The 40 Best Basketball Movies Of All Time Ranked

1927's "My Fair Co-Ed" — also known as "The Varsity Girl" — is generally considered the first-ever basketball movie (per SilentEra.com). Considering basketball itself had only been invented 36 years prior (via Springfield College), that's a pretty quick turnover. But thinly-veiled sports metaphors aside, basketball has clearly had a role in the world of movies for almost as long as movies themselves have existed. Due to the dynamic and quick-moving nature of the sport, it's not hard to see why it makes for the perfect backdrop for an exciting film. Whereas, say, a movie about baseball or golf needs to rely on a lot of off-the-field drama to keep audiences engaged, basketball movies can have long stretches that take place on the court or blacktop and it makes for as thrilling a set piece as a car chase or a fight scene.

When considering the best basketball movies, a mix of total fiction, full-on documentary, and everything in between has to be included. There's also room for movies that are about the NBA, the NCAA, and other organized leagues, as well as street ball or even a version of the sport that pits aliens against anthropomorphic bunnies. In addition, there are varying movies that are entirely about basketball, and movies in which the sport serves mostly as a backdrop to events and relationships largely adjacent to it.

Just as every player is different, every fan is different, and every era is different, every basketball movie is different — but the best ones all share a certain reverence for the game and the people who love it. 

While the "movie based on a true story of an underdog team who overcomes adversity to win in the end" formula has been done approximately 10,000 times already, there's a reason why it's a well that is returned to so often. It works, and it makes you feel good. In the case of "Hurricane Season," Forest Whitaker stars as a Louisiana high school basketball coach tasked with overseeing a team of students from five different schools who have been displaced because of Hurricane Katrina. 

With many of the students being former competitors, there's obviously some challenge in getting them to play as a team, not to mention just trying to get back to the normalcy of something like school sports after the devastation that Katrina caused. The team ends up winning the championship — and later, an ESPY award — which teaches not only the kids but the community the importance of coming together after a tragedy. "Hurricane Season" doesn't do much to shake up the aforementioned formula, but it's still a story that's likely to inspire anyone who hears it.

Come to see Ed O'Neill prove that he's a solid actor who didn't get the career he probably deserved because people couldn't un-see him as Al Bundy, and stay to see a top-of-his-game Nick Nolte co-star alongside a then-21-year-old Shaquille O'Neal. That's the basketball drama "Blue Chips." Nolte plays Pete Bell, a college basketball coach who hasn't had a winning season in a while and is being forced to compete with other schools who are partaking in the sketchy (and illegal) practice of secretly paying top prospects to play for them. 

Bell is initially reluctant to participate in this practice, but soon finds himself almost unavoidably drawn into it, which brings top-tier prospects like Neon Boudeaux (Shaq), Butch McRae (Anfernee Hardaway), and Ricky Roe (Matt Nover) onto his squad — but also puts him in the crosshairs of sports journalist Ed (O'Neill), who suspects Bell is buying off his new all-stars and won't quit until he proves it. It's an unflinching look at the way the big business of basketball has even contaminated the game at the college level, and the disappointment of the old guard who are finding that the days of college sports purity are long gone.

Some movies aren't wall-to-wall about basketball, but still have the sport as an effective backdrop. "Just Wright" is such a movie, a charming romantic comedy starring rapper-actor Common as basketball star Scott McKnight and rapper-actor Queen Latifah as physical therapist Leslie Wright. Yes, it's part of that long line of movies where the name of one of the main characters serves as wordplay in the title. What are you gonna do?

Needless to say, McKnight ends up getting injured and needing Wright's services, and the two begin a romance that goes through all the usual beats of hitting roadblocks and falling apart before the two ultimately live happily ever after. "Just Wright" rarely colors outside of the usual romantic comedy lines, although basing it in and around the world of professional basketball does give it an interesting enough wrinkle to elevate it a touch above the middle-of-the-road rom-com it otherwise admittedly is. At the end of the day, you definitely buy the romance between the two leads, and that's really all a romantic comedy is trying to sell you.

"The Winning Season" came and went pretty quietly in 2009, the story of a down-on-his-luck divorced dad who is given a shot by his principal friend to coach a girls' varsity basketball team. It's definitely one of the more far-fetched and head-scratching premises for a sports movie — or any movie, really — but right off the bat, the ever-reliable and extremely underrated Sam Rockwell sells a conceit that probably wouldn't have worked otherwise. 

