As season two of Swagger premieres on Apple TV Plus June 23, it joins an unprecedented number of basketball-themed series and films greeting viewers. Besides Swagger, the story of a teen hoops standout that’s inspired by the life of NBA star Kevin Durant, there’s The Crossover on Disney Plus; Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty on HBO; and Shooting Stars on Peacock. In terms of films, there’s the Air Jordan story Air on Prime Video and the redo of White Men Can’t Jump on Hulu. 

The trend includes nonscripted programming, too, including Bill Walton film The Luckiest Guy in the World, which premiered on ESPN June 6; Showtime’s Wilt Chamberlain docuseries Goliath on July 14; and Stephen Curry: Underrated on Apple TV Plus July 21.

Reggie Rock Bythewood, creator, director and executive producer of Swagger, said when he was approached about taking Durant’s story to screen four or five years ago, he was also pitched two other basketball-themed series. “I don’t know what was in the air,” he told B+C. 

Isaiah Hill plays teen superstar Jace Carson in Swagger. The project was hatched, Bythewood said, when Durant got talking to Brian Grazer of Imagine Television Studios at a social event. “I was given the space to do something to stand out and separate ourselves from the other basketball shows,” Bythewood said. “That was inspiring.”

Blame Jordan

There are substantially more shows and films related to basketball right now than programming centered on football, soccer, baseball or other sports. The trend began when docuseries The Last Dance, about Michael Jordan’s last season with the Chicago Bulls, aired on ESPN and ABC in spring 2020, and streamed on Netflix. With the pandemic dominating life in America, the high-flying exploits of Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman were just what many desired to see. 

“The Last Dance certainly helped” start the trend, SportsBrandedMedia founder and CEO John Meindl said. 

A couple of years later hoops movie Hustle, with Adam Sandler as a down-on-his-luck scout who finds a stunning prospect in Spain, came out on Netflix. Based on the success of The Last Dance and Hustle, several basketball series followed. 

What is it about basketball that makes the sport pop in the entertainment world? Teams have five players at one time, while football has 11 offensive players and 11 more defenders. Players don’t wear helmets or facemasks, eliminating a boundary between fans and athletes. 

Basketball offers a basic goal — get the ball in the hoop — but requires an exceptional level of athleticism to do it well. “There’s a simplicity to the game of basketball that makes it easy to understand, yet it has an athletic elegance that elevates said simplicity,” said Rodney Barnes, executive producer of Winning Time, a series about the Lakers in the ‘80s that starts season two August 6. “There’s a sense of individual expression in the game which can highlight a character’s personality while not departing from the ongoing narrative.”

The sport is also extremely diverse and plays well around the globe due to its expat superstars. The MVP of this month’s NBA Finals was Nikola Jokic of Serbia, star center for the Denver Nuggets. 

“The international love of the game has created a talented pipeline of players beyond U.S. borders,” Linda Ong, founder and CEO of brand consultancy Cultique, said. 

Real-Life Video Game

While fouls and timeouts slow the action, basketball nonetheless runs at a pace that football and baseball cannot boast of, which appeals to a wider swath of fans. “Whereas baseball is more methodical and football stops and starts, modern basketball moves at its own up-tempo rhythm; a frenetic pace that mimics a video game, appealing to a younger audience,” Barnes said. “Its ability to cross lines of class, race and socioeconomic barriers creates a wellspring of storytelling possibilities.”

Entertainment pundits also describe a culture in basketball that doesn’t quite exist in other sports. The sport intersects with fashion and hip-hop in ways other sports do not. Ong credits the NBA for “leaning into cultural relevance with its fans, as opposed to marketing at them.”

Endorsement deals and strong social media personas further break down the walls between star player and fan. “Top basketball players and their endorsement deals are front and center in the media more so than other professional athletes,” Meindl said. “There’s a unique culture surrounding basketball.”

