Steph may be Underrated, but is his doc really OVERrated?

Since The Last Dance hit in 2020 we’ve seen a rise in sports documentaries of its nature, and Steph Curry was no exception. His new doc from Apple TV+, Underrated, has dropped and Amin Elhassan and Charlotte Wilder took to Oddball with their thoughts.

Apple TV+’s website describes the film as the “remarkable coming-of-age story of one of the most influential, dynamic and unexpected players in the history of basketball: Stephen Curry. This feature documentary — blending intimate cinéma vérité, archival footage and on camera interviews — documents Curry’s rise from an undersized college player at a small town Division I college to a four-time NBA champion, building one of the most dominant sports dynasties in the world.”

Charlotte said she felt like she was waiting for the doc to start for the entire run time and that she didn’t realize going in how much of the film was going to focus on his time at Davidson. She says she thought it was going to be about tracking this evolution through the NBA. She posits that perhaps the filmmakers were expecting a certain amount of access, but when it came to reality the amount of access they got led to a thin doc so instead they went back to the Davidson days because of extra access. And that, Charlotte says, is a bad look for a doc — if the viewer immediately feels like the filmmakers didn’t have the access they thought and instead had to go for lower-hanging fruit.

Amin says the archival footage is great, but he was looking for more from two points in his life. He says he wanted more of Steph Curry as a child, as unlike someone like MJ, his dad played in the NBA and there is a lot of archival footage of him hanging around with his dad during his NBA playing career. The other thing that left Amin wanting was that there was a seeming gap between No. 7 overall pick and NBA champion/MVP, and that blew Amin’s mind. Amin feels like the doc glossed over some of the adversity that Steph overcame, between ankle injuries and changing his body. Charlotte agrees and notes that we got his entire NBA career in five minutes in a montage at the end. She also points out that the doc never mentions that Dell Curry played in the NBA and was one of the league’s best shooters or the fact that his mom was an elite D1 volleyball player.

Amin also points out that the doc glosses over all the privilege that Steph has had — genetically, financially and in terms of experiences — and try to make this a “pull up by the bootstraps” type of doc which rings false. Amin does say that all those privileges don’t take anything away from how great Steph is in his own right, if anything he thinks it makes the story more colorful and Amin is surprised they ran from it.

Charlotte agrees that she wanted more about his family, wanted interviews with people who knew him as a kid and she even wanted to get Steve Kerr, his longtime coach, in there as well. Or even his brother or wife! Charlotte also takes umbridge with the “false underdog narrative” as evidenced by sports talk radio callers calling Steph washed — as the Tom vs. Time doc about Tom Brady similarly did — and she thinks that it’s lazy and she’s frankly tired of it. Amin also points out that the doc starts with Reggie Miller reading the scouting report on Steph (why couldn’t we get more Reggie?) and by contrast in his time with the Suns they compared Steph to Steve Nash and never thought of him as just a shooting guard even if they didn’t see unanimous MVPs in his future.

Even with a landmark collegiate moment of bouncing back after a tough first game and remaining in the starting lineup, Amin points out that they never go back and ask his coach why he kept Steph in the starting lineup, leaving Amin to beg for some exposition. Charlotte even takes it a step further to point out that there are a lot of false equivalencies in the doc as well. Amin just wanted more of the why and the behind-the-scenes inner workings.

So on the Oddball grading scale, what does the doc get? Charlotte gives it the first D in Oddball because there were parts of it she liked, such as the highlights, but it frustrated her deeply. Meanwhile, Amin gives it not one, but two L’s, saying it’s a double loss as you didn’t even get to talk to his head coach or the GM that drafted him or anybody from the Warriors. How do you swing and miss on that?

SHOW BREAKDOWN

The Moses of Weed in The NBA

• Is Kevin Durant the Moses of Weed in the NBA? Did he REALLY convince Adam Silver to change the NBA’s policy on marijuana? Amin & Charlotte decide whether the Miami Heat will make the playoffs again this season, whether the Nuggets will repeat, and more on everyone’s favorite most-hated segment, BET THE SHOW! Plus, Amin & Charlotte share their review of the Apple TV+ documentary, “Stephen Curry: Underrated”.

Watch more below!

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