50 Best NBA Documentaries

Basketball has been lucky with documentaries. The players are famous enough to carry a film, the archive footage goes back decades, and the best stories (a teenager from Akron, a war that split up a national team, a brawl in Detroit) don’t need much help from a narrator.

This list sticks to films and series you can actually find. It is grouped by subject so you can skip to the era or the player you care about.

The 50 best NBA documentaries available for viewing:

Start here

1. The Last Dance (2020). Ten hours on the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls, built on footage that sat in a vault for two decades. ESPN’s most-watched documentary.
2. Hoop Dreams (1994). Two Chicago teenagers followed for five years. Not an NBA film, strictly speaking, but the best film about what the NBA dream costs.
3. Once Brothers (2010). Vlade Divac and Drazen Petrovic, teammates for Yugoslavia, torn apart by the war. The best of ESPN’s 30 for 30 basketball films.
4. Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. The New York Knicks (2010). Eight points in nine seconds, Spike Lee courtside, and a rivalry that was funny even when it was nasty.
5. The Redeem Team (2022). How the 2008 U.S. Olympic team recovered from the bronze medal of 2004, with Kobe Bryant setting the tone.

Teams and rivalries

6. Bad Boys (2014). The Detroit Pistons of 1989 and 1990, in their own unapologetic words.
7. Celtics/Lakers: Best of Enemies (2017). Five hours on the rivalry that carried the league through the 1960s and the 1980s.
8. Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals (2010). The HBO film on two players who needed each other.
9. The Dream Team (2012). NBA TV’s account of Barcelona 1992, including footage of the famous closed-door scrimmage in Monte Carlo.
10. The Other Dream Team (2012). Lithuania’s 1992 Olympic team, newly free of the Soviet Union and sponsored in part by the Grateful Dead.
11. When the Garden Was Eden (2014). The New York Knicks of Walt Frazier, Willis Reed and Earl Monroe.
12. This Magic Moment (2016). Shaquille O’Neal, Penny Hardaway and the Orlando team that should have won more.
13. Legacy: The True Story of the LA Lakers (2022). The Buss family tells its own story across ten episodes.
14. Celtics City (2025). A long series on the franchise from Bill Russell to the present.
15. Untold: Malice at the Palace (2021). The 2004 Pacers-Pistons brawl, told by the players who were suspended for it.
16. Court of Gold (2025). Inside the men’s basketball tournament at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Player portraits

17. Kobe Bryant’s Muse (2015). Bryant narrates his own career during his recovery from a torn Achilles.
18. Kobe Doin’ Work (2009). Spike Lee points 30 cameras at Bryant for one game.
19. More Than a Game (2008). LeBron James and his high school teammates in Akron.
20. Iverson (2014). Allen Iverson’s life from Hampton, Virginia to the Hall of Fame.
21. No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson (2010). The bowling alley brawl that nearly ended his career before it began.
22. The Carter Effect (2017). What Vince Carter did for basketball in Toronto and in Canada.
23. The Doctor (2013). Julius Erving, from Rucker Park to the ABA to Philadelphia.
24. Kareem: Minority of One (2015). Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on his career and his reputation.
25. Bill Russell: Legend (2023). Eleven championships and a lifetime of activism.
26. Goliath (2023). A three-part reassessment of Wilt Chamberlain.
27. They Call Me Magic (2022). Magic Johnson’s life in four parts.
28. The Announcement (2012). The day in 1991 when Johnson told the world he had HIV.
29. Shaq (2022). Four episodes, as modest as you would expect.
30. Stephen Curry: Underrated (2023). From Davidson to four championships.
31. Giannis: The Marvelous Journey (2024). Giannis Antetokounmpo’s path from Athens to Milwaukee.
32. Tony Parker: The Final Shot (2021). The French point guard looks back on four titles with San Antonio.
33. D. Wade: Life Unexpected (2020). Dwyane Wade on his final seasons and his family.
34. Dennis Rodman: For Better or Worse (2019). The rebounding, the hair, and everything else.
35. Bill Walton: The Luckiest Guy in the World (2023). Four parts on a career interrupted by injuries and a life that wasn’t.
36. Linsanity (2013). Jeremy Lin’s two weeks in New York, filmed by a crew that had been following him for years.
37. Year of the Yao (2004). Yao Ming’s rookie season with the Houston Rockets.
38. Jordan Rides the Bus (2010). Michael Jordan’s season of minor league baseball.

The game beyond the NBA

39. The Fab Five (2011). Michigan’s freshmen of 1991 and the style they brought to the sport.
40. Without Bias (2009). Len Bias, the No. 2 pick who died two days after the 1986 draft.
41. Benji (2012). Ben Wilson, the best high school player in the country, killed in Chicago in 1984.
42. Lenny Cooke (2013). The player ranked ahead of LeBron James in high school who never reached the NBA.
43. Through the Fire (2005). Sebastian Telfair’s senior year at Lincoln High School in Brooklyn.
44. Basketball County: In the Water (2020). Why Prince George’s County, Maryland produces so many pros, with Kevin Durant as executive producer.
45. One and Not Done (2017). John Calipari and the one-and-done era.
46. Black Magic (2008). Basketball at historically Black colleges during segregation.
47. Doin’ It in the Park (2012). Pick-up basketball on New York City playgrounds.
48. NYC Point Gods (2022). The New York point guards of the 1980s and 1990s.

Business, scandal and culture

49. Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul (2022). Tim Donaghy, the referee who bet on games, gives his version. We covered him in our piece on the 2016 Finals conspiracy theories.
50. Sole Man (2015). Sonny Vaccaro, the man who signed Michael Jordan to Nike. Pair it with Unbanned: The Legend of AJ1 (2018) for the story of the shoe itself.

Why are NBA documentaries so popular?

Partly because of streaming, which gave every service a reason to pay for one. Mostly because of The Last Dance, which arrived in April 2020 when there were no live sports to watch and proved that tens of millions of people would sit through ten hours on a team from 1998.

The players noticed. A film is now part of how a star manages his legacy, and many of the recent ones are produced by the player’s own company. That is worth remembering while you watch: the older films on this list tend to be more candid than the new ones.

Where can you can view NBA documentaries? Which platforms?

1. ESPN+ and Disney+. Home of the 30 for 30 library, which accounts for a third of this list.
2. Netflix. The Last Dance, The Redeem Team, the Untold films and Court of Gold.
3. Max, Apple TV+ and Prime Video. Most of the recent player portraits.
4. YouTube. Many older films, including NBA TV productions, turn up here in full.

Availability changes often and differs by country, so search for the title before you subscribe to anything.