Newly appointed men's basketball coach Don Haskins (Lucas) from Texas Western College in El Paso, lacking necessary financial resources, makes an effort to recruit the best players regardless of race to form a team that can compete for a national championship. Some of the young men he brings in possess skill, but are raw in talent when it comes to organized teamwork focusing on defense and ball distribution. In the end, his Texas Western Miners team comprises seven black and five white athletes; a balance that raises eyebrows among university personnel. Haskins puts his players through a rigorous training program, threatening to cut anyone who doesn't work as hard as he demands, while trying to integrate his players into a single team with a common goal.
It has been 25 years since the 1957 Fillmore High School (fictional) basketball team won the Pennsylvania state championship. The coach and four of the victors regularly gather to relive the glory of their shining moment.
Before he was born, Laue's umbilical cord wrapped around his neck in the womb. To save his own life, Laue used his arm to protect his neck. Lack of circulation to the arm caused him to be born with an arm that ended just below the elbow. Kevin’s father died when he was in middle school. A former athlete and youth coach, his father had difficulty accepting Kevin’s disability. The will to carry on for his family and make his father proud drove Kevin to follow his own path of success by playing extraordinary basketball.
Leslie Wright (Queen Latifah) is a straight-shooting physical therapist and die-hard basketball fan who is tired of being a guy's best friend. She and her god-sister, Morgan (Paula Patton), are living together; Morgan dreams of becoming an NBA trophy wife.
Monica (Sanaa Lathan) and Quincy (Omar Epps) have wanted to be professional basketball stars since they were kids. Monica wanted to play for the Los Angeles Lakers, and wear Magic Johnson's number: 32, and Quincy wanted to be like his father and play for the Clippers. However, Monica has to work hard to establish herself, while Quincy was born with natural star potential. As the two struggle to reach their goals of playing professionally, they must also deal with their emotions for each other.
Earvin "Magic" Johnson and Larry Bird were rivals on the basketball court but unlikely friends off of it. After Johnson's team won in the 1979 NCAA championship game, Johnson would be drafted first in the 1980 NBA draft by the Los Angeles Lakers, while Bird would go to the Boston Celtics at the #3 spot. Bird captured "Rookie of the Year" in 1980, while Johnson's Lakers won the NBA Championship and Johnson was named NBA Finals MVP. The Celtics took the championship in 1981, the Lakers took it back in 1982. The Celtics would win again in 1984, while the Lakers would win the title in both 1985 and 1987. The careers of both men were cut short, Johnson by his diagnosis with HIV and Bird by a debilitating back injury.
Calvin Cambridge is a teenage orphan whose two best friends, Murph and Reg Stevens, are also orphans. At night they have to sell chocolate for a greedy orphanage director, Stan Bittleman, (Crispin Glover) after each home game of the Los Angeles Knights.
Jerome and his friends are very adept at streetball, but are no match for the older boys in their neighborhood. When the friends realize a streetball team called Game On is coming to town to look for talent, they practice extremely hard.
The film chronicles Twyman's and Stokes's relationship from Stokes's rookie year in the NBA up until his death. Stokes and Twyman were teammates on the Rochester Royals during the 1950s (during which time the team located to Cincinnati). Stokes fell ill three days after the last game of the 1957-58 NBA season, in Minneapolis. Stokes drove to the basket, drew contact and fell to the floor, hit his head, and was knocked unconscious. He was revived with smelling salts, and he returned to the game.
Kathy Morrison (Harris), mother of three, who helps run a "color-blind" adoption program, wants to have another biological child. Her husband, Pete (Bologna), the head coach of the Phoenix Suns, finds out he can't produce another child. Kathy thinks about adopting a boy, Frederic "Freddie" Wilcox, and Pete does not want to adopt a boy who happens to be black. When he relents, Freddie's arrival causes an upheaval in the Morrison's neighborhood, their school, and family. Kathy's answer is to adopt another child, in this case two, a war-traumatized half-Vietnamese girl, Quan Tran, and a Hopi boy, Joe. The new extended family must now learn to live together.
Professor Brainard (pronounced BRAY-nerd) is an absent-minded professor of physical chemistry at Medfield College who invents a substance that gains energy when it strikes a hard surface. This discovery follows some blackboard scribbling in which he reverses a sign in the equation for enthalpy to energy plus pressure times volume. Brainard names his discovery Flubber, which is a portmanteau of "flying rubber." In the excitement of his discovery, he misses his own wedding to Betsy Carlisle, not for the first time. Subplots include another professor wooing the disappointed Miss Carlisle, Biff Hawk's ineligibility for basketball due to failing Brainard's class, Alonzo Hawk's schemes to gain wealth by means of Flubber, the school's financial difficulties and debt to Mr. Hawk, and Brainard's attempts to interest the government and military in uses for Flubber.