Air, now streaming on Amazon Prime, is the first film of the year that seems to me to be Oscar worthy, and that’s only if ten or more yet-to-be-seen films don’t knock it out of contention.

Although sports films are occasionally on Oscar’s radar, basketball films rarely are. In the 96-year history of the Academy Awards, I can think of only three, 1980’s The Great Santini, which was nominated for Best Actor Robert Duvall and Best Supporting Actor Michael O’Keefe; 1986’s Hoosiers, which was nominated for Best Supporting Actor Dennis Hopper; and 1994’s Hoop Dreams, which was nominated for Best Documentary.

The Great Santini, which is about the relationship between Duvall’s tough marine father and O’Keefe’s sensitive basketball-playing son, is only peripherally about the sport. Hoosiers revolves around a 1950s high school team and its new coach played by Gene Hackman. Hopper plays the basketball-loving town drunk who assists him in turning the team’s losing streak around. Hoop Dreams follows the lives of two inner-city Chicago boys who struggle to become college players. Air is nothing like any of them.

If Air compares to anything, it would be 1996’s Jerry Maguire and 2005’s Moneyball, both of which were nominated for multiple Oscars including Best Picture, Actor (Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, respectively), and Supporting Actor (Cuba Gooding Jr., who won, and Jonah Hill, respectively). Cruise was playing a football player’s agent and Pitt a baseball team manager. Matt Damon plays a shoe salesman in Air who, like Cruise and Pitt before him, has an idea that is tough to sell but comes through in the end.

Damon has been tasked with finding three basketball players that Nike, the third largest athletic shoe company in 1982, behind Converse and Adidas, can use to advertise its product. Damon’s idea is to spend the proffered $250,000 on one player, rising star Michael Jordan. Once obstacles are overcome, it’s up to Jordan’s mother, played by Viola Davis, to choose between Nike and Adidas’ matched offer plus a Mercedes. She wants more. She wants her son to have a percentage of the profits, which as we all know, he gets. There’s no suspense in this well-known story. The fun is in getting there.

Like Jerry Maguire and Moneyball, Air could conceivably end up with Oscar nods for Best Actor and one of its supporting players, albeit in this case it’s more likely to be a supporting actress nod for Davis than a supporting actor nod for any of the actors, including Ben Affleck, who also directed. He plays Nike’s CEO in the film.

The Jordan endorsement made Nike the top-selling athletic shoe, allowing the company to eventually buy the once mighty Converse shoe company. Jordan, of course, went on to become the greatest player in the sport, and some say, any sport.

So, if basketball films aren’t the most popular sport films, what are? Not baseball, football, or auto racing. No, the most popular sport films over the years have been those dealing with boxing. That fascination goes all the way back to the 1894 documentary Leonard-Cushing Fight. The first narrative film about the sport was 1914’s The Knockout.

Classic 1930s films about boxing, in part or in whole, include City Lights in which Charlie Chaplin takes to the ring to impress a girl, The Champ for which Wallace Beery won an Oscar playing a dying boxer, The Prizefighter and the Lady in which real-life prizefighter Max Baer starred opposite Myrna Loy, Kid Galahad in which Edward G. Robinson turns bellhop Wayne Morris into a champion prizefighter, and Golden Boy in which William Holden became an overnight sensation opposite Barbara Stanwyck as a violinist who enters the ring to make money for his family.

Unforgettable 1940s films about the subject include City for Conquest in which James Cagney is a boxer blinded in the ring, Here Comes Mr. Jordan in which Robert Montgomery is a prizefighter who dies too soon and is reincarnated into a gangster’s body, Body and Soul in which boxer John Garfield becomes involved with gangsters, The Set-Up in which Robert Ryan plays an over-the-hill boxer, and Champion in which Kirk Douglas plays an arrogant fighter who alienates everyone around him.

Memorable 1950s films that touch on the subject include The Quiet Man in which John Wayne plays a retired prizefighter, The Long Gray Line in which Tyrone Power plays a real-life West Point boxing instructor, and Somebody Up There Likes Me in which Paul Newman advanced his career playing Rocky Grazziano.

The 1960s gave us Anthony Quinn as a punchy fighter in Requiem for a Heavyweight.

The 1970s gave us James Earl Jones as early 20th Century Black prizefighter Jack Johnson in the ironically titled The Great White Hope and Sylvester Stallone in the Oscar-winning Rocky, which spawned numerous sequels.

The 1980s gave us Robert De Niro in an Oscar winning performance as Jack LaMotta in Raging Bull.

The 1990s gave us Daniel Day-Lewis as an Irish boxer recently released from prison in The Boxer and Denzel Washington as the falsely-imprisoned Rubin “Hurricane” Carter in The Hurricane.

The 2000s gave us Hilary Swank as a female fighter in the Oscar-winning Million Dollar Baby and Russell Crowe in the James J. Braddock depression-era comeback drama, Cinderalla Man.

The 2010s gave us Mark Wahlberg and Oscar winner Christian Bale as real-life welterweight half-brothers in The Fighter.

The 2020s have not yet produced a boxing film of any great consequence, but the decade is still young.

Happy viewing, everyone.