#5 – Air Bud

I struggled to keep this movie off the list. After all, it’s just a little too easy of a pick.

Air Bud is a movie about a dog that has the incredible ability to bump a basketball off his nose and place it into a basketball hoop.

Now, if this talent was used to enter the dog in various dog shows I’d think you’d have an awful movie. But, if the dog somehow is allowed to join a 10 year olds basketball team and little kids are forced to try and box out a dog — now you have one of the most awful movie ideas of all-time.

The coach is able to get the dog into the game because it doesn’t say anything about no dogs in the rule book! Brilliant!

#4 – American History X

It pains me to place such a great movie on this list, but you can’t simply ignore Edward Norton’s dunk. As he tips the ball away on game point, and stumbles down the court trying to maintain a simple dribble he jumps and the classic basketball edit is made and you see him land one of the worst dunks in movie history.

The actual scene is about 10 minutes long with tons of terrible basketball action, but the dunk is what truly puts it over the edge and all you really need to see.

#3 – The Super

Where do I even begin? In The Super, Joe Pesci stars as a slumlord forced to live in his own apartment building until it is brought up to code. For some reason he decides to play in a game of 3-on-3 basketball with some neighborhood kids.

While you would expect basketball to be taking place during this scene, Pesci’s character spends a majority of the time doing arm and finger fakes, a move I have never seen in an actual basketball game.

Pesci’s team schools the kids, hitting layup after layup and celebrating each basket like they just won the Super Bowl. Meanwhile, Pesci is wearing gloves during the entire scene.

The scene ends just as any awful movie scene should end: an incredibly unrealistic dunk. Not only do they choose to have Joe Pesci somehow dunk a basketball on a 10 foot rim, but as he jumps off the ladder that is just off camera he fails to hold on to the ball and it falls into the hoop before he grabs the rim.

#2 – Teen Wolf

Michael J. Fox stars as high school basketball player Scott Howard who suddenly turns into a werewolf, and is able to use it to his advantage as werewolf Scott Howard is 100 times more athletic than human Scott Howard.

Scott suddenly doesn’t want to win as the werewolf, and shows up to the championship game as his normal, boring non-headband wearing self. What follows is 8 minutes of awful editing, bizarre score keeping, Michael J. Fox looking down at the ball while he dribbles, and the championship decided on a free throw with no time left. A free throw? That’s how you wanted to end the movie?

# 1 – 3 Ninjas

3 Ninjas could make the list for a variety of “worst movie scenes”. The movie premise is three brothers learn kung-fu from their grandfather, and then proceed to beat up criminals for the next hour.

However, one scene stands alone as being the most awful and that is the two-on-two match-up between the two older brothers and the school bullies.

This scene has everything an awful basketball scene fan could ask for. We have an unrealistic opening where the two brothers spot the bullies 9 points for absolutely no reason when they are only playing to 10 — followed by them allowing the bullies to shoot uncontested on the opening play. That opening shot is of course blocked despite “Rocky” being nearly six feet away from the shooter.

We are then presented with a variety of trick shots, such as a casual no look over the shoulder shot which hits nothing but net, the free throw line hook shot, and my personal favorite of an alley-oop layup.

The pinnacle of awfulness is reached at minute 2:42 where “Rocky” jumps over the two bullies from the free throw line and throws down the dunk.

The bullies win after undercutting young “Colt” on a lay-up, picking up the loose ball and shooting a jumper to win. “Colt” and “Rocky” never call a foul and lose their bikes.