By: Judah Gregory

*Note: This article contains spoilers

‘Hustle’ is a movie produced by Adam Sandler, Lebron James, and Maverick Carter that was created on June 3, 2022. The movie is about Stanley Beren (played by Adam Sandler), who is an NBA scout for the Dallas Mavericks, trying to recruit prospects for their franchise. But the general manager overrides and vetoes everything he does with prospects and actually threatens to fire him when the general manager messes up the draft and picks someone who Stanley didn’t advise. This is when we meet the main character, Bo Cruz, played by real NBA player Juan Hernangomez.

Bo lives in Spain with his mother and daughter. He doesn’t actually play basketball professionally for their country but makes money off pickup games at the park when Stanley, who happens to be there, is scouting. Stanley sees how good he is and immediately tries to talk to him, but his limited Spanish made him say something weird to him and made Bo walk off. But him being a scout, he followed Bo to his house, where he met his mom and daughter, and ended up convincing Bo to play with the promise of money and getting his family out of Spain.

This is where the antagonist for Bo is Kermit Wilts, played by real NBA rookie of the year Anthony Edwards. This part of the movie everyone loves because Edwards played his part very well and already talks trash in games, so in the movie he said some crazy things. But they first met at a pickup game just to showcase their talents, and Kermit dominated the game while Bo underperformed, played pretty badly, and was basically shut down due to the trash talk of Kermit.

I like this part because it shows how, in basically every sport, letting someone talk trash to you can take you out of your game and put you out, so you have to be mentally ready, and that’s the same advice Stanley gave him to use.

Kermit and Bo would meet two other times, and in their second meeting, they were playing at a combine in front of thousands of people, and Bo took his mother and daughter to help him perform better, but when Kermit’s regular trash talk didn’t work (because he saw his daughter), and blocked Bo’s shots out the stands, he then waved at his daughter. He takes another loss but actually isn’t upset, and his performance in the game already brought scouts so that he would be able to declare for the NBA draft.

The third and final time they meet is in the NBA, where the movie ends at the tip-off to start the game.

I like this movie because it’s about basketball, and in the movie, it shows one of the routes to the NBA which is the international one. The acting for the movie, I think, is good, with Anthony Edwards playing the main antagonist, which was good for the movie and definitely was my favorite character. Since there have definitely been worse basketball movies, I think this one is worth watching.

Overall, I would give this movie a 8/10. You can watch ‘Hustle’ on Netflix.