March Madness is upon us. The time of the year were we all pretend to be working at our cubicle when we secretly have the game streaming on our computers or phones. Its the most wonderful time of the year.
It got me thinking. What is the best basketball movie ever made? When you think about good sports movies I feel like it is easy to come up with lots of great baseball and football films, in fact you could easily do a top 10 list for those. Now try to think of 10 great basketball movies? Can you? Neither can I. In fact I could only coome up with one great basketball film and that is Hoosiers.
Hoosiers is a story about a small town in the 1950’s Indiana that defies all odds and goes on to win the state basketball championship. Gene Hackman gives an awesome performance as the coach with a checkered past teaching a team that fundamentals and hard work are what win games.
Written by Angelo Pizzo who also wrote “Rudy” and was scored by the wonderful Jerry Goldsmith, they capture the era of basketball that most of us never knew. Even though you know the outcome you will still find yourself holding your breath and rooting for this underdog team.
Now try to think of a basketball film that compares to this. “Space Jam”, “Glory Road” I don’t think so. It is not like they haven’t made a lot of basketball films, they just haven’t been very good.
So once again, I dare you to tell me a better basketball film than Hoosier. If you dare, you better come to play ball because in this scenario you are Hickory where your shots of winning are slim, not impossible but very, very slim.