14 Great Basketball Movies

Will Ferrell dons the tightie-tight shorts to play well-coiffed ABA trailblazer Jackie Moon in this silly hardwood comedy.

In 1966, Don Haskins, the basketball coach of Texas Western College made history by starting an all-black lineup against an all-white Kentucky team in the NCAA championship game. Josh Lucas stars in this relentlessly rousing drama, based on Haskins' bestselling autobiography.

Age only improves this rousingly old-fashioned tale of a small-town high-school basketball team and the no-nonsense coach (Gene Hackman) who takes them further than any of them dared imagine. (There's no flash or pretense in the filmmaking or the performances; as on any well-trained team, everyone properly executes the fundamentals.) And we like what it says: Forget the obvious David-and-Goliath theme, this movie is really about redemption and second chances.

Take the aching high-school-life dramas of Friday Night Lights, transpose them to the world of girl's basketball, and you'll have something like Ward Serril's gripping documentary. We all could learn a thing or two from the young heroines of the Roosevelt High Roughriders. Comparisons to Hoop Dreams are inevitable, and entirely justified.

Hubert Davis' deeply personal documentary explores the lives that were forever altered when his father, Harlem Globetrotter Mel Davis, left his mother and him for a white woman and her son.

A high-school basketball coach (Samuel L. Jackson) dispenses a big can of tough love when he takes over a failing program and a dispirited team. Think Lean on Me meets Hoosiers — with even more shouting.

A high-school hoops star (played by Duane Martin) confronts two possible career paths on the eve of his graduation. An otherwise conventional sports drama remembered mostly for its believable on-court action and a memorable performance by the late Tupac Shakur.

If the nickname ''Pistol'' doesn't immediately call to mind one of the most remarkable athletes to ever lace up a pair of high tops, you probably aren't a hoops fan. This is a modest (and, perhaps, too big-hearted) biopic that follows the early years of future NBA Hall-of-Famer ''Pistol'' Pete Maravich.

Don Cheadle and Forest Whitaker star in this engaging based-on-real-events HBO movie about Earl Manigault, a basketball phenom who achieved a mythic reputation on the courts of Harlem. (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar once called him the greatest player he had ever seen.) Manigault's life story is as remarkable as it is inspirational.

A killer concept: Astrologer advises struggling pro basketball team to hire only players born under the sign of Pisces. A killer setting: disco-era Pittsburgh. And the gravity-defying artistry (and comedy stylings) of Julius ''Dr. J'' Erving. What's not to love?