To the top of Ben Affleck’s sneakers procedural air, Bigwigs from Nike’s basketball division sit around a conference room table discussing the merit of players in the 1984 NBA draft. They have a $250,000 budget to split between three prospects, meaning that giants Converse and Adidas will inevitably cede the right to sponsor the best players in the draft. Thus, they look further at the draft board: the fifth choice, Charles Barkley, is mired in “club problems” and “nobody wants to see him on TV”; 16th pick, John Stockton, played his college ball on Gonzaga and “no one even knows where it is”; Melvin Turpin, drafted sixth, seems like the safest bet – he appears to have “excellent vision,” though Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) notes that he only averages one assist per game. In 2023, of course, we know that Barkley and Stockton are in the Hall of Fame, Gonzaga is a perennial leader, and Turpin has never done much in the league.

These kind of nods to knowledgeable viewers hidden everywhere air by rookie screenwriter Alex Convery, this is nothing new. At least since 1980, when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar complained about Walton and Leimbeer being dragged around the court for 48 minutes at airplane!, knowing allusions to the savvy audience watching basketball have been built into films affecting the sport. But the new generation of basketball films reflected a new generation of basketball fans who are as versed in collective bargaining agreements, overseas scouts, sports gambling and shoe deals as they are in the products on the court. In a world where every move of an NBA grandmaster spawns hundreds of podcast episodes, Hollywood has adapted by releasing a flood of films that deeply explore aspects of the game that seemed unimaginable at the time. chusirs.

In fits and starts, this revolution has already happened in sports films. Bennet Miller money ball filmed a seemingly inedible story about a renegade general manager and Yale economist using sabermetrics to find underrated baseball players. Ivan Reitman Draft Day dropped spectators into the Cleveland Browns war room during the NFL Draft. Even Jerry Maguire, in his own 90s dramatic style, saw former journalist Cameron Crowe unearth some of the secrets of the sports agencies. It’s natural for fans of these sports to see themselves in these supporting characters—think of the massive popularity of fantasy football and baseball, which dwarf the NBA’s fantasy league audience. But the culture of basketball is driven primarily by the culture of black youth, and the inevitable tension between the game and the business interests that surround it is only now being explored in detail on screen.

high flying bird makes this tension his main obsession. The 2019 Steven Soderbergh drama is set during the NBA lockout as the league’s owners and players are deadlocked over their new collective bargaining agreement. The film follows the maneuvers of superspy Ray Burke (the excellent Andre Holland) as he negotiates with seemingly everyone in the basketball universe for a purpose that is not always clear to anyone but him. It’s a tight, intellectual film that introduces the audience to sharks and invites them to swim, but it’s amazingly insightful about the symbiosis of basketball and commerce.

Written by Tarell Alvin McCraney, the playwright behind the story that inspired Moonlight, Soderbergh’s gritty cinematography on the iPhone fills audiences in offices, boardrooms, lounges, bars, restaurants, gyms, saunas, and wherever the basketball business is. Fans are now more interested than ever in understanding how NBA sausages are made, and Soderbergh doesn’t miss a single nasty detail.

“They invented the game on top of the game,” says Spence (Bill Duke), an experienced basketball coach and South Bronx community activist. Spence is the kind of guy who’s been wearing tracksuits for the last 40 years and still thinks three-pointers and slam dunks are useless; anyone who has been in the game long enough knows a penny or two. Having put the thesis about high flying bird in his mouth, McCraney and Soderbergh seem to draw a contrast between old-school hoopers and money-crazed new jacks.

However, it is not so easy. The lockout also hurts Spence’s money by making it difficult to get professionals to his charity events, and it’s illegal for him to advertise their presence there. It soon becomes clear that lockouts are a common problem, and the player-focused revolution in streetball that the film is driving helped tease him during screenings, but never materialized. (Like Kevin Durant’s viral pickup game at Rucker Park during the last real lockout, high flying birdthe climactic one-on-one behind-the-scenes game is one of a kind.)

The lockout ends because it has to end because the game over the game just feeds too many mouths. It’s a bittersweet but authentic finale, and life has already imitated the art: earlier this month, owners and players agreed in principle to a new CBA, delaying a new lockout by at least seven years.

