is one of a num­ber of neg­li­gent moves on Lenny and his mon­ey-hun­gry entourage of wish-promis­ing agents’ part, and the play­er (who was rat­ed the best young star in the coun­try) ends the film a decade lat­er watch­ing his rival LeBron James on TV. Lebron – the star of Space Jam 2 in the way Jor­dan was for the orig­i­nal – is still play­ing today, undoubt­ed­ly one of the great­est play­ers of all time. But Lenny Cooke was said to be as good as him, per­haps even bet­ter. The tapes of a young Lenny which make up the first half of the film were shot in 2001 by Adam Shop­ko­rn, designed to be a text on the ascen­sion of a great young tal­ent. Instead, the Safdies picked up the footage a decade lat­er, and com­plet­ed the film­ing of a very dif­fer­ent doc­u­men­tary. As crit­ic John Sem­ley writes: Hoop Dreams was meant to be a warn­ing against all of this: the exploita­tion of young black ath­letes, the false promis­es of boot­strap­ping upward mobil­i­ty through sports, the lies that dan­gle on the stick of Amer­i­can nationhood.”

No dis­cus­sion about the cin­e­ma of bas­ket­ball would be com­plete with­out some­thing on Spike Lee, the sport’s most ardent film-world fan since Jack Nichol­son stopped being seen court­side at every Lak­ers home game (Nichol­son made his own bas­ket­ball film in 1970, his rau­cous direc­to­r­i­al debut Dri­ve, He Said). 

The recent NBA play­offs again saw Spike cheer­ing on his beloved Knicks at Madi­son Square Gar­den, still alter­nate­ly rag­ing and rejoic­ing like he was seen doing in Reg­gie Miller vs The New York Knicks, a 30-for-30 doc­u­men­tary depict­ing the Knicks/​Indiana Pac­ers rival­ry that has at times seen Lee cast in a more promi­nent role than some of the play­ers. His is a true devo­tion, though, meld­ing sport and art at mul­ti­ple times through­out his career, includ­ing direct­ing the com­mer­cials for those first Nike-backed Jor­dan sneak­ers and a vital doc­u­men­tary for ESPN called Kobe Doin’ Work, a day-in-the-life type thing that has become espe­cial­ly poignant in the years since Kobe Bryant’s death in 2020.

Most impor­tant­ly, Lee direct­ed He Got Game, in which he cast NBA play­er Ray Allen in the lead role oppo­site Den­zel Wash­ing­ton. Real life play­ers had often shown-up in bas­ket­ball movies – Blue Chips had Shaquille O’Neal’s name on the poster the same size as Nick Nolte’s – but in truth these were as sup­port­ing roles in small­er films, or stunts. If He Got Game did have a prece­dent, it was in Corn­bread, Earl and Me, an under­seen but influ­en­tial film that starred NBA rook­ie-of-the-year Jamaal Wilkes as the tit­u­lar Corn­bread, gunned down by white police­man in a case of mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty. But Lee’s film puts an ama­teur on screen for about as much time as its star, and much of it hinges on Allen’s abil­i­ty to go one-on-one with Wash­ing­ton, the estranged father of a fam­i­ly freight­ed with the tragedy that land­ed him in prison. 

Denzel Washington wearing a red jersey holds a basketball on a blue basketball court. Two men stand behind him.
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
Denzel Washington in He Got Game (1998)

No one is claim­ing that Ray Allen is per­form­ing mir­a­cles in He Got Game (his char­ac­ter is lit­er­al­ly called Jesus, mind), but he holds his own against Den­zel, and that’s not noth­ing. This is tes­ta­ment to the idea that bas­ket­ball play­ers make for nat­ur­al on-screen actors: through an alche­my of their size and pres­ence and charis­ma, it can be said that the NBA has pro­duced more suc­cess­ful crossover act­ing per­for­mances than most oth­er dis­ci­plines. The apoth­e­o­sis of this is Kevin Gar­nett, play­ing a fic­tion­alised ver­sion of him­self in Uncut GemsBig Tick­et” every bit as dom­i­nant in the mid­dle of Safdie Broth­ers mania as he was on court – but you can also point to Antho­ny Edwards (cur­rent NBA star du jour) and Juan Her­nangómez (Euro­pean jour­ney­man) in Hus­tle, both of whom put in assured dra­mat­ic performances.

Hus­tle stars anoth­er celebri­ty bas­ket­ball fan, Adam San­dler, in a return-to-seri­ous-act­ing show­case, but it was of course Uncut Gems that start­ed the move­ment. I’ve seen the Safdies’ film referred to as bas­ket­ball-adja­cent, which would put it in a list with The Bas­ket­ball Diaries and The Last Pic­ture Show et al, the sport as scaf­fold­ing on which a non-bas­ket­ball nar­ra­tive is hung. But any film as invest­ed in the par­tic­u­lars of the NBA play­offs as Uncut Gems is a bas­ket­ball movie prop­er, not least when the major­i­ty of the dia­logue is made up of the minu­ti­ae of US sports bet­ting, a for­eign lan­guage of par­leys and under/​overs and vig­or­ish and mon­ey lines and spread. 

This ille­gal activ­i­ty runs through so much of bas­ket­ball and its rep­re­sen­ta­tion on screen (the side­line bets of White Men Can’t Jump; the points-shav­ing scan­dal in Blue Chips; the owed debt that stalks James Caan in The Gam­bler), even more so than in the cin­e­ma of base­ball or the NFL – sports which out­rank bas­ket­ball in terms of nation­al pas­time sta­tus and are com­men­su­rate­ly sen­ti­men­tal about it. 

If much of the above has focused on the seri­ous and ugly side of the sport, know that there is love here too: Spike’s bas­ket­ball-across-Amer­i­ca mon­tage that opens He Got Game; Pete Bell end­ing Blue Chips by play­ing a pick­up game with some pre­teen city kids, his pas­sion not com­plete­ly destroyed by an insti­tu­tion des­per­ate for Rhodes schol­ars who can dunk”; Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Love & Bas­ket­ball, a beau­ti­ful and authen­tic film that splits itself up into four quar­ters like they are the chang­ing sea­sons (and is the rare exam­ple of a black female direc­tor depict­ing a black female player’s career), slip­ping ques­tions about gen­der and iden­ti­ty and per­for­mance and obses­sion into what is oth­er­wise a stu­dio sports picture. 

Placed against the more unholy aspects of the game, these exam­ples show the uneasy dual­i­ty of the bas­ket­ball movie, and, by exten­sion, the sport itself. One young player’s heart­break is another’s cre­ation myth. A coach can lose it all except for what counts. A pair of play­ers wary of the other’s eth­nic­i­ty com­bine har­mo­nious­ly on court and for­get that not so long ago, they swapped racial slurs. That last illus­tra­tion comes from White Men Can’t Jump, a film where­in trash-talk­ing sub­sumes poet­ry as a street­baller invokes John Keats and says that a thing of beau­ty is a joy for­ev­er.” As an epi­taph to the his­to­ry of the bas­ket­ball film, I can think of none more fitting. 

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