The best basketball movies of all time for a slam-dunk night of streaming

Documentarian Steve James’s emotionally supercharged fly-and-the-wall film is not just a great basketball doc, but a classic doc all round. It follows two aspiring NBA stars from the Chicago projects, William Gates and Arthur Agee, from prodigy status at high-school to private school and then a collision with the raw realities of pro sport. Infamously, the Oscars was not familiar with this film’s game, failing to nominate it for the Best Documentary award it would surely have won. These days, you can hear Agee and Gates on their own podcast.

Ron Shelton’s street-ball comedy. Something like The Color of Money for the hip-hop generation, it’s charged by the bickering chemistry between Wesley Snipes, as slick-talking blacktop grifter Sidney Deane, and Woody Harrelson as his paleface ringer teammate, Billy Hoyle. But the cast is really a big three: Rosie Perez is equally electric as Hoyle’s take-no-shit, aspiring Jeopardy! contestant girlfriend. Let’s just pretend the 2023 Jack Harlow remake doesn’t exist.

Here’s what happens when Teen Wolf becomes ‘middle-aged wolf’. Gene Hackman is in superbly grizzled form as Norman Dale, a college basketball coach with a checkered past who washes up at an Indiana high-school and starts taking names in the pursuit of glory. Suffice to say, the Hoosier State doesn’t take to his courtside methods. Dennis Hopper turns in an Oscar-nominated turn (amazingly, one of only two) as an alcoholic coach with a touching redemption arc, and Jerry Goldsmith hits a three with his daring, electronic score. 

When he’s not at Madison Square Garden watching the Knicks, Spike Lee is indulging his other passion: filmmaking. Those twin loves come together perfectly in this high-top-wearing family drama. Dripping bad attitude, Denzel Washington plays an ex-con freed by a basketball-loving prison governor to persuade his gifted son (Ray Allen) to pick ‘the right college’ to play for. Sure, America loves basketball, but enough to free criminals? The opening credits, a glorious expression of America’s love affair with the game set to Aaron Copland’s brassy score, suggest… well, yes.

Directed by William Friedkin, this college hoops drama bombed at the box office and with critics, but its reputation has since done a 180, coming to be seen as a trenchant critique of the ‘win at any cost’ mentality of American sports. Nick Nolte is a struggling basketball coach at a fictional LA university who finds himself at the centre of a pay-to-play scandal – a major deal in the era before NIL agreements. The film also functions as a pseudo-historical document, showcasing a young, lithe Shaquille O’Neal in his debut acting role, alongside his future Orlando Magic teammate, Anfernee ‘Penny’ Hardaway. 

Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps play LA neighbours-turned-sweethearts united by a love of the game in Gina Prince-Bythewood’s slam dunk of a debut. Structured, like the sport itself, into quarters, it spans 12 years of their respective lives, charting a rivalry that eventually blossoms into romance. Lathan carries its women-can-ball-too message with the assurance of a point guard on a fast break, and Epps, having a sadly fleeting Hollywood moment, brings twinkly charm and equal athleticism. The result is spiky, funny and genuine – a film to fall hard for, even 25 years on. 

Although better remembered for its soundtrack - specifically the Warren G classic ‘Regulate’ – this urban drama, about a high school basketball prospect struggling to juke the corrupting influences surrounding him, stands out for a few reasons. Written by New Jack City screenwriter Barry Michael Cooper, it exudes a gritty, streetwise authenticity. And the music is electrifying, highlighting a raft of ’90s West Coast rap talent. Most of all, it has Tupac Shakur, in one of his handful of acting roles, burning a hole in the screen as menacing drug dealer Birdie Sheppard. 

Steven Soderbergh’s career of genre dart-throws was bound to land on a sports movie eventually, and like most everything else he’s tried his hand at, the resulting experiment is an engulfing success. In his second film shot entirely on an iPhone, Soderbergh follows an NBA agent (Moonlight’s Andre Holland) as he desperately tries to save his job during a lockout. It’s an incisive look at the ‘game within the game’ of professional sports, and features interviews with real-life players Reggie Jackson, Donovan Mitchell and Karl-Anthony Towns about their early experiences in the league.

This manga-to-anime adaptation is a reminder that Japan takes its b-ball pretty damn seriously too. Writer-turned-filmmaker Takehiko Inoue transplants his own mega-selling comic series ‘Slam Dunk’ onto the screen in a soulful coming-of-age story that follows scrawny point guard Ryota over the course of one key game against elite high-school opponents. Regular flashbacks add emotional depth to the do-or-die on-court action, while the hand-drawn animation captures the staccato drama of the game beautifully.  

