Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: The problem with …

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: The problem with most sports movies is that they’re primarily about winning. Winning the Big Game at the end is the automatic payoff for enduring and overcoming all the obstacles thrown in the character’s way. When I played at UCLA, Coach Wooden taught us that winning definitely is a goal, but it’s not the only goal. It’s not even the most important goal. Becoming disciplined, educated and compassionate team members was his main goal for us. Good men who were also good players. And while sports movies pay a lot of lip service to that idea that “winning isn’t everything,” they usually flush all that well-meaning philosophy down the toilet by making sure the character wins at the end. Few movies have the courage to stick to their theme without slathering the ending with feel-good victories and sloppy sentimentality. While there’s nothing wrong with a feel-good ending, a manufactured one sends a mixed message to our youth: Sports build character, but the only demonstration of that character is winning.