It’s playoff season for the NBA, which may be why a pair of basketball documentaries are now dominating the sports documentary ranks on Netflix.
That’s not too surprising, considering that Untold: The Death & Life of Lamar Odem revisits one of the biggest stories in the NBA over a decade ago.
Untold: Jail Blazers goes back even further, and it’s already cracked the top 10 movies on Netflix, which is an impressive feat.
You can find both of those projects among the Watch With Us team’s updated choices for the must-watch Netflix sports documentaries.
‘Untold: Jail Blazers’ (2026)
The Jail Blazers was the unflattering nickname given to the Portland Trail Blazers in the early 2000s after the team’s players earned a reputation for being in trouble with the law to varying degrees of seriousness. Rasheed Wallace and Damon Stoudamire‘s marijuana possession seems a lot less important than Qyntel Woods‘ dog fights and Ruben Patterson‘s sexual assault conviction.
Untold: Jail Blazers gives some of the so-called Jail Blazers a chance to tell their own side of the story as they recall the difficulties they faced. For a while, the city of Portland was behind the Trail Blazers. But as the legal problems mounted, Portland’s fans loudly turned against them. It’s a unique chapter in the team’s history that likely won’t be repeated.
Untold: Jail Blazers is streaming on Netflix.
‘Untold: The Death & Life of Lamar Odom’ (2026)
If Lamar Odom wanted to make himself one of the most prominent players in the NBA, he succeeded. But not necessarily the way he wanted it to. Odom won two NBA championships with the Los Angeles Lakers and found even greater fame when he was married to Khloé Kardashian. However, the wild ride Odom took to the top of the league was only the beginning of an epic fall.
Untold: The Death & Life of Lamar Odom features Odom, Kardashian and more as they recount his turbulent years, including his infamous overdose in a brothel that nearly killed him. Over a decade after that brush with death, Odom is still around to tell his story.
Untold: The Death & Life of Lamar Odem is streaming on Netflix.
‘Koshien: Japan’s Field of Dreams’ (2020)
Japan’s love affair with baseball goes back to the late 19th century, and it’s only gotten more passionate in the intervening years. Koshien: Japan’s Field of Dreams is a documentary about two high school baseball coaches, Hiroshi Sasaki and his mentor, Tetsuya Mizutani, as they vie to lead their respective teams to a place among the 100th annual Koshien baseball tournament.
Sasaki was previously a coach for all-star players like Shohei Ohtani, and the Koshien has a reputation for giving the best high school prospects a chance to become legends before going pro. Unlike Mizutani, Sasaki is willing to break with some of Japan’s rigid baseball traditions. Even so, the players and their coaches treat the game with gravitas and respect rarely seen outside of the major leagues. Baseball is more than a game here, and only the elite players will walk away as the winners.
Koshien: Japan’s Field of Dreams is streaming on Netflix.
‘Muscles and Mayhem: An Unauthorized Story of American Gladiators’ (2023)
The original American Gladiators TV series wasn’t exactly a sports competition show, but it was sports-adjacent and kind of an early extreme sports forerunner that took off in the ’90s. Ordinary athletes from around the country were recruited to try their hand at some outlandish games while going head-to-head with some intentionally cartoonish physical specimens who served as the titular gladiators.
A handful of the gladiators participated in Muscles & Mayhem: An Unauthorized Story of American Gladiators, and it confirms a lot of what fans already suspected about drug-fueled and steroid excesses that drove these people to push their bodies to the limit. As the gladiators became stars, the producers pushed back and introduced even more gladiators to fill the ranks. American Gladiators only had a limited shelf life, but this is an entertaining look back at that moment in time.
Muscles & Mayhem: An Unauthorized Story of American Gladiators is streaming on Netflix.
‘Miracle: The Boys of ’80’ (2026)
In the United States, the 1980 Winter Olympics event is best remembered for one of the greatest moments in sports history: the Miracle on Ice. Team USA’s college players defeated the Soviet Union’s team of professionals before going on to win the gold in the final round. Miracle: The Boys of ’80 is Netflix’s timely look back at this snapshot in time, not only in terms of sports, but for the nation itself.
Coach Herb Brooks passed away over two decades before this documentary was made, but his children paint a portrait of a man who was driven to beat the Soviet team at all costs. Yet it’s the players themselves who come to the forefront here with their first-hand accounts of what it was like to be a part of this momentous event. With Team USA’s Men’s Hockey team recently winning the Olympic Gold medal, Miracle is even more relevant now than ever.