Another prestigious basketball film of 2019 was Uncut Gems, Josh and Benny Safdie’s disturbing take on the underworld of sports gambling. Adam Sandler plays Howard Ratner, a jeweler and gambler who always thinks his next bet will be big. (Spoiler: yes, until it stops.) Safdie and Sandler kind of revive Howard, diluting his very real passion for basketball with his mind-clouding proclivity for betting. His aggressive bets are scary, but for the most part they are based on a deep understanding of the game. Meeting Kevin Garnett thrills Howard for more reasons than the opportunity to make money off him.

Uncut Gems The action takes place in 2012, when sports betting in the United States was banned by law. Today it is impossible to watch the NBA broadcast without betting shops advertising. In 2019, Howard’s vocabulary of betting, over/under and accumulators seemed insider, even dubious. Now it’s business as usual. This has already begun to seep into the game in an ugly way. After the March game in Orlando, fan turned to Wizards All-Star Bradley Beal outside of the arena, yelling “You fucked me for $1300, you fucking!” Beal justly retaliated by saying, “I don’t care about your bets or accumulators, bro. That’s not why I play this game.” We now live in the world of Howard Ratner.

Sandler’s hoop fandom goes way beyond it. Uncut Gems character, and he let it fuel his passionate 2022 project, Fuss. With dozens of high-profile cameos and deep basketball vocabulary, Fuss it’s the NBA’s biggest love letter in this wave of films, but it’s still scathingly critical of the league’s mechanics.

The film is about Sandy Sugerman, an international scout for the Philadelphia 76ers, whose life is an endless cycle of low-level games in lighted gyms, fast food meals in five-star hotels, and business class flights to no one knows where. Sugerman is promoted to the bench at the beginning of the film, but is sent back to the field for one last job when beloved team owner Rex Merrick (Robert Duvall) dies and leaves his underdog son Vince (Ben Foster) in charge. (By the way, Foster plays the best dick-wielding guy in any of these films, slightly beating the insufferably coaxing Kyle MacLachlan in a duel in high flying bird.)

Photo: Scott Yamano/Netflix

Remainder Fuss catnip for amateur draft pickers. Sugerman discovers Beau Cruz (real NBA player Juancho Hernangomez), a streetball player wearing work boots, while on a business trip to Spain. He practically ferries Cruz back to Philadelphia when the Sixers front office says they’re not interested. “There are 450 players in the NBA and 100 are just waiting to be called,” says Sugerman Cruz. “My job is to know everyone else.” With the proliferation of recruiting news, tryout drafts, and televised international and development league games, many fans now feel like they have the same job.

But being a prospect (or a scout tasked with finding them) is hard work, and most Fuss about the unglamorous routine of being outside, looking inward. Cruz competes, shows, fights, pre-draft practice and endless hours of some of the most grueling training ever filmed outside of Rocky. franchise. Fuss is a blast, and certainly a far less subversive film than high flying bird or Uncut Gemsbut constantly reminds fans that working in the NBA is just a job.

The most recent of this wave of postmodern basketball films doesn’t depict life in the NBA at all, but is nonetheless defined by it. airSonny Vaccaro walks in the same amateur circles as Stanley Sugerman, but he’s not going to sign prospective players to the NBA roster. He wants them to wear his shoes. Sneakerhead culture and basketball culture are closely and inextricably intertwined, but air depicts a time when branded shoes did not yet exist, and invites viewers to witness their birth.

Director Ben Affleck talks about the origins of Nike’s Air Jordan line in a casual yet detailed contract negotiation. As with the rest of the films, much of the action takes place off the basketball court, in conference rooms and corner offices. Michael Jordan himself – a player whose face never appears on screen – is a controversial choice that sometimes seems incompatible with airA story about empowering the player.

Affleck defended his decision, saying that Jordan is “too big” for a film that’s really more about merchandising and workforce, and in truth, he’s probably right. The story of the machine that surrounds the sport – the game on top of the game – cannot be told through the most prominent stars. In the age of social media, fans have unprecedented access to LeBron James, Steph Curry and, yes, even Michael Jordan. But they also know more than ever about basketball players Ray Burks, Stanley Sugermans and Sonny Vaccaros. These days, we can also see their stories in movies, and this allows us to see a richer and more subtle vision of the world of basketball.