Does Netflix's Hustle mark the return of sports movies?

"Look at the hops on this guy, there was nobody like him," an enthusiastic Stanley Sugerman, played by Adam Sandler in Netflix's newly released Hustle, exclaims.

Sugerman's excitement is in reaction to a video of former basketball player Julius Erving throwing down slam dunks at 63. The scene is an ode to a man who was one of the best at his craft. A call to the past. 

That idea is also central to where some experts say the sports film finds itself today. Once a titan of industry, churning out classics like Rocky, Rudy or The Sandlot, the genre is now a grizzled veteran among a new class of content. 

Audiences have long connected with the themes involved in a sports film, says Lorna Schultz Nicholson, a former university rowing coach and sports writer based in Edmonton.

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"Sports are fast and furious and have highs and lows," she said. 

Vish Khanna, who hosts the podcast Kreative Kontent and is an assistant editor with Exclaim! magazine, similarly points to the tension and arcs of sports as storytelling techniques that he says audiences are inherently drawn to. 

Despite this, Hustle is just one of a handful of major sports-related releases to come out this year, along with Home Team, Into the Wind and Jersey. (Compare that to 2000, a year featuring classics such as Remember the Titans and The Replacements that saw eight major sports movies released.)

The film follows Sugerman, a player scout for the Philadelphia 76ers. Sugerman, who's tired of travelling on the road, aspires to become a coach so he can spend more time with his family. While scouting in Spain, Sugerman comes across Bo Cruz, an unknown phenom, who Sugerman thinks could be his team's ticket to a championship. 

So, why are we seeing this decline of audience-favourite sport films? 

Khanna attributes this change, in part, to the rise of social media. He says sports movies were once used as a way to tell stories about athletes, giving the average audience member an entry point into their lives.

But now, we're living in a "remarkable time to get to know athletes," he said, where the audience already has direct access to their favourite athletes' lives.

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Jonathan Filipovic, a professor in the faculty of humanities and social sciences at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ont., who has examined the role of sports in film and literature in some of his classes, agrees that we're in the midst of an unprecedented time when it comes to connecting with athletes.