15 Sports Documentaries That Will Ruin Your Entire Weekend (In the Best Way)
I made the mistake of starting The Last Dance on a Friday night. It was 8pm. I told myself I'd watch one episode. Just one. By 3am I was eating cereal directly from the box and yelling at my TV about Scottie Pippen's contract situation like it personally affected me. It did not personally affect me.
That's the thing about great sports documentaries. They're not really about sports. They're about obsession, sacrifice, ego, heartbreak, and what it costs to be the best at something. They just happen to use basketball or car racing or free climbing as the vehicle. And once one grabs you, the weekend is gone.
Here are 15 that will absolutely destroy your productivity. You're welcome.
1. The Last Dance (2020)
Where to watch: Netflix
I already told you about my Friday night. But here's the thing — even if you don't care about basketball, this thing pulls you in. It's about Michael Jordan and the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls, but really it's about what it takes to build a dynasty and whether the people who built it even liked each other. Spoiler: mostly no. The detail that wrecks me every time is Jerry Krause, the GM who kept insisting "organizations win championships" to a team with literally the greatest player who ever lived. Jordan's face in those interview cutaways is a masterclass in barely-contained contempt.
2. Senna (2010)
Where to watch: Peacock, Prime Video
If you've never watched Formula 1 and think it's just cars going in circles — watch this first, then we'll talk. Ayrton Senna was a Brazilian driver who dominated F1 in the late '80s and early '90s, and this documentary is essentially a Greek tragedy set at 200 mph. The rivalry between Senna and Alain Prost is one of the nastiest feuds in sports history. The film uses no talking-head interviews — just archival footage — which makes it feel like you're actually there. The ending hits like a truck. I'm not going to tell you more than that.
3. OJ Made in America (2016)
Where to watch: ESPN+, Hulu
This is five and a half hours long. Watch all of it. Every single minute. What starts as a story about a football player turns into a documentary about race in America, the LAPD, celebrity, media, and how a city's history can shape one trial's outcome. The moment I couldn't shake: archival footage of OJ Simpson in the late '60s, charming, beloved, beloved by everyone, talking about how he's "not Black, he's OJ." Watch it and see how that choice plays out over decades.
4. Free Solo (2018)
Where to watch: Disney+, National Geographic
Alex Honnold climbed El Capitan — a 3,000-foot sheer granite wall in Yosemite — without a rope. Without any protection whatsoever. One mistake, anywhere on that wall, and he dies. The filmmakers were friends of his, which means there's this unbearable tension throughout where you realize: they're filming this knowing he might fall and they'll catch it on camera. The shot near the top where he has to do a heel-hook move on a hold called the "Boulder Problem" is the most anxious I've ever been watching anything. My palms were sweating on my couch.
5. Icarus (2017)
Where to watch: Netflix
Bryan Fogel started making a documentary about doping in amateur cycling. Just his own little experiment. Then he met Grigory Rodchenkov — the head of Russia's anti-doping lab — and suddenly he was sitting on one of the biggest sports scandals in history. The moment when Fogel realizes what he's actually stumbled into, when Rodchenkov calls him from Russia and the whole thing starts unraveling, is genuinely jaw-dropping. It won the Oscar for Best Documentary and it earns it.
6. Drive to Survive (2019–present)
Where to watch: Netflix
Yes, it's a series. Yes, some of the drama is arguably manufactured for cameras. Watch it anyway. Netflix's behind-the-scenes Formula 1 series single-handedly tripled the sport's American fanbase and it's not hard to see why — it takes something that looked impossibly corporate and technical from the outside and shows you that these teams are run by enormous personalities having enormous fights. Christian Horner alone is worth your time. Start with Season 1. Cancel your plans.
7. Hoop Dreams (1994)
Where to watch: Criterion Channel, Tubi
One of the greatest documentaries ever made, full stop. William Gates and Arthur Agee are two kids from Chicago who both want to make the NBA. Filmmakers followed them for four years, from eighth grade through high school, and what they captured is both an incredible basketball story and a devastating look at how America uses young Black athletes. It's three hours long. You'll wish it was longer. The scene where Arthur's dad, who had a serious drug problem, gets clean and shows up to watch his son play — I dare you not to lose it.
8. When We Were Kings (1996)
Where to watch: Tubi, Prime Video
The Rumble in the Jungle. Muhammad Ali vs. George Foreman in Zaire, 1974. Ali was 32, considered washed up, fighting a man who had destroyed every opponent he'd ever faced. This film captures the entire spectacle — the politics, the music (James Brown, B.B. King, and others performed there), and Ali's almost supernatural ability to get inside Foreman's head. The rope-a-dope strategy Ali used that night is one of the greatest moments of athletic gamesmanship in history. If you want more context on what made that fight legendary, the broader world of underdog stories puts it in perfect perspective.
