

Having Quincy in the stands, too, you know-his dream didn't pan out but he was right there cheering and supporting his wife and her love of the game and her talent. I wanted to give a different narrative for young girls and women that you can aspire to have it all. You shouldn't have to choose one or the other. They should have love and a career, and it's okay to aspire for both. I wanted to show that a woman could and should have it all. "And so, when it did I wrote a new ending to the piece. "What's kind of amazing is when I first wrote the script, the WNBA was not in existence," Gina Prince-Bythewood, the movie's writer and director, told me over the phone recently. Before that moment in the film, she settles for some desk job at a bank and her soul slowly begins to crumble.
#Love and basketball professional
That historic milestone for women's sports was incorporated into the movie's plot, and it's because of the WNBA that Monica is able to pursue her dream of becoming a professional basketball player. Love & Basketball was released just three years after the WNBA's inaugural season. It's a Hollywood ending that was made possible by the real-life creation of the WNBA. The camera pans away to the front row, where Quincy is sitting courtside holding their baby daughter. Instead of Quincy having the All-Star NBA career, the movie's final scene shows Monica being called to the court for the starting line up of a WNBA game as a member of the Los Angeles Sparks. Will Monica set her dreams and sports career aside for the sake of love? That was the expectation for women, even at the turn of the millennium, but what I love about Love & Basketball is how it flips the predictable romantic cliché.
#Love and basketball pro
The challenges extend to her relationship with Quincy McCall (Omar Epps), the son of a NBA player and an aspiring pro himself, who expects Monica to put him above all else-even basketball. But because I'm a female, I get told to calm down and act like a lady," she laments. "You jump in some guys face, you talk smack, and you get a pat on your ass. Monica struggles to reconcile her competitive and aggressive style of play on the basketball court with her off-the-court female sensibility. Love & Basketball follows Monica Wright (Sanaa Lathan), a tomboyish baller with raw hoop skills and tenacious determination.
#Love and basketball full
As athletes with varying athletic abilities, each one of us found an element we could relate to in the film, whether it was fighting for respect on a playground basketball court full of boys or dealing with the assumptions that go hand-in-hand with being taller, tougher, and little more rough around the edges. We ate it up, every last second of it, no popcorn needed. I went to see it with a few members of the women's basketball team. In 2000, when Love & Basketball hit theaters, I was a senior in college. Read More: Maya Moore: Back From Rio With Olympic Gold, and Back to the WNBA Grind These three simple things may not be priorities when it comes to listing the best sports movies ever, but they are important-and, even today, they're still rare to see.

And then there's Love & Basketball, which is not only about a female athlete but about one who happens to be African-American, and who also happens to excel at basketball even more than the movie's main male character.