Producing On and Off the Court

Star players are also active in film and television production. LeBron James’s SpringHill productions include Shooting Stars, about his on-court exploits in high school, The Crossover and game show The Wall, among many others. Stephen Curry’s Unanimous Media projects include Apple TV Plus documentary Stephen Curry: Underrated and mini-golf spectacle Holey Moley on ABC. 

A primary challenge of scripted basketball shows is finding actors who can play the game. Speaking before the April premiere of The Crossover, inspired by Kwame Alexander’s novel of poems about teen brothers balancing hoops and a tricky home life, executive producer and co-showrunner Alexander said: “When we casted it, we looked for identical twins who can act, who are ballers. Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.”

Producers then focused on finding excellent actors to play the Bell brothers, and putting them through what Alexander called a hoops “boot camp.” 

“We figured it would be easier to train them how to be ballers than train them to be great actors,” he said. 

Winning Time’s Barnes too spoke of teaching actors the points of the game, and bringing in more seasoned players as doubles when the situation calls for it. “Some basketball acumen is definitely preferred,” he said. “But if there’s athletic ability, aspects of the game can be taught.”

A Certain Swagger Sets Show Apart 

Bythewood said Swagger star Isaiah Hill knows his way around a basketball court. “When he dunks, he doesn’t just dunk,” Bythewood said. “He puts a little hot sauce on it.”

With so many hoops-themed series and films out there in 2023, Bythewood knows Swagger must offer something special to stand out. He spoke of aiming to make the viewer feel like they’re “part of the game, not a spectator.” That involved putting camera operators on Rollerblades to better help them keep up with the high-speed action. Sending a skates-wearing operator up and off a ramp meant fully capturing Jace Carson executing a slam dunk. 

“We put you inside the game in a way that’s not been seen before,” Bythewood said.  

Apple TV Plus Thursday offered a first-look trailer at its new basketball-themed drama series inspired by the life of NBA superstar Kevin Durant debuting Oct. 29.

The 10-episode series, Swagger, explores the world of youth basketball and follows  the exploits of players and their families and coaches as they walk the fine line between dreams, ambition, opportunism and corruption, said the streaming service. 

The series stars O’Shea Jackson Jr., Isaiah Hill, Shinelle Azoroh, Quvenzhané Wallis, Caleel Harris, James Bingham, Solomon Irama, Ozie Nzeribe, Tessa Ferrer, Tristan Mack Wilds and Jason Rivera.

Swagger is executive produced by Durant, Reggie Rock Bythwood, and Brian Grazer, along with Rich Kleinman, Francie Calfo, Samie Kim Falvey and Smantha Corbin-Miller.

Apple TV Plus will debut the first three episodes of the series on Oct. 29, followed by one new episode weekly every Friday thereafter through Dec. 17, said the streaming service.

When National Basketball Association All-Star Kevin Durant suffered a ruptured Achilles tendon in the first half of Game 5 of June’s NBA Finals, it all but ended the Golden State Warriors’ two-year championship reign. Without Durant, the two-time NBA Finals Most Valuable Player, the Warriors went on to lose the championship to the Toronto Raptors in six games.

The devastating injury will keep former NBA Most Valuable Player Durant — who two months later would sign a long-term deal to play for the Brooklyn Nets — off the basketball court for most of the 2019-20 season. But it hasn’t hampered his drive into the entertainment arena as an executive producer and entrepreneur. And that push has earned him recognition as the 2019 Multichannel News Athlete of the Year among men. 

From serving as executive producer of ESPN Plus’s sophomore sports series The Boardroom, to his hands-on development of Fox Sports’s prison sports documentary Q Ball and the upcoming scripted drama series Swagger for Apple TV+, Durant is looking to match the success he’s had in his fruitful 12-year NBA career.

“In addition to being a two-time NBA champion and Finals MVP, Kevin Durant is an accomplished entrepreneur with a deep passion for storytelling,” NBA deputy commissioner and chief operating officer Mark Tatum said. “Kevin’s investments across sports, media, technology and philanthropy demonstrate his wide variety of interests and his commitment to making an impact in communities around the world.”