9. The Two Escobars (2010)
Where to watch: ESPN+
In the 1980s and '90s, Colombian soccer was simultaneously reaching its highest heights and becoming deeply entangled with Pablo Escobar's cartel. This documentary follows two Escobars: Pablo, the drug lord, and Andrés, Colombia's greatest soccer player. They weren't related. But their fates got tangled together in a way that's almost impossible to believe. Andrés Escobar was murdered after accidentally scoring an own goal at the 1994 World Cup. This film explains everything that led to that moment, and it's absolutely haunting.
10. Unguarded (2011)
Where to watch: ESPN+
Chris Herren was supposed to be the next great New England basketball legend. Instead, heroin nearly killed him. Multiple times. This documentary is unflinching about addiction in a way that sports docs rarely are — Herren doesn't sugarcoat anything, and his honesty is both brutal and genuinely moving. The detail that gets me: at his lowest point, Herren was shooting up in his car while his kids waited inside his house. He cleaned up. He now travels the country talking to kids about addiction. Bring tissues. Seriously.
11. Murderball (2005)
Where to watch: Prime Video
Wheelchair rugby is exactly what it sounds like. Guys in modified steel wheelchairs smashing into each other at full speed to move a ball across a line. The athletes in this film are disabled veterans and accident survivors who are among the most competitive, foul-mouthed, and legitimately entertaining people you'll ever see in a documentary. The rivalry between the US and Canadian teams — specifically between former US player Joe Soares and the American team he now coaches against — is legitimately gripping. This movie will make you feel like a wimp for ever complaining about anything.
12. Pumping Iron (1977)
Where to watch: Prime Video, Tubi
The documentary that made Arnold Schwarzenegger a star before Terminator made him a legend. This is Arnold in his prime, competing for his sixth Mr. Olympia title against Lou Ferrigno (yes, the Incredible Hulk guy). What makes it extraordinary is how openly Arnold performs psychological warfare on his competitors — and how much he seems to enjoy it. There's a scene where Arnold casually mentions he didn't attend his father's funeral because he didn't want to lose focus during competition. Whether it's true or not, the fact that he said it tells you everything about who he was in that era.
13. Fire of Love (2022)
Where to watch: Disney+, Max
Okay, this isn't sports. But it belongs on this list because it scratches the exact same itch: what kind of person dedicates their life to something so completely that it eventually consumes them? Katia and Maurice Krafft were French volcanologists who spent their marriage chasing active volcanic eruptions. They filmed everything. The footage is unreal — lava flows from meters away, pyroclastic clouds, rivers of molten rock. They died in 1991 doing exactly what they loved. This documentary is visually stunning and quietly devastating. Watch it.
14. Untold (2021–present)
Where to watch: Netflix
Netflix's anthology sports documentary series is wildly inconsistent — some episodes are good, some are great, some are essential. The ones you absolutely need to watch: Untold: Malice at the Palace (the 2004 Pacers-Pistons brawl, told from the players' perspective), Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn't Exist (Manti Te'o's catfishing story, which is more complicated and more sad than you remember), and Untold: Deal with the Devil (boxing and corruption). Block out a weekend and just work through them. You'll keep finding ones you didn't expect to care about.
15. The Weight of Gold (2020) — The Sleeper Pick
Where to watch: HBO Max
This one doesn't get talked about enough. Michael Phelps produced and narrated this documentary about mental health crises among Olympic athletes, featuring interviews with Bode Miller, Lolo Jones, Apolo Ohno, and others. The premise sounds like it could be a PSA, but it's not — it's genuinely raw and specific. What happens to elite athletes when the thing they've sacrificed everything for is suddenly over? Phelps talks openly about suicidal thoughts after Beijing 2008. He won eight gold medals and went home and sat alone in his room not wanting to exist anymore. Somehow that makes everything else feel heavier and more human.
Alright. That's 15. Your weekend is gone. I'm sorry. But also, you're going to watch Senna and text me about it at 1am saying you can't believe you didn't know about this, and I'm going to feel very smug about that.
Start with whatever sounds most interesting to you — there's no wrong door here. Just clear your Saturday, tell your friends you're busy, and accept that you're about to have a lot of feelings about sports. And if you're battling streaming fatigue, these are exactly the kind of things worth keeping a subscription for.
