10 Thoughts on Love & Basketball After Rewatching the Film as an Adult
This is undoubtedly one of the best movie soundtracks of my lifetime.
Why did Monica go to prom with that grown man?!
Rumour tells it (I’m rumour), this was supposed to be a queer love story between Monica and Shawnee (Gabrielle Union).
Many of the same conversations about misogyny towards women’s sports in this film, particularly regarding the WNBA, can still be had now, 25 years later. It is exciting, though, to be witnessing the WNBA gain more attention in 2025. It’s disheartening, though, to know that the WNBA had only existed for three years when Love & Basketball premiered, and now almost 30 years later many of these athletes are just starting to recieve their flowers.
Tyra Banks, Sanaa Lathan, and Regina King were integral parts of my queer awakening.
Q and Monica represent a pattern that so many can relate to - wanting to avoid becoming their parents so much so that they end up repeating their exact patterns, but in different contexts, which make them feel like they can’t be anything like them. Both of the protagonists wanted to avoid ending up in the type of marriages their parents were in. Q attempted to avoid the nonstop arguing and secretiveness of his parents relationship, while Monica actively fought to be everything that her parents’ traditional, patriarchal relationship wasn’t. Yet, Q followed in his father’s footsteps in making his partner feel left in the dark due to his inability to communicate, and Monica resembled her mom when she was willing to humiliate herself to be chosen by the man she loves.
Something that 90’s romance movies, and life, have continuously tried to convince me, is that so much of being a romantic partner as a Black woman in North America is about survivng a series of humiliation rituals. Why was he dunking on her like that???
If my niece ever comes to me with an entire layer of skin missing from her bloody cheek and tells me it is the result of another kid violently pushing her to the ground, there will certainly be no five second kisses shared between them the next day.What is so apparent in this movie is Q’s carelessness and inability to communicate throughout all stages of his life, starting with him as a young boy on the neighbourhood basketball court. The “boys will be boys” rhetoric protected him from ever needing to take accountability for the many moments where he was dead wrong, and also saved him from some royal ass whoopings from aunties like me.
At its core, the love story between Q and Monica, through my current lens, isn’t about a toxic relationship, or about Monica deserving better. It’s about them choosing each other, and the sport they love, over and over again, because basketball, and each other are what they know they can always safely return to. And more importantly, want to return to. Sure, there are some flaws in that rationale. but as Stephanie Sengwe says, “back in 2000, we didn’t have psychology terms such as gaslighting, toxic masculinity, fawning and bread crumbing, now so prevalent in the zeitgeist.” We are critical of their love story ,when we review it through a current, intersectional, feminist lens. But this simply wasn’t the same lens it was created in.
This film speaks heavily to family dynamics, particularly Black family dynamics within a North American context. Misogyny, pressure for Black youth to perform and excel in sports, Black women suppressing their needs to protect the feelings of men. Many of the current reflections on Monica and Q on social media is critical - and considering it’s been over 25 years since the film came out, it should be. But I can’t agree that their character flaws make it a bad film. Great films aren't about having characters that feel likeable, it's about writing characters that feel honest. The characters in Love & Basketball are a real reflection of a lot of people’s reality. Not the part about being outstanding ball players, that’s not a common predicament for most. However, being in complicated, confusing, exciting relationships - especially ones that are shaped throughout our adolescence, many of us can resonate with that.