Pick Your Favorite Basketball Movie | Page 2 | The Boneyard

Pick Your Favorite Basketball Movie

nwhoopfan said:
"Mighty Macs" is a dramatization about Immaculata College and "The Heart of the Game" is a documentary about a high school team in Seattle (Roosevelt HS).

edited--"The Winning Season" is a bit cheesy but decent, about a screw up of a guy trying to redeem himself while coaching a girls HS bball team. Good cast, stars Sam Rockwell as the coach and Emma Roberts and Rooney Mara as a couple of his players, Rob Corddry is the principal who gives him the job out of desperation.


So there you go, there's at least 3 movies about high school or college women's hoops teams.

Wasn't there a documentary about a girls HS team from a reservation? To answer my own question, "Off the Rez" follows Shoni Schimmel. Just a quick peak at google yielded several results for documentaries and dramatizations about this specific subject.
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Thank you. I will watch whichever ones I can get today.
 
"Hoop Dreams" (1994) is an excellent documentary that follows two Chicago-area (boys) basketball players as they navigate the world of high level HS basketball and recruiting. It's heartbreaking, uplifting, insightful, engrossing. Highly recommend (it is nearly 3 hours long, though)
 
snowkot said:
I didn't grow up in the 50's but for me, by far, "Hoosiers."

No "he shoots - cut - closeup as the ball goes in." No mini-court to facilitate cinematography. No small section audience in digital multiples.

Just REAL basketball.

Maris Valainis as "Jimmy Chitwood" is as close to Larry Bird as we'll ever see in a fictional film. Gene Hackman is remarkable, the best coach character since G.D. Spradlin (more on that later) and Craig T. Nelson in "All The Right Moves." There's the "this really happened" aspect. And finally - that score! A masterwork by icon Jerry Goldsmith.

As someone who's done work in both, that opening scene, the car mowing through the leaf-strewn rural fall streets, with "Main Title - Welcome To Hickory" underneath, defines perfect film-making. Pity the original score was done almost exclusively on synths - the drum programming is putrid (it has been redone with orchestra). Every time I happen on that opening scene while cruising for content, I'm stopped in my tracks, goosebumps.

Second for me, for personal reasons, is 1977's "One On One," Robby Benson's tour-de-force, co-written with his father, Jerry Segal. I've read the book, multiple early versions of the screenplay (entitled, "Catch A Rising Star."), and purchased both the vinyl, and digital versions of the OST.

The story around the perils of men's basketball recruiting was ahead of its time. Benson's brings the perfect wide-eyed "wow - look at all this" note to the character. He also offers a quite realistic point guard / "hot dog" (if unrealistically short). The soundtrack's a critical component, featuring superb music by Charles Fox, Paul Williams's lyrics, brilliantly executed by Seals and Crofts. Annette O'Toole's turn as his counter-culture girlfriend is spot-on. And then there's G.D. Spradlin, absolutely bang-on, as the coach of Megalith U. Unlike "Hoosiers," plenty of groaners here, but for me, #2. My friends and I still run quotes from this one. :)
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Wow! Great call on Robby Benson's 1977 One on One movie. Until Hoosiers came out, this was my favorite basketball movie and still remains one of the best sports movies of all time. Wish it was shown more often.
 
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"Believe in Me" Jeffrey Donovan and Bruce Dern high school girls basketball in Oklahoma. Worth watching and it is available to stream free.
 
Sonny44 said:
Hoosiers.
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While set in Indiana, it was at least partially inspired by a far, far, far smaller school, Joe’s, Colorado, and its bid for a national championship against big Chicago high schools in 1920s.
 
HopJim said:
Wow! Great call on Robby Benson's 1977 One on One movie. Until Hoosiers came out, this was my favorite basketball movie and still remains one of the best sports movies of all time. Wish it was shown more often.
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Same here mate! ;)

While almost never on TV, it is around - scarcely. WBShop offers it on DVD (made on demand). I bought it (of course) - not bad for DVD quality. Am@zon Pr1me rents it, also in SD for $2.99. There's a low rent trailer or two on Y0ut@be, but that's about it. Just as well - at that quality, it's not like it stands up for repeated viewing. Now if it ever came out in 4K...:)
 
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Dokey said:
While set in Indiana, it was at least partially inspired by a far, far, far smaller school, Joe’s, Colorado, and its bid for a national championship against big Chicago high schools in 1920s.
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Funny - was chatting just the other day with a good mate who's lived in Indiana his entire life. The "Milan Miracle" is indeed the stuff of legends for all native "Hoosiers."