Rockwell has always had a special skill at making audiences root for characters that don't really deserve to be rooted for, and he definitely does that well in his portrayal of Bill Greaves. His relationship with his team ends up being mutually beneficial, as he helps them win while they help him reconnect with his estranged daughter. There aren't too many unexpected story beats in "The Winning Season" and it definitely could've been a little more adventurous. But to its credit, it at least isn't one of those sports movies where winning the championship automatically solves all of the personal issues of everyone involved — particularly the girls on the team.

The 1991 film "Heaven is a Playground" was in development for so long that Michael Jordan was attached to star while he was still just an up-and-comer in the NBA (via The New York Times). By 1990, when the production was finally ready to begin, Jordan was much more established and no longer interesting in appearing — something the filmmakers would eventually take Jordan to court over and lose (per The Chicago Tribune). Younger player Bo Kimble would eventually be cast in the lead role instead.

"Heaven is a Playground" follows a lawyer from the suburbs (D.B. Sweeney) who comes to bond with a group of inner-city street ball players after frequently shooting hoops with them. He and a local coach try to keep the youths on the right track, and also help them fend off the questionable intentions of an agent who comes sniffing around looking for his next big client. The movie definitely feels like the product of a film that had a long, troubled production, with a lot of jarring tonal shifts and scenes that feel like they were written at different times by different people. But there is definitely a very watchable movie in there if you can overlook the rough edges. 

There's no getting around it: the most important legacy that "Above the Rim" has left behind is its soundtrack, particularly the all-time classic hip hop track "Regulate" by Warren G and Nate Dogg. It definitely kept the movie in the public consciousness a lot longer than it would have stayed without an iconic song attached to it, and in "All-Star"/"Mystery Men" fashion, people still listen to and remember the song but have long since forgotten what movie it originally came from. 

But none of that is to say that "Above the Rim" is a bad film. In fact, it's a really good one, about a young street baller named Kyle (Duane Martin) who was signed to play in the NBA but was ultimately cut and went on to have a successful acting career instead (via BET). Kyle must decide if he wants to stay in the dangerous world of street ball or risk the violent retribution of thug Birdie (Tupac Shakur) by leaving it behind and pursuing a path to playing for Georgetown. The many basketball scenes in the film are incredibly staged and are an absolute treat to watch, which definitely elevates what would've otherwise been a merely decent dramatic flick. 

It's easy to write off the basketball comedy "Uncle Drew" because it's based on a series of commercials (via Hollywood Insider) — but a series of basketball commercials from the '90s starring a certain Chicago Bull and a certain animated bunny eventually spawned two movies, toys, video games, clothing, and much more. So we should be willing to forgive NBA all-star Kyrie Irving for trying to capture a little bit of that same magic and success.

Rather than trying to be some big-budget, special effects-intensive, intergalactic epic, "Uncle Drew" instead opts for a simple comedy with Irving reviving the titular character alongside an ensemble full of current and former NBA stars and a few comedic actors. Yes, that sounds a bit familiar — "Uncle Drew" never really bothers to go out of its way to tread any new ground or avoid tropes and clichés. But it's still an extremely charming film full of hilarious in-jokes and cameos for longtime basketball fans, and Lil Rel Howery, Nick Kroll, and Tiffany Haddish do a great job picking up the slack for the often-stiff performances from many of the real-life players.

Netflix is host to some unfairly overlooked basketball movies among their originals, seemingly released with zero fanfare and quickly buried beneath the hype of their latest action-comedy starring A-list actors or reality show full of sexy people in bathing suits. But just because a particular sports drama might not take the trending charts by storm doesn't mean it's not worth your time and attention.

"Amateur" follows Terron Forte, a 14-year-old basketball player who is clearly on the path to greatness in the sport. When an NCAA prep school begins to take notice of him, Forte soon learns that the road to NBA superstardom is an often dark one full of backdoor deals, one-sided contracts, and people more interested in how to make money off of him rather than do what's best for him. The decision to have the movie dull its edge in the home stretch and retreat into cliché heart-tugging, feel-good sports movie territory is disappointing and turns what could've been a great sports movie into a merely good one, but "Amateur" is still well worth watching.

There was a huge trend in the mid-'90s through the early-'00s of taking William Shakespeare's plays and adapting them into modern teen movies. The most well-known and successful of these was definitely "10 Things I Hate About You," the iconic 1999 high school rom-com that was loosely based on "The Taming of the Shrew" and helped to make a movie star out of Heath Ledger. His co-star, Julia Stiles, was clearly a good fit for that type of thing, as she would return for another high school retelling of a Shakespeare play two years later: "O" (aka "Othello").

The themes explored in the original story of "Othello" were still relevant in 2001, and unfortunately remain relevant to this day. Bringing the classic tale to the world of high school basketball is a clever way to modernize it, and the film handles the violence and racism in a surprisingly mature and nuanced way. All due respect to Baz Luhrmann's terrific "Romeo + Juliet," but it's nice to see a dramatic Shakespeare adaption from this era that doesn't feel like a two-hour music video. 

