I was a fan of the ESPN 30 for 30 series. The original idea, that there are tons of untold stories in sports that a lot of fans don't know about, is a good one (that they mostly stuck to). I also liked the idea to have directors pitch projects that were personal to them, as some of the best in the series were ones where you could see exactly where the director was coming from and relate. The series covered a broad range of interests, too, so anyone's list is going to look different. Two of my top five were not the most critically acclaimed in the series, but definitely up my alley interest-wise.
There were five I didn't see. Two I had no interest in (Tim Richmond: To the Limit, and Unmatched. Tennis and Nascar are towards the bottom of the sports interest spectrum for me. Thank God there wasn't a golf one.) Two I kind of wanted to but missed somehow (Without Bias and Guru of Go. I should have seen all of the basketball ones...) and one I was very interested in and am still trying to find when they replay it (Straight Outta LA, the Ice Cube one about the Raiders.) So those won't be on the list, but here's my rankings of the other 25, with some thoughts on select docs.
25 (and I'm sure 30 if I had seen the other 5)- Marion Jones: Press Pause (Michael Moore thought this "documentary" was one-sided. I love track and field, and have been forced to accept that half the race takes place in a science lab. But Marion Jones did more damage to the sport than possibly anyone, and I refuse to feel bad for her, and definitely am not inspired by her, John Singleton.)
24- Little Big Men (I fell asleep. Pretty boring.)
23-The Legend of Jimmy the Greek
22-The House of Steinbrenner (What happened to this being about stories I didn't know?)
21-The Band That Wouldn't Die
20-The Birth of Big Air (I bet this would be a lot higher if I was a bigger X Games fan.)
19-Fernando Nation (I wish they had focused a little more on the phenomenon of flash-in-the-pan baseball prospects, especially pitchers with a gimmick pitch. "Hideo Nomo Nation" would be an excellent 40 for 40.)
18-Pony Exce$$
17-The U (College football teams cheat. In the 80s Some of them weren't very good at cheating, and got caught. I get it. Pony Exce$$ gets docked below The U for having too much Skip Bayless.)
16-Silly Little Game (I've been playing fantasy sports since before I knew I didn't invent it, so I was looking forward to this one, but as you can imagine, the story of creating fantasy baseball does not lend itself to a lot of action sequences.)
15-Kings Ransom (We're swinging more to the "like" side of the pendulum now. this was a good story about small markets not being able to afford their superstar. At least Gretzky won Edmonton a few titles, first cough*Lebron*cough)
14-Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL? (I didn't know the USFL had that much of a toehold in the sports lexicon before seeing this.)
13-The 16th Man (Never saw Invictus, so this was interesting, but I depends if you'd rather see footage of the actual people, or Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon.)
12-The Best That Never Was
11-Four Days in October (The critics, I'm sure justifiably, accuse Bill Simmons of adding this one for personal reasons. As a Cubs fan, I was rooting for the Red Sox in 04, so I liked this a little more than your average Yankee fan probably did. It definitely gets away from the idea of telling stories people didn't know about, though.)
10-Once Brothers
9- Into the Wind
8-No Crossover: the Trial of Allen Iverson
7-Muhammad and Larry (There's not much to tell about Muhammad Ali anymore, but I didn't know a whole lot about Larry Holmes before this. As a boxing fan, I love stories about fighters I didn't get to see for myself.)
6-Winning Time (This was my childhood, along with the Pistons, Cavs, and Celtics. All the teams and players I grew up hating. Which is why I wish they had really unloaded on each other in the interviews. While the basketball parts are all exciting and fun to try to identify, the interviews don't add as much as I would like.)
5-June 17th, 1994 (I'm one of those people that remember exactly where I was on that day, and remember trying to watch the basketball game in the split screen. I didn't remember all the other stories from that day until watching this, and they started coming back to me.)
4-Jordan Rides the Bus (I am as big of a Jordan fan as they come, so I'm sure I liked this one more than non-Chicagoans. The best part of this one is the analysis of how the media portrayed the whole thing as a giant joke, even after MJ starts improving during the season. This was one of the few I wish had been longer.)
3-One Night in Vegas (This one got lukewarm reviews, but as many of you know I love boxing and hip-hop in equal parts, so I'm very much the target audience for this documentary. I could write a lot more about what either Tupac or Tyson meant to me growing up, but I'll digress and just say I wish for narrative reasons the actual boxing match had been a little more exciting.)
2-Run Ricky Run (Ricky Williams basically chose smoking weed over playing professional football. That is amazing to me, and I love how the documentary really respects what Ricky was doing when he was out of football instead of making fun of him. The best movies, books, TV shows make me think about something differently, and this one made me think about the idea of "priorities" differently.)
1-The Two Escobars (The Two Escobars is not just the best documentary I saw this year, it might be one of the best movies I saw this year. It certainly has the most gripping source material, as the whole saga could easily have been a good feature film even if it didn't actually happen. And I love the way the story loops around from the own goal at the beginning to all the events leading up to it, and why there was so much at stake. Great story, great storytelling, see it if you haven't yet.)
I hope ESPN doesn't stick too close to the title and keeps the series going. Especially because there's nothing else to watch on Tuesdays during football season.
Just don't let Singleton make any more.
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