Love & Basketball: For Your Heart

What brings me back to Love & Basketball, time and again, is how complete and satisfying a story it tells. It is a tender chronicle of young love, but it’s also a coming-of-age story. Monica (Sanaa Lathan), the young woman protagonist, loves basketball and pursues her dreams with ferocity. She also loves Quincy (Omar Epps), who loves basketball, too, as he tries to follow in the footsteps of his father, an NBA player. The movie is, in an elegant way, also a tale of two families. Monica’s parents are a traditional suburban couple. Her mother stays home to raise her children, while her father supports the family by working in banking. Monica is a daddy’s girl, and she struggles to connect with her mother because she cannot understand her choices, or imagine her life as fulfilling. Quincy, on the other hand, is trying to emulate his father, who is handsome, confident, talented, and famous. His father may be a good parent, but he is a terrible husband, and Quincy is forced to see his mother relegated to supportive basketball wife and little else. When his father falls from grace, Quincy is forced to question whether he actually wants to follow in his path, given that his father is not the man Quincy thought he was. The screenplay makes it easy to root for both Monica and Quincy, and even though this movie is Monica’s story, Quincy is just as fully developed a character.

Monica is strong, independent, and interesting, but still there is room for softness in her life. As in many fictional love stories, Monica and Quincy, who grow up together, don’t particularly care for each other when they first meet, but over the years they develop a tentative friendship that finally blooms into love when they allow themselves to see each other as the people they have become instead of who they were when they first met. The movie gives as much as it takes. As Monica and Quincy grow into adulthood, attend college, pursue their basketball careers, we see their love mature. We see what happens when they reach a seemingly impassable obstacle—Quincy asking Monica to defy her team curfew to comfort him when he receives bad news. And most important, we see what happens when a woman chooses herself. Her life goes on, and though she might have regrets, she continues to pursue her ambition.

It is no small feat that Love & Basketball tells a love story without requiring a Faustian bargain from its heroine or its audience. In part, that’s because this is a movie that contains multitudes. It is a romantic drama, yes, but it is also a sports film. Most of the movie is about two kids who dream of playing in the NBA and get there in very different ways. Monica’s pursuit of a professional basketball career is the movie’s centerpiece, because it is a dream she nurtures well before the inception of the WNBA. She doesn’t think about whether or not this ambition is possible. She simply does everything in her power to make sure that she is ready for the right opportunity. Her commitment is unwavering. Monica’s greatest love is basketball. She doesn’t set aside that love because the future she wants isn’t available to her, and then, when she is finally ready for that future, the world has changed, just enough. The dream she has spent a lifetime working for finally comes true. We get to go on that journey with her, from Los Angeles to Barcelona and back, trusting we and she will end up in the right place.

We talk a lot about representation in film and television because, even now, Black people don’t always get to see our stories told in ways that are authentic and nuanced and compelling. Representation becomes this shallow thing that small-minded gatekeepers think can be satisfied with mere quotas and the barest of gestures. We have not yet gotten to a place in the cultural conversation where we can talk about how much more representation demands than blunt, inelegant approaches. We want to see our stories told, but we don’t want or need them to be universal. We want the stories to be textured and engaging and unique. We want our stories to be realized by people who know and understand something about our lives. We want the aesthetics of our representation to be handled with care. So often, directors and cinematographers seem to have no idea how to light Black skin beautifully. We end up washed-out, or our skin looks gray and dull. So much vibrancy is lost when aesthetics are overlooked.

But nothing is overlooked in a Gina Prince-Bythewood production. Not only does Love & Basketball tell a wonderful story that is incredibly specific, it is also beautifully shot. She is a director who understands that representation is never just representation. Whether it is Quincy shooting baskets bare-chested in his driveway or Monica sitting on her parents’ porch after a long day of work or Monica and Quincy seeing each other at a high-school dance, great care has been taken. Their skin practically glows, suffused with necessary light. There is nary an ashy knee or elbow in sight.

Every production detail contributes to the story being told, from the costumes to the soundtrack to the location settings. And then there are the finer points. Monica’s hair, over the course of the film, is styled in such relatable ways, from her loose, textured mane as a young girl to cornrows when she’s playing basketball in college to her pressed, gently curled hair when she starts working at her father’s bank. For Black women of a certain age, we know those hairstyles. We wore those hairstyles. This is a small thing, but it also isn’t. The details matter, and a great director knows that. Monica’s hair is probably something you would never think to notice, which makes the authenticity of her hair story so important. It is missteps and oversights that distract us in movies, and pull us out of a film. It is a testament to Love & Basketball that there are no distractions. We don’t have to hold our breath, worried that we won’t be well or wholly represented.