Miracle: The Boys of ’80 is streaming on Netflix.
‘Glitter and Gold: Ice Dancing’ (2026)
It didn’t take long for a scoring controversy to erupt at the 2026 Winter Olympics. The French team of Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron upset Team USA‘s Madison Chock and Evan Bates to take the gold medal. This scandal makes Netflix’s Glitter & Gold: Ice Dancing even more timely, as it depicts the backstory behind these skating pairs.
As laid out in three episodes, Chock and Bates are a married couple likely competing in their last Olympics, while Beaudry and Cizeron are more recently paired. The French team also has other skeletons in its closet that are touched upon in this docuseries. Given the way that things played out on the world stage, perhaps Netflix should commission a fourth episode to wrap things up.
Glitter & Gold: Ice Dancing is streaming on Netflix.
‘Elway’ (2025)
In professional football, John Elway was the first quarterback to lead his team to five Super Bowl appearances. But he was also mocked for coming up short the first three times before ending his career with back-to-back NFL Championships. Elway lets the quarterback tell the story of his career from the highs to the lows.
A few of Elway’s contemporaries and former teammates also share their perspective on the man they knew. But it isn’t until late in the film that Elway opens up about the toll his competitive drive took on himself and his family. That gives viewers a look at the man behind the legend.
Elway is streaming on Netflix.
‘Scotty James: Pipe Dream’ (2025)
Scotty James in Scotty James: Pipe Dream Netflix
If there had to be a snowboarding documentary, it might as well be for one of the very best in the world. Scotty James lives up to the hype, and the documentary Scotty James: Pipe Dream allows its subject to revisit his rise to glory as he nears what may be his final Winter Olympics as a professional.
Unlike some other athletes, James has a very healthy relationship with his siblings, as well as his wife, Chloe Stroll, and their son, Leo. It’s heartwarming to see their support for him, especially since it’s made very clear that James probably wouldn’t have reached the same heights without them.
Scotty James: Pipe Dream is streaming on Netflix.
‘Untold: Shooting Guards’ (2025)
The name of Untold: Shooting Guards comes from an incident on December 21, 2009, when Washington Wizards teammates Javaris Crittenton and Gilbert Arenas pulled guns on each other during a heated argument in the locker room. It remains one of the most shocking incidents in the history of the NBA.
Shooting Guards features interviews that shed new light on what happened that day, as well as the events that came later. Neither man walked away from the incident completely unscathed, but only one of them later found himself accused of murder and standing trial on a charge that could send him away for decades.
Untold: Shooting Guards is streaming on Netflix.
‘Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist’ (2022)
No matter what Manti Teʻo does in his post-football life, he’ll always be overshadowed by the story about his fake girlfriend. But buckle up, because Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist is an even wilder story than you may remember. When Te’o was a favored prospect in college to make the NFL, he told the media and the entire world that his girlfriend was dead and he was dedicating his season to her.
However, Te’o’s girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, wasn’t dead because she was never alive. She was just a ruse created by a man named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo. Te’o really believed he had a girlfriend called Lennay, but this is one catfishing scheme that goes wildly out of control.
Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist is streaming on Netflix.
‘America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys’ (2025)
Who made the Dallas Cowboys into America’s team? Not Jerry Jones, the man who purchased the organization in 1989. But he has become synonymous with the franchise and its three Super Bowl wins in the ’90s. America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys is a multi-episode documentary that chronicles Jones’ tenure as owner of the team, which began with the controversial firing of Coach Tom Landry and the hiring of Jones’ college teammate, Jimmy Johnson, to replace him.
This show largely lets Jones shape the narrative over the earliest years running the team, as well as his falling out with Johnson despite winning two Super Bowls together. The series isn’t exactly objective, but it’s still fun to watch footage that Cowboys team in action with Hall of Fame legends like Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith and Michael Irvin. Say what you will about the organization, but that ’90s team was something special.
America’s Team: The Gambler and his Cowboys is streaming on Netflix.
‘Who Killed the Montreal Expos?’ (2025)
The trailer for Who Killed the Montreal Expos? compares the answer to that question to a game of Clue. “Lots of motives. Lots of suspects.” Here’s what we know going in: The Montreal Expos fielded one of the best teams in baseball in the mid-’90s, and it all went downhill from there. In the battle to keep baseball alive in Montreal, MLB actually collectively owned the Expos before what was left of the team moved to Washington, D.C. and rebranded as the Washington Nationals.
