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The Heart of the Game

A slam dunk

By TOM MEEK | June 14, 2006

3.0 Stars

SLAM DUNK: Heart of the Game

In director Ward Serrill’s documentary, coach Bill Resler talks of the magic pixie dust his rocketing girls’ high-school basketball team possesses and worries about the preening parents who might taint matters by getting over-involved. Resler is an innovative leader who devises a predatory theme (lions, wolves, and piranhas, oh my) as a defensive psyche each year. He’s also a tax professor at the University of Washington. How and why a portly man in Birkenstocks, with no background in athletics, jumps in to turn around a failing program is never quite explained. Perhaps that’s because Heart, shot over seven years, changes gears when Darnellia Russell, one of the few African-Americans at the Seattle high, shows up at tryouts with WNBA skills. She later gets pregnant, and her promising future dissolves. The drama plays out earnestly even if some side stories fall by the way — Serrill’s hoop dream is a slam dunk from the heart.

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