50 Best Sports Movies Ever

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40. Glory Road

Year: 2006
Sport: Basketball
Starring: Josh Lucas, Derek Luke, Austin Nicholas, Jon Voight, Evan Jones
Director: James Gartner

From time to time, a sports film is released that transcends traditional standards for quality by becoming something that needed to be made. That’s the case with Glory Road, which was inspired by the true story of the 1965-66 Texas Western Miners basketball team.

Led by Josh Lucas as head coach Don Haskins and Derek Luke as star point guard Bobby Joe Hill, Glory Road covers one of the most important seasons in sports history.

Haskins executed an improbable plan in a racially-divided state of Texas to build his team around black athletes. The NCAA reported in 2012 that 57.2 percent of Division I college basketball players are black, but that wasn’t the case in the 1960s.

Not only did Lucas break barriers with the way his team was crafted, but he started the first ever all-black lineup—and he did so in the National Championship Game.

Lucas’ role as Haskins and Luke’s performance as Hill helped Glory Road tell one of the most incredible tales in the vast world of sports.

Despite facing overt and disgusting displays of racism, including that on the systematic front, Texas Western prevailed. Haskins treated his players as equals and men at a time when most programs saw black players as tokens to keep on the bench who’d promote a false sense of equality.

Glory Road wasn’t a perfect film, but it was a powerful one with strong acting, solid action on the court, and a story that had to be told.

Next: 39. The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars

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