Last Chance U: Basketball Review

Last year, I wrote about how Netflix has found a niche in the college sports documentary corner of the documentary game, churning out the excellent Cheer and the Last Chance U series (along with the less popular, but still compelling, QB1). Which, for someone like me who adores a good college sports documentary, has been a highlight of having a Netflix subscription over the past several years. So, it comes as no surprise that I was incredibly excited to check out the sixth season of Last Chance U when is dropped this past week.

Last Chance U: Basketball marked a key change on the tried and true formula of the series – instead of following a JUCO (junior college, a school that provides an Associates degree, along with a chance for students to pull up grades in order to transfer to a four-year college as a Junior) football program, this season was all about JUCO basketball. I’ll admit, as a big college football fan, I was worried I wouldn’t be as interested in a season following a sport I didn’t care as much about. I also worried that, this far into the series, the players and coaches would be less authentic and more concerned with playing things up for the cameras. But after watching the season premiere, it was clear my worries were for nought.

East Los Angeles College is a large junior college located, you guessed it, in Los Angeles. Which means that unlike the first four seasons of Last Chance U, that saw city kids living in rural areas and attempting to adapt to some of the more challenging attitudes that came with it (season five was set in the Bay Area), there’s a different set of challenges facing the student athletes in ELAC. Southern California is not cheap, and the college doesn’t provide housing, so the athletes must find their own. There are locally raised athletes who still have some temptations of their past lives to contend with. There are the blue chip recruits who are at odds because they play the same position and are fighting each other for playing time (unlike with football, the smaller roster of players – and the limit of only five on the court at a time – make playing time a hotly contested subplot within the season). And there’s the former elite prospect who lost his way on the big stage of Division I ball and is now attempting a comeback, over a year after he last played a game.

Now, all of that is a recipe for drama – and that doesn’t even take into account that the season was filmed during the 2019-2020 JUCO season, which means the specter of Covid-19 is hanging over the latter episodes in the season. We know things are going to stop, that the world is about to fall apart quickly. But the team has no idea that each game they are playing could be their last one with their teammates. That silently ticking clock (Greg Whiteley and his team are careful to avoid making any references to the coming storm until the players and coaches begin to take notice of it) adds another layer of intensity to the story, another road block for the team to overcome on their quest for a championship.

And what a quest it is. In fact, this might just be my favorite season of Last Chance U to date. In the past, the show has provided a glimpse into the psyche of asshole, megalomaniac coaches who will do whatever it takes to win and get their kids out to their dream schools. It’s also, in season five, shown us a caring, kind coach who lacks the killer instinct and, as a result, doesn’t see the same success on the field and with placing his kids in elite programs. This time around, we have Coach John Mosley, who works his team incredibly hard, but who genuinely loves each one of his players and is committed to doing everything in his power to both keep them on the right path and get them into another school. And his job is way harder than his football counterparts in that respect – with basketball rosters so small in comparison to football, there are far fewer open transfer spots to go around. Mosley is a likeable character, and it’s nearly impossible not to root for him and his staff (which includes the upbeat Robert Robinson and the recruiting guru Kenneth Hunter). It’s a sensational coaching staff, and you can see how much they love their jobs and the young men they get to coach – something that wasn’t always apparent with coaches in past seasons.

The team is also full of large personalities and compelling stories: KJ Allen is the local superstar who lacked the grades to translate that talent into a D1 role; Deshaun Highler has been through the ringer the past several years, but leads the team and is, in the words of Robinson, “the nicest asshole” you’ve ever seen; Malik Muhammad is the 6’9″, athletically gifted center who occasionally lacks the drive to push himself to his true potential; and then there’s Joe Hampton, who washed out on the big stage at Penn State and is trying one last time to make it back into the college elites. Compelling stories, great athletes, and people you genuinely root for. It’s the perfect combination.

If you’ve been a fan of past seasons of Last Chance U, I cannot recommend this season highly enough. It has so much heart, this team truly is talented, and the last two episodes are heart-stoppingly intense (seriously, the editing around the games is just sensational). I was worried that basketball wouldn’t be nearly as compelling as college football. Boy was I wrong. While there obviously won’t be a new season of Last Chance U filmed this year due to the pandemic, I cannot wait to see what’s to come next with this great series. I only hope we get more time at ELAC.