Ben Affleck was going through it when he made this scruffy underdog tale: recently divorced, in rehab, with his career in a lull. That’s to say, he clearly knows his character, a down-and-out construction worker handed a ticket to redemption when he’s asked to coach the basketball team at his old high school, where he was once a star with pro potential. You can guess what happens at just about every beat, but Affleck brings a lived-in authenticity to the role that makes the cliches cut close to the heart.

Unfortunately, the presence of Kevin Garnett isn’t enough to qualify Uncut Gems for this list, but as movies featuring Adam Sandler interacting with NBA players go, this Netflix dramedy is a worthy consolation. His schlubby charm is on full display as Stanley Sugerman, a slumping basketball scout whose career is reinvigorated by a promising recruit, played by Spanish star Juancho Hernangomez. A number of other pro-ballers appear and acquit themselves well, especially Minnesota Timberwolves phenom Anthony Edwards as a trash-talking draft prospect.

In which Gus Van Sant essentially redoes Good Will Hunting as the story of a reclusive author mentoring a young basketball prodigy with hidden writing talent. In this case, it’s newcomer Rob Brown in the Matt Damon role, impressively holding his own against Sean Connery as the agoraphobic Pulitzer-winner who takes him under his wing. Although it’s mostly remembered for one line, it delivers a rather moving message about freeing oneself from internalised fears – though it still culminates in The Big Game, where the ultimate fate of the protagonist is determined by a pair of free throws.

‘An astrological disco sports extravaganza’, or so exclaims the trailer, this cocaine fever dream is the definitive cult film of the basketball movie subgenre. Dr J himself, Julius Erving, is Moses Guthrie, the frustrated star of the floundering Pittsburgh Pythons. The solution? Astrology, duh! Surrounding Guthrie entirely with fellow pisces, the team transforms into a fusion of the Harlem Globetrotters and the Village People, beating opponents with high-flying dunks, fancy passing and, uh, disco dancing. It’s utterly bonkers, but captures something about the era – namely, that everyone in both Hollywood and the NBA was on a lot of drugs. 

If you need to elevate a made-for-teens sports flick above its many cliches, call Samuel L Jackson. To be fair, the man he embodies here, high school basketball coach Ken Carter, actually exists, and in 1999 made headlines when he prohibited his team from playing due to poor grades. Still, if it wasn’t for Jackson’s commitment, it’d come off as just another faux-inspirational melodrama about a stern authority figure administering tough love to a bunch of troubled kids. It is that, but Jackson makes you believe – and the kids, including a debuting Channing Tatum, may even make you a bit misty. 

Before becoming a well-regarded street poet and writer of the punk anthem ‘People Who Died’, Jim Carroll was a star basketball player at New York’s elite Trinity School, whose life swiftly descended into a whorl of drugs, crime and prostitution following the death of his best friend and sexual abuse at the hands of his coach. Leonardo DiCaprio, in one of his earliest film roles, portrays Carroll in director Scott Kalvert’s grim biopic, in which athletic prowess is not a portal to salvation but a symbol of what’s lost once an addict makes it to the other side.

Basketball’s answer to the ‘misfits in action’ comedy a la Bad News Bears and Slap Shot isn’t nearly as successful, but its zany energy makes it worthwhile. Gabe Kaplan is a hardcore hoops head from New York who scores a dream job coaching at a small Nevada college and recruits a crew of local ne’er-do-wells to make up his squad, including Knicks legend Bernard King. Note: if you accidentally end up watching the freewheeling documentary of the Portland Trail Blazers’ 1977 season, also called Fast Break, you won’t be terribly disappointed.

Turns out, werewolves are just as distracted by balls as their domesticated cousins. Yes, it’s the movie where Michael J Fox turns into a lycanthrope, and rather than ripping an entire high school gymnasium to shreds, opts to tear up the court instead. Sure, it’s silly. But Fox, then just off Back to the Future, has enough boyish charisma to make it work. And besides, have you ever seen Lon Chaney dunk from the free throw line? Didn’t think so.

All right, look: is it the best basketball movie? Clearly not. Is it even truly about basketball? At its core, what it’s really about is celebrity branding and corporate IP, which does reflect something about pro sports as it exists today… but no, not really. Is it the most famous basketball movie, though? Absolutely. Lebron James couldn’t even complete his GOAT résumé without starring in a remake. So it’d be dishonest to dismiss it completely. And hey, Bill Murray and Yosemite Sam are pretty good in it, too.