10 Movies Where It Didn't Matter That The Hero Lost

Though the entirety of Coach Carter was based around Samuel L. Jackson's eponymous coach taking a bad basketball team and making them good, the point was never to win games. It was a nice benefit, certainly, but the titular coach saw past a sports trophy and looked to the future of the boys on the team. An astonishing amount of young men in the area went to prison, and he was determined to avoid that fate for them.

Instead, he wanted to give them a chance to go to college. This was more important than what happened on the court, and is why he had no problem shutting the team down when none of their grades improved as they had promised.

Yes, they were a very good basketball team, and ultimately were invited to the State Championship tournament where they met St. Francis, the highest ranked school in the State. It was a close game, but Richmond lost. However, this was never the point. The point was that in knuckling down and working hard in school to earn the privilege to be able to play basketball, they gave themselves the chance of a better future.

Between them, five players earned scholarships, and six went on to college, utterly eclipsing the expected statistics for the school.