A basketball coach with the unenviable task of turning failing young men into successful basketball players, Ken Carter is a man who commands respect, but one who offer to show respect to these struggling sportsmen. Coach Carter’s goal is not only to turn these boys into men, but to make them working together as a functioning unit to win basketball games. The journey is what makes Coach Carter the film, a drama of hope and strength that shows the formidable power of never giving up and always pushing forward against any odds in the quest for the ultimate respect.

The Richmond High School basketball team start as a group of failures. They lose their basketball games, they fail at school, they disrespect each other, and they start fights between each other as well. The team’s original coach couldn’t control them, so Coach Carter is sworn in to change their fortunes and improve their reputation tenfold.

As is the case in reality, taking on a new responsibility comes with growing pains. Coach Carter enters the gym, introduces himself to his players, but finds out he has to speak louder so they can hear him, they also couldn’t see him either. After these instances of disrespect, Carter puts his foot down by getting serious and turning the tables on one of the young bucks Timo Cruz, after he goes in for a sucker punch.

From here on out, Coach Carter pushes his team harder than they’ve ever been pushed before. He forces them to perform hundreds of press ups and thousands of suicides if they turn up late or shows him disrespect; he makes the players sign a contract to turn up to all their classes, sit in the front row of those classes and maintain a 2.3 grade-point average, and tries his darndest to prevent them from ending up in prison.

The methods Coach Carter adopts to socialize the team is what’s particularly noteworthy. He sees the team, himself and the entirety of Richmond High School as one. If one student fails, they all fail, meaning they are all in this together. This mirrors the state of play on the Basketball court, and is a way to ensure that the players stick together both in life and during a game.

The extremity of Coach Carter’s rules raises the ire of the Richmond community. After the disappointment and upset with the students failing their exams, Coach Carter locks the gym until such times as their collective grades improve. The community become irate at this, because they believe basketball is all these men have in their lives, and that it’s all they love and live for.

It’s easy to assess Coach Carter as a figure of schooling conformity, who enters the fray to bend the students to the whims of their new corporate master. Afterall, Coach Carter watches them like a hawk, scolds them for wrongdoings both inside and outside of the gym, not relenting or changing his own style throughout; he’s a rigid man on a mission and never stopped to think his tactics were too extreme on the boys.

However, to take the view that Coach Carter is a stubborn control freak who has no fun, reduces the importance in turning young men away from crime and a squalid lifestyle.

The criticisms echoed towards Coach Carter’s coaching style are abundant to those who don’t see the underlying value in them. He wants to turn the reputation of college students around and the criminality associated with black people in America. Coach Carter’s ability to keep an eye the team and treat everybody as a unified part of the community is what makes Coach Carter the best kind of coach there is in life, one who will keep on going through thick and thin and challenges his pupils to be their best at all times. We all need a Coach Carter in our lives.