Christmas is the ultimate overlap of entertainment and sports. The year’s blockbusters are typically reserved for release on Christmas Day, with a slew of big-budget and indie hits releasing all month. Christmas Day sees the league’s best rivalries matched up for primetime holiday viewing.
But what if we amp it up a notch? With the In-Season Tournament over, the regular season ramps back up, making it the perfect time to recommend new releases for certain NBA fanbases. We considered major nice and naughty storylines when selecting which December film releases should be required viewing for specific NBA fanbases.
Fans of the Lakers and LeBron James are high on their team winning the inaugural In-Season Tournament. It’s apt that the epic about one of history’s great victors, Napoleon Bonaparte, should be the biopic to study what it means to keep the conquest going into June. If LeBron is Joaquin Phoenix’s Napoleon, then Anthony Davis is Vanessa Kirby’s Empress Josephine, his right-hand and most trusted co-conspirator.
Considering the heinous accusations surrounding the Thunder’s young star, the cinematic comp is appropriate. Priscilla reveals the deep manipulation and coercion of Priscilla Beaulieu by the much older Elvis Presley, who was almost a decade her senior. Giddey has been accused of having sex with a preteen girl, who would have been 14 or 15 at the time of hooking up, which would have been illegal in California, where it reportedly took place. Giddey could learn a lot about the concept of consent and statutory rape from Presley’s disgusting treatment of his way-too-young wife.
In the newest chapter of the global sensation Hunger Games, a new group of young phenoms with heavy expectations and pressures band together to fulfill their promise. It sounds eerily similar to what the brilliant young talent of the Orlando Magic is accomplishing this season as the best young core in the NBA. Paolo Banchero, the team’s cornerstone and future All-Star, is the newest hope for Orlando’s struggling franchise. Like that of Coriolanus Snow and Lucy Gray Baird, his ascension depends on growing up fast.
Within a snowy, frostbitten milieu, a group tries to find hope in the unforgiving and indifferent cold. While a tad morose, the Minnesota Timberwolves have been one of the worst-run franchises of the last 20 years, stuck in a too-cold-for-free agents city that stars can’t wait to escape. But just as the heroine (?) discovers, looks can be deceiving, and sometimes a new addition, like Anne Hathaway’s Rebecca and Rudy Gobert, is just what the doctor orders to go a little crazy.
In Maestro, an aging savant risks familiar connections and marriage equality to pursue his career dreams. To understand the madness of Tom Thibodeau, Knicks fans should look to another maniacal perfectionist in Leonard Bernstein, the greatest American composer who is the subject of Bradley Cooper’s passion project, Maestro. Thibodeau drives Knicks fans crazy with his incessant stubbornness, but with much less success than Lenny. Thibodeau has no West Side Story in his oeuvre, but he does share Bernstein’s questionable work ethic and laser focus on chasing the high of great heights.
Luka Doncic, the Mavericks protege and future Hall-of-Famer, could learn a lot from 12-year-old Mahito Maki, the titular star of The Boy and the Heron, who learns to work with others to reach his dreams. It’s not just Doncic’s fault he’s had to be a one-man-show in Dallas, but he has failed thus far to learn to trust others and bring out the best in his copilots like Kristaps Porzingus, Jalen Brunson or Kyrie Irving. But Irving could be Doncic’s “heron,” the mystical guide who can accompany him on his journey of self-discovery. Time will only tell if the pairing works out as it does in the film or if Irving, like his predecessor, flees the coop.
A hard-nosed tactician in Texas inspires his band of motley boys to become men, earning their place in sports lore. That could be the tagline for the Von Erich biopic The Iron Claw or the turnaround Ime Udoka has kickstarted in Houston with the Rockets. Patriarch Fritz von Erich shares Udoka’s inspiring, yet harsh, way of bringing out the best of his guys, and the Rockets look like the next great group to dominate Texas sports. Udoka, like Fritz, has to learn to reign in his worst tendencies, mainly off the court, to provide the right kind of inspiration to the younger acolytes looking to him for guidance and protection.
Greg Popovich has never been where Enzo Ferrari was at the apex of Micahel Mann’s biopic: broke, past his prime. But Pop can relate to building a legacy that has been often duplicated but never replicated. Both men share a take-no-crap (and prisoners) approach to competition and are willing to lambast those around them with equal measure. Both men were able to bring the best out of those under their stewardship while paving a no-nonsense path with their hard-nosed personalities. Spurs fans can see similar highs of the Ferrari legacy in Pop, making Pop’s lack of too many losing seasons even more impressive when compared to Ferrari’s larger-than-life legacy.
At this point, the best the Pistons can do on their is hope to rise from the dead and relearn how to be a real team again. The feminist Frankenstein epic starring Emma Stone portrays a back-from-the-dead body learning a new identity while finding its place in the world. It’s the best analogy for the lifeless effort the Pistons have been displaying this season.
