In his new movie, Hustle, Sandler’s NBA

 Adam Sandler has found a surprising new niche: movies in which he acts alongside NBA power forwards featuring scenes at Celtics-Sixers games. In 2019, Sandler starred in Uncut Gems, an anxiety roller coaster that featured a scene-stealing performance from Kevin Garnett and revolved around a series of (ill-advised) bets on a Boston-Philly playoff series. In his new movie, Hustle, Sandler’s NBA costar is Jazz reserve Juancho Hernangómez, and the movie wraps with a scene at a Celtics-Sixers game that seems to be a season opener, or perhaps a preseason game. The stakes are lower this time around.

Gems was greatly enhanced if you knew about Garnett, a Hall of Famer whose trademark was over-the-top intensity—a perfect fit in a movie designed to make viewers uncomfortable for two straight hours. But you don’t need to know anything about Hernangómez, who has averaged 5.4 points per game in his career and has been traded four times in the past 12 months. That relative anonymity also makes him a perfect fit for his role. Hernangómez plays a total unknown, a Spanish construction worker named Bo Cruz discovered by Sandler’s character, Sixers scout Stanley Sugerman. Sugerman stakes his entire professional career on proving Cruz belongs in the NBA, bringing him to America and guiding him through the draft process.

Hustle is not the first movie with a streets-to-spotlight story of an overlooked athlete. It takes place almost entirely in Philadelphia and features a seven-minute training montage in which Hernangómez’s character runs up a staircase and celebrates. It’s been done before. But Hustle will be particularly entertaining for die-hard NBA fans, due to its sheer immersion in the NBA world. I counted 29 active or former NBA players in the credits, plus dozens of appearances from coaches, media personalities, front office members, team owners, and more.

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It’s NBA overload. It makes sense when movies use pro basketball players in basketball scenes—when professional actors have to play basketball in movies, it sometimes looks like this. But Hustle is so thoroughly saturated with league-adjacent figures that background characters with no lines who easily could have been played by professional extras are instead played by, like, former Pelicans GM Dell Demps. Fran Fraschilla is in this movie. The Professor from the And1 Mixtape Tour is in this movie. Emeka Okafor is in this movie. If you know who all three of those people are, you’ll probably enjoy Hustle, simply for the sheer ability to point at the screen when you see guys you know.

So which NBA stars took to the silver screen—and which should stick to setting screens? We gave awards to the best—and most forgettable—performances in this ode to the NBA.