Rez Ball on Netflix is inspired by a true story ( Photo Credit – Netflix )
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Rez Ball is partially inspired by a true story, and it became popular because of its honest portrayal of life on a reservation.
Rez Ball follows Chuska Warriors, a high school basketball team composed of Navajo players and coaches. When their star player faces a tragedy, Jimmy Holiday steps up to lead the team and guide them as they struggle to meet their personal goals and the community’s expectations. The film has beautifully delivered a powerful mix of inspiration and heartbreak, given it was written by one of the creators of Reservation Dogs.
Though Netflix’s Rez Ball features Chuska Warriors in New Mexico, it is actually inspired by the Chinle High School Wildcats of Arizona. Furthermore, Michael Powell’s 2019 book Canyon Dreams: A Basketball Season on the Navajo Nation also inspired the movie. The book focuses on the Wildcats, a high school basketball team, and offers a journalistic perspective on one of the team’s seasons. While the book inspired the storyline for Rez Ball, it wasn’t used as the direct source material.
Apart from the book and the Chinle High School Wildcats, the movie also used director Sydney Freeland’s experiences of playing basketball while growing up on a Navajo reservation. The co-write of Rez Ball, Sterline Harjo, told Time, “It was from her community and she played basketball there. It was really about just telling a real story that we both connected to and felt authentic and real to us.”
Freeland also shared that basketball is the backbone of life for the Navajo community. She said, “What you have is high school sports, and a lot of that fell onto basketball because that’s what a lot of Indigenous communities excelled at.” She also portrayed the other parts of her basketball experience, like when the team talks trash about each other in their native language and do not understand each other. Moreover, Rez Ball represents how the Navajo community has strong female role models as they made the team’s coach a woman, Heather Hobbs.
Overall, Rez Ball is a tale of overcoming tragedy and grief, learning the power of teamwork, and confronting the realities of life on a reservation. While the film isn’t a fully historical account, it still captures the truths of its themes.