Going much further into the past than most basketball or sports documentaries in general typically go, "On the Shoulders of Giants" flashes all the way back to the 1930s. It focuses on an all-Black team known as the New York Renaissance, the Harlem Renaissance, or most commonly, the Rens (per Britannica). Not allowed to play in any professional leagues at the time, the Rens initially had to settle for playing an exhibition game against one of the era's best white teams, the New York Celtics aka Original Celtics (via Celtics Hub). And, no, they didn't eventually become or have any direct relation to the Boston Celtics.

Though the Rens got demolished by the Original Celtics in their initial meeting, the Rens eventually got to play more white teams and soon began racking up wins. Still, inclusion in official leagues continued to elude the Rens. Finally, in 1939, the world's first integrated professional basketball tournament was launched, allowing black and white teams to play each other for the first time outside of a purely exhibition setting. It's a story not enough people know, and this documentary — produced and co-narrated by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — is an excellent look at a groundbreaking moment in sports history. 

When that rare high school basketball player is already good enough to go straight to the NBA, he has a choice to make — go right into a professional sports career, or go to college first to both further his education and also continue to hone his skills. One such player to face this choice was Sebastian Telfair, already gracing Sports Illustrated covers and being offered lucrative endorsement deals while still trying to navigate being a high school player and student (per ESPN).

Obviously, the ending of "Through the Fire" isn't a big surprise, as it's about a real life player who had already begun his NBA career by the time the documentary was released. Still, it's hard not to get wrapped up in the anxiety and suspense of the choices Telfair has to make, at an age where he is too young to have to make such huge decisions about his life and career and have so much money already being thrown at him. It's a story that has played out many times in the history of sports, but rarely have cameras been there to capture the story as it happens. 

Another journey with a talented high school athlete who was no doubt about to become an NBA all-star, "More Than a Game" looks back at LeBron James when he was still playing at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron, Ohio. Though the team had five impressive players on its dynamite squad, James was the one who was drawing the attention of the media — Sports Illustrated had already dubbed him "The Chosen One" — and becoming a young celebrity, something that would soon become a major issue for the squad.

The movie sometimes tries too hard to squeeze itself into sports movie tropes by portraying the team as underdogs when they clearly were no such thing (per SFGate), the story it's telling is no less engaging. That we can see the beginnings of the career of one of the greatest NBA players of all time is a treat, and makes one wish that cameras had been there and had as much access at this point in the lives of other future NBA legends. And the fact that James was already being lavished with so much praise at such a young age and didn't completely fall apart under such ridiculous pressure is an accomplishment all its own.  

You don't have to know much about streetball to have heard of Robert "Bobbito" Garcia, one of the most prominent and well-known figures in the history of the sport. The player, coach, DJ, and author is the perfect person to put together what is arguably the definitive documentary on New York City's legendary streetball scene. And he does just that in "Doin' It in the Park," a fittingly scrappy project that Garcia and filmmaker Kevin Couliau put together in 2013, basically teaching themselves how to make a movie as they went along (via The Hollywood Reporter).

That approach is appropriate for a movie about streetball culture, of course. It's a sport that was created on the fly over many years of casual contests between random players who eventually formed their own teams and tournaments. Every frame exudes the love that Bobbito has for the culture surrounding streetball, and it's equal parts history lesson and celebration. Unfortunately, its low-budget, self-distributed nature means that "Doin' it in the Park" is difficult to find, but keep on checking those streaming services and watch it the moment it should happen to pop up on one. 

This underrated coming-of-age film — featuring a very young Lawrence Fishburne in his first-ever film role — starts off as the inspiring story of a teenager named Nathanial "Cornbread" Hamilton, the pride of his neighborhood with basketball skills that seem destined to lead to great things. But that all comes to a tragic end when Cornbread is shot to death by police, who mistake him for an assault suspect.

In a story that still feels tragically familiar, justice for Cornbread starts to look unlikely as the police hamper the investigation and intimidate people who could otherwise prove that Cornbread was innocent, and was indeed murdered in cold blood. "Cornbread, Earl and Me" definitely goes a little too heavy on the melodrama at times, which does occasionally hamper the power of the message. But that complaint definitely doesn't come anywhere close to keeping this from being an excellent and heartbreaking movie about how difficult it is for people of color to break out of the cycle that systemic racism that goes on generation after generation. 

