Every Spike Lee Movie Ranked Worst To Best

When He Got Game was released, it was called out for the liberties Lee took with the rules of basketball coaching. But these flaws are trivial to the film itself, which overcomes its detractor's complaints with one of the most viscerally powerful stories of Lee's career.

An entertaining sports flick wrapped inside of a genuinely warm-hearted father-son drama, the film finds Denzel Washington in one of his most wrenching roles as convicted murderer Jake, who attempts to get his son (real-life basketball star Ray Allen) to attend a prestigious college so he can get an early release from prison.

Vivid in its assessment of the pairs' fraught relationship and Jake's effect on everyone in their immediate circle, He Got Game is a sublime and memorable drama that deserves to rank as one of Lee's best.