Best Basketball Movies?

More NBA players than ANY. MOVIE. EVER.

White Men Can't Jump and He Got Game are great. I used to watch Celtic Pride all the time too, that was one I rented about 10 times from Blockbuster, I probably should have just bought it.

Hoop Dreams is great too, and I'm friends with the son of the guy who made it so I've been able to pick his brain about it a few times.

I thought I'd be the only one to mention Celtic Pride. It certainly wasn't a critical success.

Celtic Pride was one of the first DVDs I bought. I love that movie.

Plot and dialogue aside, I think the nature of the sport works against basketball movies at times because the action on the court sometimes looks really staged or it's easy to see where different takes have been used when there's a final game winning shot, especially when that shot is taken along the baseline and then a closeup shows the ball going in, with the arc and sometimes even the direction the ball is coming from not matching up with the previous shot.

I believe in Blue Chips they played a number of actual games, then strung the footage together in an attempt to avoid that.

Actually, I think Eddie did the same thing.

It definitely worked in Blue Chips. Having a number of NBA players making cameos probably helped as well.

Looked it up on IMDB, and am posting because I'm bored:

For the filming of Pete's team versus Bobby Knight's, the filmmakers had the teams play two games, from which they took bits and pieces to assemble what is seen in the film. Unlike the screen version, Knight's team prevailed in both games.

I think that's really the best way to do sports movies. Just play actual games, then edit the footage to get what you want. Maybe stage the "last second game winner" if you really want it, although you could just tell the guys "game is tied, this is the winner" and have it play out a few times, and just throw in a shot of it going in even if the real shot didn't.

The problem with sports movies is that they are all terrible and almost all work from the same concept. In the end, sports just aren't that interesting when dramatized.

The endings are usually predictable, though the same could be said of other genres as well. Action movies use just as many cliches and usually turn out with the good guys coming out on top.

I wouldn't say action movies are good either. If anything they're spectacles. And they have far more things they can do to be that, than a sports movie ever can be. A dunk or jumper is only interesting when it matters, and sports movies are so bad, they fail to sell the reason for it mattering.

I suppose they cater to a select crowd that just wants to enjoy the main "hero" characters overcoming the cliched team of "bad guys" (Dodgeball, for example) and the more the odds are against them, the better. I've read that Dodgeball's original ending would have seen the Average Joe's lose but test audiences reacted poorly to it.

Andrew, how exactly was the original ending suppose to go?

Plot and dialogue aside, I think the nature of the sport works against basketball movies at times because the action on the court sometimes looks really staged or it's easy to see where different takes have been used when there's a final game winning shot, especially when that shot is taken along the baseline and then a closeup shows the ball going in, with the arc and sometimes even the direction the ball is coming from not matching up with the previous shot.

the thing that i mostly hate is when they use the same shot or move over and over and try to make it seem like several different shots. a big example of this would be above the rim.

Andrew, how exactly was the original ending suppose to go?

It's been a while since I watched the DVD but there's a summary on Wikipedia which is as follows:

In a DVD extra, director Rawson Marshall Thurber shows a joke "director's cut" with the movie ending in the Average Joes' defeat. In that version, the line of dialogue "They came here for absolutely nothing" was the last of the movie, immediately preceding the credits roll. Thurber states in the DVD commentary that, due to poor screen testing, the studio forced him to replace that ending with one mandated by the studio, which was the one seen in theaters. Thurber further states in the DVD commentary that he was so incensed by the studio's actions that he "left the film for a week," and that he continues to believe that depicting the defeat of the Average Joes was "the right way to end the movie!"

Thurber has also said that in the early drafts of the script, the Average Joes did lose, but the plot concept was "balanced" by one depicting Steve the Pirate returning from an absence with a large amount of money he had won at Treasure Island after a person driving through the Fremont Street Experience (That particular section of Fremont Street is closed to traffic in the real world), played by Thurber, told him to go back there. Thurber's disapproval is further reinforced by the treasure chest filled with money that Peter wins saying "Deus Ex Machina" (literally: "God out of a machine") which is Latin for a nonsensical plot device used to resolve a story with no regard to its logic. In Greek theatre, actors portraying Olympian gods would literally descend on apparatus and dictate terms or events to resolve difficult situations, hence the pejorative term for contrived resolutions. Its purpose was to show how much the director disliked the new "happy" ending. Also, the part where Ben Stiller's character criticizes the ending could also be Thurber getting out his opinion to the viewers.

Above The Rim is the best! deep story and great acting and good b ball action

Coach Carter is my vote here. Since it is based on a true story and it almost made me cry because of the ending and the theme song it fits the movie(i think).

Andrew, Wow reading that, makes me rethink how Dodgeball would've ended and believe me. It sucks

Dei, In a way it's the theme song for the movie because it shows what the true meaning of the movie is about.

Andrew, Wow reading that, makes me rethink how Dodgeball would've ended and believe me. It sucks

Which ending do you mean? The original idea or the one that made the final cut?

That alternate ending sounds a lot funnier than the real one.

I think he was saying that the "official" ending sucked.

:? That alternate ending sounds a lot funnier than the real one.

I think it would have made the movie feel like a waste of time though (for those who don't see it as such as it is); I suppose it might have made it a "true" underdog story in that the underdog doesn't always triumph but the proposed ending after "They came here for absolutely nothing" would have been extremely abrupt and frankly, the whole appeal of underdog stories is that they somehow come out on top.

Had the Average Joes lost, balancing it out with Steve the Pirate winning enough money to save the gym and making fun of Deus Ex Machina endings in the process, it would have worked out alright.

I meant the "original" because I don't think a "true underdog story" would end with the team losing..

the only thing that could have made dodgebal better is if they replaced all the actors with some sexy as hell female strippers and let them play for real in the nude. short of that change the movie would have sucked no matter what

Me thinks Mr. Sauru needs some action from Mrs. Sauru.

Me thinks Mr. Sauru needs some action from Mrs. Sauru.

/me agrees

Hoosiers