Screen and Roll

Of all the sports, basketball is the most difficult to re-create, so that’s the reason why there have been so few satisfying basketball movies.— Spike Lee

I love going to the movies. I love the ritual of it, from sneaking in my own snacks and the inane pre-show trivia to the ceremony of settling into silent communion with a bunch of strangers in the dark. Yet over the past two and a half years of restrictions and lockdowns, “going to the movies” has mostly meant going to one’s couch — which isn’t, obviously, the same thing. But if you’re anything like me, you’ve still spent your pandemic “going to” a lot of movies. And if you’re exactly like me — five foot seven, delicately balding, and rabidly obsessed with a certain James Naismith invention — a lot of them have featured basketball.

Never more than during the coronavirus epoch have my braided obsessions with movies, hoops, and movies about...