If you’re at a loss as to what to binge on a Wednesday night, Samuel L Jackson’s Coach Carter has you more than covered…

We’ve reached that special time of week once again. The time where we look to the streaming services for answers as to how to spend our Wednesday nights, and subsequently hit you hard and fast with five reasons why you should join us on our inevitable binge fest.

Last week, took a trip back to the 1960s with young Leonardo DiCaprio in the Stephen Spielberg classic Catch Me If You Can, but for this week’s Executive Decision, we’re heading to the late 90s with Samuel L. Jackson, for the sports drama epic Coach Carter.

And so, let’s not waste any time. Five reasons why you need to fire up Netflix and chuck on Coach Carter coming right up.

American Parties on the Big Screen

I think we’ve all grown up with this super bombastic impression of what American house parties are like. I mean, here down under it’s pretty standard; open backyard, some local DJ that plays the same twenty songs and a goon sack hanging from a clothesline. In America however, and more specifically Coach Carter, well, let’s just say they put us to shame. A mansion, heated pool and enough rooms to literally get lost in? I’d swap my 18th for any of those parties any day of the week.

A Love Letter To Basketball

There’s no question that basketball sequences have been done to death on the big screen over the years, but the way they’re crafted in Coach Carter stands out in a major way to its contemporaries. There’s a real focus on basketball plays themselves as well which is satisfying to any OG fan of the game, and when you see Robert Ri’chard’s Damien Carter, Channing Tatum’s Jason Lyle and so on put them into motion, it’s beyond satisfying.

Samuel L Jackson Being A Badass

Look, there’s no question Samuel L. Jackson is a badass in every role he graces, but the man managed to make even a high school basketball coach come across as the coolest (and most hardcore) cat in the universe. It’s shown really well in the scene below between him and Cruz, the retired baller managing to subdue and totally restrain a high school gang member. It’s also responsible for my favourite line of the movie: “I’m not a teacher; I’m your new basketball coach.” Enjoy:

The Training Scenes

Teamwork makes the dreamwork, and there’s plenty of it to go around in the endless amounts of push-ups and drills the Richmond Oilers get up to in practice. It feels like you’re there grinding out each exercise with them, sweating it out like you’re one of the crew. Another cool part is the workshopping of the various plays, the team running through tactics like ‘Linda’ and ‘Darlene’ with perfect precision.

 The End Credits

So it may not have been the happy ending we were all hoping for when our heroes lost the championship game, but the sheer joy in the end credits scene more than makes up for it. Soundtracked by the uplifting vibes of Twista’s ‘Hope’ ft. Faith Evans, we find out where Cruz, Lyle, Worm and the rest of the team end up later in life, and contrary to the delinquents they all started the film as, they all turn out more than okay, and it’s all thanks to the man himself, Coach Carter.