This documentary features former Expos players Vladimir Guerrero Sr., Larry Walker, Pedro Martinez and others in and around the organization who had a first-hand look at the team’s downfall. It’s a cautionary tale in sports, and not all of the owners appear to have learned the lessons.
Who Killed the Montreal Expos? is streaming on Netflix.
‘SEC Football: Any Given Saturday’ (2025)
College football and the NFL may share the same sport, but the former has enough drama and compelling personalities of its own. You should consider SEC Football: Any Given Saturday as a primer for college football, rather than a complete look at what it entails. But it’s enough to step into a world that can be even harder to follow than the National Football League.
Each episode of Any Given Saturday puts the focus on a team from the SEC, one of the top divisions in college football. The coaches seem to be driving most of the narrative, but there’s also a lot of behind-the-scenes footage and game clips to give fans their football fix during the week or off-season.
SEC Football: Any Given Saturday is streaming on Netflix.
‘Celtics/Lakers: The Best of Enemies’ (2017)
There are plenty of rivalries in the NBA, but few with the history of the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers. Over the decades, the Celtics have largely been dominant over their West Coast counterparts. But the Lakers have had some era-defining victories of their own.
30 for 30’s three-part documentary series, Celtics/Lakers: The Best of Enemies, adds an interesting wrinkle by having Donnie Wahlberg narrate the Boston side and Ice Cube handling the Lakers’ story while trading a few barbs at each other. Most of this series explores the famous battles between Larry Bird‘s Celtics and Magic Johnson‘s Lakers, but the history between them goes beyond any particular players. These two teams arguably set the tone for the last 40 years of basketball, and they’re still hated rivals to this day.
Celtics/Lakers: The Best of Enemies is streaming on Netflix.
‘The Last Dance’ (2020)
The Chicago Bulls of the late ’90s had a collection of larger-than-life characters that most movies could only dream about. Coach Phil Jackson, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman and the incomparably iconic Michael Jordan ruled basketball courts like few other teams ever had. This group even had a personal nemesis in Bulls General Manager Jerry Krause, who declared that the 1997–98 season would be their final run together.
The Last Dance primarily focuses on the Bulls’ final championship campaign, with frequent flashbacks to the history of Jordan, Pippen, Rodman and other players and coaches associated with the team. It’s mesmerizing viewing, especially if you loved watching Jordan put on a show. There may never be another team as riveting as these Chicago Bulls, and their story still resonates three decades later.
The Last Dance is streaming on Netflix.
‘This Was the XFL’ (2016)
Almost any wrestling fan can tell you that former WWE owner Vince McMahon has never succeeded in any venture outside of sports entertainment. But in 2001, McMahon and NBC — which had recently been jilted by the NFL — teamed up to take on America’s favorite pastime with the XFL, a football league that incorporated some of WWE’s over-the-top elements.
This was the XFL chronicles the disaster that followed, and the XFL’s subsequent demise after only a single season of play. Because this documentary was made in 2016, it doesn’t touch upon McMahon’s second XFL launch in 2020, which was an even bigger bust than the original one. But the story was far more interesting the first time.
This was the XFL is streaming on Netflix.
‘Pelé’ (2021)
If you’ve ever wondered if soccer has an answer to Michael Jordan, it’s Pelé. Few fans in America knew Edson Arantes do Nascimento by his given name, but Pelé achieved international fame for the skills that made him a three-time World Cup winner for his native Brazil.
Pelé takes on the daunting task of attempting to convey just how important its subject is to soccer. It covers a wide period of Pelé’s life, including his childhood and the last chapter of his career working with the New York Cosmos MLS team. Pelé wasn’t just a soccer player; he was an ambassador for the game who transcended sports. If you’ve never seen Pelé handle a ball or score, then you’re in for a treat. The archival footage of his games is a blast.
Pelé is streaming on Netflix.
‘This Magic Moment’ (2016)
Before Shaquille O’Neal came to the Los Angeles Lakers to win three out of his four NBA championships, he was drafted by the Orlando Magic and nearly started a dynasty on the East Coast. In 1993, Shaq was paired with Penny Hardaway, a gifted player who seemed destined for superstar status. Together, they made the Magic one of the most exciting teams of the mid-’90s.
This Magic Moment takes a look back at Shaq and Hardaway’s time together as teammates and explores the high hopes that everyone had for their shared success. The documentary also revisits the way their partnership dissolved and how the Magic’s dream of a dominant NBA championship run never came to pass.
This Magic Moment is streaming on Netflix.
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