Love & Basketball (2000)
and the Girl Who Won the First Game
A girl who loves the game as much as the boy next door, in the years before a women's league. What it teaches about playing to win, being called too much, two ambitions in one relationship, and saying what you want out loud.
Love & Basketball (2000). Written and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood. Sanaa Lathan as Monica Wright, Omar Epps as Quincy McCall, with Alfre Woodard as Monica’s mother, Camille, and Dennis Haysbert as Quincy’s father, Zeke.
She beat him at their very first game.
This page belongs to On Screen. It is a refusal, and a gentle one, and it is the first film in the series built around a Black woman athlete: a girl who loved the game as much as the boy next door did, in the years before there was a professional league for women to play in at home.
Like every entry on the On Screen page, it reads a story for the pattern it teaches, and makes no claim about anyone’s diagnosis. Nobody in this film is a villain. It is a love story, and it’s worth reading because of what it doesn’t ask the woman to give up.
No line of the film’s dialogue is quoted on this page. There is no quote page for it that could be checked, so everything here is drawn from the plot of record.
The Story
The film is told in four quarters, like a basketball game.
In the first, in 1981, Monica and Quincy are children in Los Angeles who become friends over their shared love of basketball. Monica beats Quincy in their first game of one-on-one. Their friendship survives a rough game when he knocks her down and accidentally cuts her face, and they share a first kiss.
In the second, in 1988, they’re at high school. Quincy is the star of the boys’ team and dates the prettiest girl in school; Monica leads the girls’ team, struggles to control her temper on the court, and has feelings for Quincy. They finally come together after both are accepted to the University of Southern California.
In the third, at college, Quincy is a rising player and Monica fights with her coach for playing time. Quincy struggles with the attention, and finds out about his father’s infidelity. Under the pressure of their sports and their studies, they break up.
In the fourth, in 1993, a few years before the WNBA existed, Monica is a success playing professionally in Barcelona; Quincy is struggling on the bench for the Los Angeles Lakers. After he’s badly injured, she learns he’s engaged. She confronts her mother about their troubled past, quits basketball and takes a job at a bank. Her mother encourages her to go after what she wants. Monica challenges Quincy to one more game of one-on-one, with his wedding as the stakes. He wins, and chooses her anyway. They marry and have a daughter, and Monica goes on to play in the WNBA.
Love & Basketball was Gina Prince-Bythewood’s first feature, and won the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay.
What It Gets Right
A great deal. It gives a woman a talent, a temper and an ambition as big as the man’s, and never asks her to shrink any of them to be loved. It shows the cost of being a woman athlete before there was anywhere at home to play. It lets her mother, who chose a different kind of life, end up urging her daughter toward the one she wants. And it ends with the woman doing the thing she loves, and a little girl with a basketball.
What It Teaches
1. She won the first game
The film’s first scene sets the terms: Monica beats Quincy. She is as good as he is, and for most of the film, she’s better at being honest about what she wants.
Many girls learned early to let the boy win, or to play a little worse when he was watching. Monica never does. The film never punishes her for it.
2. Too much
In high school, Monica can’t always control her emotions on the court. In college, she keeps running into trouble with her coach.
It’s worth noticing how often a girl’s intensity gets read as a problem, when a boy’s gets read as drive. The film lets Monica be intense and still be the heroine.
3. Two careers, one relationship
At college, both of them are under pressure, from their sports, their studies and, for Quincy, the discovery of his father’s infidelity. They break up.
The film doesn’t make Monica choose between him and the game. It lets them both have ambitions, and lets that be hard. Many women were taught that only one career in a couple gets to matter. This film quietly refuses that.
4. The bank job
Years later, after Quincy gets engaged, Monica quits basketball and takes a job at a bank. It’s the moment the film comes closest to the old story: a woman who gives up her dream when the love story goes wrong.
And then her mother, Camille, the one Monica has just confronted about their troubled past, is the one who tells her to go after what she wants.
5. One more game
Monica’s last move is the one she’s always made: she challenges him to one-on-one, with his wedding as the stakes. He wins, and chooses her anyway. She lost the game, and it didn’t matter. What mattered was that she’d said what she wanted, out loud, the way she always played.
6. The little girl with the ball
The last thing we see is their daughter, playing with a basketball. And Monica plays in the WNBA. The love story got its ending. So did the career.
She Kept Her Own Dream, Side by Side
| Shirley Valentine (1989) | Romy and Michele (1997) | Love & Basketball (2000) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What she loved | The sea, and living | Their own designs | The game |
| What stood in the way | Her family’s expectations | The popular girls | The years before a women’s league |
| What she did | Stayed in Greece | Opened a shop | Played |
Three women who kept the thing they loved, and didn’t wait for permission.
If You Grew Up on This
Many of us saw this as teenagers and wanted to be Monica. Nothing on this page asks you to stop loving it. The useful thing is to look at it clearly from where you stand now.
Some questions to sit with:
- Did you ever play a little worse so a boy could win?
- Have you been called “too much” for the same thing a man would be praised for?
- In your relationships, whose ambitions got to matter?
- Is there a dream you set down when love went wrong? Who told you to pick it back up?
- What would it mean to say what you want out loud, the way Monica played?
She beat him in the first game, and played in the last one.
You’re the audience now. You can say what you want out loud.
Related: Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion → · Shirley Valentine → · Waiting to Exhale →