Your Next Hanukkah Watch – Full Court Miracle

In the United States, there’s an irrevocable tie between the holiday season and sports. There’s NFL football on Thanksgiving day, the Christmas day NBA matchups, and even the spectacular outdoors NHL Winter Classic on New Years Eve. And no American winter holiday would be complete without the requisite holiday movie - whether you are a fan of Rudolph, White Christman, Home Alone, Eight Crazy Nights, or the more classic, Menorah in the Middle. However, the sports-holiday movie combination gives us the ne plus ultra of American culture aggregation- with such classics as Rocky IV or the Ted Lasso claymation special. Is there space in this apogee of New World cultural commingling for the Jewish-athletic-holiday movie? Dear reader, I am pleased to share that this hallowed summit would be barren of a Jewish contribution but for one exception. 

In my inaugural column of Mazel on the Move, let me be the first to introduce our Fig & Vine Magazine readers to the cinematic masterpiece that is  Full Court Miracle (2003). A glorious blend of slapstick comedy and spirituality, the film centers on the struggling basketball team of the Philadelphia Hebrew Academy, doing athletic battle as the Lions. A retelling of the Hanukkah story, the movie shows 14-year-old Alex “Schlots” Schlotsky who dreams of winning the Liberty Tournament and defeating the school’s rivals, the Warriors. Despite pushback from his mother, who serves as the ultimate caricature of a Jewish mother, who wishes for her son to become a doctor and nothing else, Schlots searches for a coach who can lead his team to victory and defeat the Warriors. It is at this point in the movie that Schlots daydreams a spectacular basketball-battle between the Lions and the Warriors in which the teams are dressed as ancient Israelites and Greek warriors, respectively, in a comical reproduction of the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid King Antiochus.

Schlots and the team eventually meet an incredible basketball player down at Philly’s  public basketball courts, Lamont Carr. Despite Carr not being Jewish, the team discovers that his college nickname was “The Hammer” (just like Judah Maccabee) and become convinced that he is a reincarnation of the legendary Hebrew warrior. Eventually, the team reaches the traditional sports movie climax of The Big Game, facing off against the Warriors, and the gymnasium loses power during a storm in the final minutes of the fourth period. Alarmingly for Schlots and his teammates,  they are several baskets behind and the school’s generator outside only has enough fuel to last two and a half minutes. After the teams begrudgingly come to an agreement that the team with the higher score when the generator dies will win the game, the Warriors immediately call a timeout, with a one point lead and one minute left in the generator. As the fuel burns away, the machine miraculously continues to run. The game continues for eight more minutes of play  and the Lions claw their way back to win in the final seconds. 

Despite its poor critical reception, Full Court Miracle represents more than a multicultural alternative to the numerous Hallmark Christmas specials that inundate streaming services during the holiday season. It comfortably shows observant Jews doing things outside the mainstream culture with a heimish amalgamation of infinite Jewish motifs that few movies in the early 2000s were brave enough to reference. With Shabbat dinners, Kosher eating, kippah wearing basketball players, and plenty of Yiddish jokes, Full Court Miracle is the Jewish sports movie that I think every Jew has always yearned for deep down.