2023 Movie
Dir. Bryant Robinson & Liam Hughes · United States of America · English
These relatively unique perspectives on the basketball industry are obscured by a general lack of focus
It sounds like a great idea to a documentary on minor league basketball players. After all, these are individuals who don’t yet have their stories written for them by public opinion, and each of them is an underdog living in close proximity to their ultimate goal, but still not good enough to get there. So it does these men no favors that this film is so disjointed in its construction, and opts to go down the most predictable sports documentary route, asking them the usual questions and making out the G League to be purgatory. And while it’s good that these players—whose personalities still manage to shine through in the haze—are honest about their dissatisfaction with where they are, the film ends up becoming less an account of what the G League is like, and more an advertisement for the NBA all over again.
An immersive documentary film featuring behind-the-scenes access to some of basketball’s future stars competing in the G League – the NBA's developmental league – as they try and achieve their lifelong dream of making it to the NBA.
A handful of skilled players in the National Basketball Association's minor league share their dreams of getting their chance in the spotlight.
Easily the most interesting character in Destination NBA is Ryan Turell—a young man whose passion for basketball actually seems to come in second to his Jewish faith. This intersection between his career and his cultural and religious beliefs is rich enough to be the subject of its own documentary, and whenever the film focuses on him, it's finally able to give us images and moments that you wouldn't see in any other movie with the NBA logo slapped onto it. Turell's story still ultimately gets lost in the shuffle as the film keeps switching points of view, but he's definitely somebody worth keeping an eye on.
As awkwardly structured as the letters NBA-A-G in the title.
Emil Hofileña is a curator at A Good Movie to Watch. He also writes as a theater critic, with work published in Rogue and Out of Print, among others. He’s probably crying over a movie or an episode as we speak.
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