Basketball can make great movies

Basketball is a great sport to watch in person, but it can also make for a stellar movie plot.
Because I am limited by space in a single column, I have several honorable mention basketball movies before I list my top five.
Honorable Mention: Above the Rim, He Got Game, Space Jam, Coach Carter and White Men Can’t Jump.

5. The Pistol - Birth of a Legend (1991)
“Pistol” Pete Maravich, died in 1988 at age 40 from a heart attack. 1991 biographical sports film about the 1959 8th grade basketball season of Pete Maravich and his father Press Maravich.
Every LSU fan knows the rest of the story.
I watched his teaching basketball skills videos and I wished I had been able to see him play back in the day.

4. Blue Chips (1994)
Blue Chips stars Nick Nolte as a college coach and stars Shaquille O’Neal and Penny Hardaway as talented finds.
Pete Bell (Nolte), a college basketball coach for the fictional Western University Dolphins, is under a lot of pressure to win so he pays “blue-chip” prospects to play for him.

3. Glory Road (2006)
In 1966, Texas Western coach Don Haskins led the first all-black starting line-up for a college basketball team to the NCAA national championship against powerhouse Kentucky.
In the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, the Miners narrowly lead at halftime, but finally manage to beat Kentucky 72–65 with some impressive steals, rebounding and passing techniques in the second half.
Josh Lucas, Jon Voight and Derek Luke star in this movie.

2. Hurricane Season
This movie is based on the true story of John Ehret High School’s 2005–06 State championship team. After Hurricane Katrina, Al Collins (Forest Whitaker), a John Ehret high school basketball coach in Jefferson Parish assembles a team of players who had previously attended five different schools before the disaster and leads them on the path to winning the state championship.
This story is similar to the South Plaquemines Hurricanes - a school created for displaced Port Sulphur students and others who lost their schools in Katrina - a team that St. Edmund faced in the 2007 quarterfinals as the Hurricanes won the Class 1-A football state championship.

1. Hoosiers (1986)
Hoosiers tells the story of a small-town Indiana high school basketball team that wins the state championship.
Gene Hackman stars as Norman Dale, a new coach with a spotty past.
The film co-stars Barbara Hershey and Dennis Hopper.
Hickory shocks the state by reaching the championship game in Indianapolis and defeat a team from South Bend, whose integrated players are taller and more athletic.
But tiny Hickory takes home the 1952 Indiana state championship.
Maybe it is because I have covered high school basketball since the 1980s, but Hurricane Season and Hoosiers topped my list because of their plots.
Every high school coach has felt the politics of their town’s supporters - good and bad just like Hoosiers.

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