Starting Five Review: A Slam Dunk

Jacob Prunier ‘26 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer 

Spoilers Ahead.

Netflix’s Starting Five inserts itself as the streaming service’s fourth in-depth sports docu-series since July 2023, and may just be the strongest of them all. The other series, Quarterback, Receiver, and America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders all follow different aspects of the National Football League and do a decent job, but Starting Five encapsulates the lives of these professionals the best. Why? Is it because of the production, the relatability of the players we follow, or is the series just an homage to who they wanted to make this about, Lebron James? 

The series premise is that the audience gets to follow the lives of five NBA stars, Domantas Sabonis, Jimmy Butler, Anthony Edwards, Jayson Tatum, and Lebron James, in great detail throughout their 2023-24 season. The main idea of this show is not just to show dunks and blocks, but to serve as a deep dive into the actual lives of these players and show the true human side of them that is often unseen through an NBA broadcast.  

What worked for this series works really well, so let’s start with the good… 

Personalities: The players that Netflix chose for the inaugural season of Starting Five were just about as interesting, diverse in personality, and as important a representation of the league as they could’ve made. Each of the players followed throughout the series opened up a unique perspective, coming from completely different backgrounds, and allowed for a dynamic juxtaposition when cutting from one player to another. The ability to show a much older and wiser Lebron James spending time with his wife and three children in comparison to the much younger and immature Anthony Edwards—who is still learning how to grow up and find his place in the league—serves as a strong example of this. The humble Jayson Tatum and Domantas Sabonis in comparison to the overconfident Jimmy Butler who will talk anyone’s ear off and these polar opposite personalities work so effectively throughout the series. 

Work vs. Life: Starting Five excels in illustrating that being a professional basketball player is not what it seems like and that the players, even the superstars of the league, are just regular everyday people who are talented at something. Lebron James describes how he’s dealt with worldwide fame since he was sixteen years old and managed to raise a family. Jayson Tatum opens up about how hard it is to leave his only child, Deuce, home on road trips. These vulnerable insights are some of the highlights of the show, allowing the audience to understand what these players go through. A very moving and tragic example that took place in episodes five and six of the series is when Jimmy Butler learns and copes with his father’s death during the NBA season. Jimmy is seen leaving his arena immediately after his game to go to the hospital where his father is in a chilling part of the series. Basketball is fun in Starting Five, but understanding what the basketball players deal with in their daily lives is just as important in this series. Seeing the other side of the human beings that happen to play basketball at a very high level makes these players far more relatable, personable, and easy to root for.  

Basketball: And of course, basketball is one of the entertaining and well-done aspects of the show. The microphones set up on the players, the head-to-head matchups between the featured stars, and the better understanding of the intricacies of basketball make the actual aspect of the show where they simply play ball work well. Getting to see in real time Domantas Sabonis in the huddle working on plays with his teammates or Anthony Edwards getting ready for a buzzer beater shot is something that normal sports media doesn’t show, making this a fascinating aspect. 

What Didn’t Work So Well… 

Pacing: The biggest problem with Starting Five is by far the pacing of the series. With a ten-episode mark and only five players to cover, I wasn’t going into the show with this worry, but I was quickly surprised. Everything that we saw on screen was done very well and all felt important, but it still felt like we were missing valuable moments throughout the season. The most noticeable example of the poor pacing was when underappreciated player Domantas Sabonis won a Play-in game, a very critical win that made sure that his team, the Kings, wasn’t eliminated. It’s not that the series didn’t cover this win and his eventual loss that eliminated his team, but it was more so the lack of highlighting what was a massive win for Domantas and the Kings, a relatively common theme throughout the series. It was clear that towards the end of the season, they were running out of time and couldn’t fit all of the big playoff moments into the show, definitely taking some points off for me. 

Team Chemistry: A small issue for me that was not a detriment to the show’s success, but could have added another exciting element was the lack of time the players are seen spending with their teammates. While I appreciate all of the family moments we got, I felt that due to how much time the players spend with their teammates, it could’ve added more emphasis on how these players’ lives are actually so involved with their teammates, coaching staff, and other organization members. 

What (Maybe) Worked Well? 

The elephant in the room, so to speak, during the entire series was that the actual star of this show is Lebron James, and honestly, I think that’s fair. Lebron James has been one of, if not the biggest, names in sports for over two decades. So, when Netflix had the opportunity to get a completely behind-the-scenes look at him for the whole season, it feels like they took that opportunity and ran with it. While I felt that this could have caused some of the problems that came up in the series, I also think the positives outweigh the negatives. Lebron undoubtedly had the most interesting storylines and my attention was drawn to him every time he was on screen. Even if this was about the “Starting Five”, Lebron James was the real superstar. 

Final Thoughts: Overall, I thought that Netflix’s Starting Five did a successful job of showing the audience who these celebrities are and how they operate in real life beyond the court. I am excited to watch the recently announced second season of this series and wonder if it can have the juice to follow up the first season. 8.1/10.