Best Basketball Movies of All Time

Few film genres are more difficult to pull off than making a great sports movie. Within that genre, movies about basketball have been especially tough to crack. 

The result is often a muddled mix of cliches, bad acting, and in most cases, unrealistic basketball scenes that result in a cinematic airball. But sometimes, Hollywood gets it right.

These are the best basketball movies of all time. 

Michael Shannon has carved out a career as one of the most talented actors of his generation, and that’s on full display in the little-seen basketball drama “Wolves” from 2016. 

Shannon, a two-time Academy Award nominee, plays the gambling-addicted father of a high school basketball star and gets a big lift from his supporting cast, including Carla Gugino, Chris Bauer, Taylor John Smith and Zazie Beetz. 

Jack Twyman was one of the greatest small forwards in NBA history, and alongside Wilt Chamberlain, they became the first two NBA players to average over 30.0 points per game in the 1959-60 season. 

But Twyman’s true legacy is as the greatest teammate in NBA history. He was the legal guardian for teammate Maurice Stokes, from 1958 until Stokes’ death in 1970, after Stokes was paralyzed from an in-game fall. Their story was turned into the film “Maurie” in 1973. 

This is the “Brian’s Song” of basketball movies. 

This is a deep-cut basketball film. We don’t expect many people were even aware of its existence at this point, but it features Gabe Kaplan in the lead role as a former junior high school basketball coach who realizes his dream of coaching college basketball at fictional Cadwaller University in Nevada. 

This movie is essentially “Bad News Bears” but for adults, with college basketball instead of Little League baseball.

In an interesting twist, it was a box-office hit upon its release thanks in part to a marketing campaign that included sending out press releases stating Cadwaller was an actual university with an address and phone number for the school. 

One of Leonardo DiCaprio’s last roles before “Titanic” shot him to A-list status was “The Basketball Diaries” in 1995, based on the famed autobiography written by poet Jim Carroll. 

Carroll, played by DiCaprio, was a high school basketball player in New York City in the 1960s who became addicted to heroin and saw his entire life go off the rails.

This emotional powerhouse also stars young versions of Mark Wahlberg, Michael Imperioli, Juliette Lewis and the late Bruno Kirby as Carroll’s lecherous high school basketball coach.