Abstract
Uncut Gems (2019) is a crime thriller, starring comedic actor Adam Sandler as a gambling addict and, more importantly for this collection, basketball fan. While there is no debate about the centrality of basketball to the story, as Howard’s fate depends on outcomes of professional basketball games which he is betting on, Uncut Gems is rarely seen as a basketball movie. Even though NBA games are shown in it only on television, the movie truly “gets” the sport while adhering to the common tropes of a typical basketball movie. Therefore in this chapter I firstly intend to justify my opinion that Uncut Gems is indeed a basketball movie by comparing it to other sports/basketball movies. Then I try to assess if a movie about basketball can “work” while depicting an immoral character––in this case a liar, a manipulator, and a gambler––with the sport itself deeply rooted in morality, and no redemption through the sport available, unlike in most basketball movies.
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Muniowski, Ł. (2024). “What Is He, Your Coach?”: Uncut Gems as a Basketball Movie. In: Neuhaus, T., Thomas, N. (eds) Interdisciplinary Analyses of Professional Basketball. Global Culture and Sport Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41656-9_7
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