The Caltech Beavers had, at one point, a 259-game losing streak (per Christian Science Monitor). The school is largely known for academics and doesn't put much emphasis (or money) towards its basketball team, even though it does have one. The charming and quirky documentary "Quantum Hoops" is another story about a team trying to win the big game — only this time, that means winning any game. 

Featuring interviews from former players — most of whom are now scientists, computer programmers, and the like — "Quantum Hoops" is a unique kind of underdog story, and one that's impossible to watch without watching. The people on the team are used to solving problems with equations and experiments, and attempt to apply those principles to the game of basketball, even when they don't have the athletic prowess to match. A fictional movie with this premise would've easily evolved to insulting "look at these nerds trying to play sports" cliché territory, but the fact that these are real people gives "Quantum Hoops" a completely different flavor, one that never mocks its subjects in any way.

Earl Manigault is one of those players that is the favorite player of a lot of players, even if he isn't a household name otherwise. The HBO biopic "Rebound" helps to establish this early on by having Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (as himself) report that Manigault was the best player he'd ever seen. Manigault was on the path to become one of the GOATs, but addiction ended up stopping his professional basketball career before it started.

But the movie is called "Rebound" for a reason. Manigault may have never been the NBA all-star he should've been, but there is still a redemption arc to his story. Not only did he overcome his addictions, but he would spend his later years coaching and counseling young basketball players while working for the New York Supportive Children's Advocacy Network (via The New York Times). Don Cheadle does a stellar job playing Manigault in all his ups and downs, and "Rebound" does an admirable job at telling a complex story within a standard movie runtime.

The incredibly ambitious documentary "The Heart of the Game" was filmed over a seven-year period (per Slant Magazine), following a high school girls' basketball team. An all-too-rare basketball movie — documentary or otherwise — to focus primarily on female players, "The Heart of the Game" deserves praise for that reason alone. But don't count out Bill Resler, the eccentric coach who watches over these girls as they experience more triumphs and heartbreaks in the span of just a few years than some players do in entire NBA careers.

Another facet of "The Heart of the Game" worth calling attention to is Darnellia Russell, one of the only players of color on the team. For this reason and more, Russell encounters a lot of issues that make it difficult for her to stay in the game. There's obviously an appeal to sports documentaries based on players or events we're already familiar with, but sometimes, the ones that show us something we've never seen before are the most effective. And that's what makes "The Heart of the Game" well worth checking out.

The 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona belonged to the Dream Team, the collection of basketball legends that played for the U.S. and lived up to its name as a ridiculously stacked team of athletes (per Olympics.com). The Lithuanian team, like most other teams, knew that the best they could hope for against the Dream Team was a silver medal. But that's not to say that the other teams don't have stories worth telling, as evidenced by the documentary "The Other Dream Team."

Not only following the Lithuanian men's basketball team but the various other political and social events that happened around the time of the 1992 Summer Games, "The Other Dream Team" sees the team eventually win the bronze — but that's not even the point. It's a movie about athletes giving their all to their sport and to each other, having a true love for the game with zero interest in fame or fortune. They're all just happy to be there, ultimately, and it's such a treat to watch.

Every sport has that one comedy. Baseball has "Bull Durham," football has "The Longest Yard" (the original), and basketball has "White Men Can't Jump." Back when Wesley Snipes, Woody Harrelson, and Rosie Perez were all still "young actors," they were firing on all cylinders and proving why none of them were going away anytime soon. Snipes and Harrelson are electric as two streetball hustlers who spend much of the movie flip-flopping between friends and rivals. Part of their effectiveness at their grift is that it's sometimes difficult to tell whether we, the audience, are in on their plans or if we're being conned by them along with the other characters on screen.

In all the ways it's the perfect basketball comedy, it's also the perfect buddy comedy, romantic comedy, and just early-'90s comedy in general. It's one of those films that is dated by its era in the best possible way, and will instantly make anyone who was of a certain age in 1992 want to grab a boombox, plop it down onto the concrete, blast some Jody Watley, talk some trash, and play some ball.

Boasting an impressive (and well-earned) 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, "Hoop Dreams" is both an incredible basketball movie and just an incredible documentary, period. Following two Black high school students in Chicago with aspirations of one day playing in the NBA, "Hoop Dreams" was filmed over a five-year span and sees the dreams of these kids get heartbreakingly crushed at almost every turn. 

It's definitely a tough watch, and an uplifting ending is ultimately not in the cards. But it's well worth the frustration and sadness that comes along with watching it, as it's one of the most unflinchingly honest looks at racism, poverty, and education in America ever put on film. It quickly becomes apparent that these boys don't stand a chance, through no fault of their own, and you'll be as infuriated as you are saddened to watch them be failed by so many people and so many institutions — people and institutions who are supposed to be on their sides and have their backs.