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Durant, 31, who was drafted second by the Seattle SuperSonics (now the Oklahoma City Thunder) in the 2007 NBA Draft, has already had what is arguably a hall of fame career. Heading into this season, the 10-time All-Star has already won a Rookie of the Year Award, two Olympic Gold Medals and four NBA scoring titles to go with his two NBA championships and two NBA Finals MVP awards as a member of the Warriors.

Penchant for Storytelling

While Durant has made his mark in the NBA, TV industry executives said his talents go beyond the basketball court. Durant in 2016 co-founded media company Thirty Five Ventures with business partner Rich Kleiman with the idea of telling stories through the lens of sports, according to Thirty Five Ventures general manager Sarah Flynn.

“As the business of sports has changed, fans want and expect more access to what goes on off the court/field, and it's important to show them the way that athletes and executives are really talking about their business,” Flynn said. “Kevin is extremely involved in the process.”

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Former NBA player Jay Williams said Durant — through content from Thirty Five Ventures — is one of several elite athletes, including fellow NBA star LeBron James, who are breaking down barriers in the sports documentary genre by developing content that allows athletes to provide an unfiltered point of view about issues on and off the field of play.

“Kevin Durant can now say, ‘Hey, you might not like exactly what I have to say, but this is how I feel,’” said Williams, who played for the Chicago Bulls in the early 2000s and currently co-hosts ESPN Plus’s sports documentary series The Boardroom, executive produced by Durant.

The Boardroom, in which Durant and prominent business executives talk about the business of sports from the perspective of those in the trenches, will launch its second season in February 2020. ESPN Plus vice president of original content Brian Lockhart said Durant’s input and flexibility in creating content that offers a unique, behind-the-scenes look at the business of sports has been instrumental in the show’s development. In its six-episode first season, The Boardroom delved into such topics as the burgeoning sneaker industry, team ownership, athlete brand-building and player development and the business of social media.

“I think the show is driven by a genuine curiosity by Kevin in the topic as he himself was going through learning what the broader business industry had to offer,” Lockhart said. “He wanted to have a conversation that included an athlete’s perspective in that space.”

Durant has also turned his passion for basketball into several other television projects. Thirty Five Ventures recently teamed with Imagine Entertainment, CBS Television Studios and Apple to produce Swagger, a scripted series based on Durant’s early basketball career, for Apple TV+. Actor Winston Duke (Black Panther, Us) will star in the series, which has already begun production.

Durant also helped turn a 2015 visit he made with the Golden State Warriors to San Quentin State Prison in California into a Fox Sports documentary, Q Ball, which debuted on Fox Sports in May after a brief theatrical run.

Hands-On Producer

Q Ball director Michael Tolajian said Durant was enthusiastic to get behind the project, which chronicled the lives of incarcerated basketball players at the state penitentiary. Durant participated in the editing for the project, and also filmed more than a dozen promos and clips promoting the documentary that he personally shared through social media.

“Almost instantaneously they responded positively and wanted to be involved in the project as executive producers and help us create and promote the show,” said Tolajian, who also serves as Fox Sports Films senior vice president. “It wasn’t just about him throwing his name on the project — he had been to San Quentin and he was passionate about it, so he was able to be involved early on creatively on the theme of the project. We couldn’t ask for a better partnership than to have someone who believes in the project … it was very much a win-win all the way around.”

Tolajian also said he thinks Durant has a bright future in the entertainment business once he hangs up his sneakers.

“I think his interest in entertainment is genuine, and I don’t see why he wouldn’t continue,” he said. “If and when he has another idea, believe me, we want to hear it.”

Added ESPN Plus’s Lockhart: “I can tell just by interacting with him that he has a passion for creating content, whether it’s The Boardroom or his new Apple TV+ scripted series, I see him being super excited about taking that next step in his career whenever the NBA career is over.

“I believe that he would love to be doing more in the entertainment space ... but he’s still very focused on his primary career,” Lockhart said.