So - sorry - the above post is not quite right. The special features on the blu-ray (and I suppose the DVD) devote an entire segment featuring the original newsreel footage of the fantastical run upon which the film was loosely based.

Quoting Wikipedia (which aligns to that newsreel): "The 1954 Milan High School Indians won the Indiana High School Boys Basketball Tournament championship in 1954. With an enrollment of only 161, Milan was the smallest school ever to win a single-class state basketball title in Indiana, beating the team from the much larger Muncie Central High School in a classic competition known as the Milan Miracle. The team and town are the inspiration for the 1986 film Hoosiers. The team finished its regular season 19–2 and sported a 28–2 overall record." The final score was not nearly as provacative: Milan 32, Muncie Central 30.

According to my mate: the film is as accurate a depiction of Indiana basketball back then as one can image.
 
FridaFriend said:
I graduated from South Bend Central High School. In 'Hoosiers', Hickory defeats South Bend Central for the state championship. In real life 1954, tiny Milan High School actually defeated Muncie Central High School. South Bend Central won the state championship in 1953 and 1957.

John Wooden coached at South Bend Central from 1934-43, basketball and baseball. One of my classmates, Mike Warren played for John Wooden at UCLA; he was a teammate of Lew Alcindor. Mike won two national championships. He is also Jessica Alba's father-in-law.
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Michael Warren from "Hill Street Blues"?
 
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Not just one of my favorite basketball movies, but one of my favorite movies period. I was a middle school basketball coach and this situation was actually happened to me, where the principal said that I couldn't enforce academics on ...... middle school students!!! I was given a choice of not enforcing academics or not coach. If you haven't seen this movie...... watch it......
 


Here's a documentary on Miss State's first trip to the NCAA men's tournament in 1963.
One Night in March.
 
garddog said:


Here's a documentary on Miss State's first trip to the NCAA men's tournament in 1963.
One Night in March.
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Very good! I knew about Loyola of Chicago but I never knew the story. about Mississippi State that year. Everyone should watch this.
 
Hooisers has so many things going for it. There's basketball and competition. There is the fall and reedemption of Norman Dale. There's the old I hate you when we met but I've come to love you, love story, plus the old I hate you when we met but I've come to love and respect you between the coach and team. It just does a lot things well. It also has many memorable moments and lines:
  • "My team's on the floor."
  • "I think you’ll find it’s the exact same measurements as our gym back in Hickory."
  • "Now, boys, don’t get caught watching the paint dry"
  • "Dentyne"
  • "There's two kinds of dumb. A guy that gets naked and runs out in the snow and barks at the moon, and a guy who does the same thing in my living room. First one don’t matter, the second one you’re kinda forced to deal with."
  • And my favorite: "Sun don’t shine on the same dog’s ass everyday, but, mister you ain’t seen a ray of light since you got here."
 
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CL82 said:
Hooisers has so many things going for it. There's basketball and competition.
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  • "There's two kinds of dumb. A guy that gets naked and runs out in the snow and barks at the moon, and a guy who does the same thing in my living room. First one don’t matter, the second one you’re kinda forced to deal with.".
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Well put!

AND the film score - no mention of "Hoosiers" is complete without a nod to Jerry Goldsmith's remarkably spot-on artisty...
 
Hoosiers- Gold

Glory Road - Silver

White Men Can't Jump - Bronze

There are a few mentioned in this thread I haven't seen yet, so I may have to do more homework.
 
Having grown up in Indiana I'm kind of partial to Hoosiers.

I was managing a pizza place at the time of filming, and we got a call from someone pretending to be ordering pizzas for the cast and crew. Wanted 100 of them and we thought we were getting pranked. About an hour later, some guy pulls up to the door in a big van, jumps out talking on one of those old brick of a cell phones and we load the pizzas in his van and our delivery drivers car. Our driver got a $100 tip that night and got to see several of the actors involved.

Also in the opening scene, when Hackman's car is pulling up to the store, that's just down the street from my cousin's house. It's just outside the town I grew up in.
 
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