On Friday, Aug. 2, Netflix premiered a documentary television series called "Basketball or Nothing" that follows the high school basketball team at Chinle High School on the Navajo Nation in Arizona.
The team plays what they describe as Rezball, a faster and looser style of basketball to make up for the fact that Navajo men aren’t usually very tall, according to one of the students in the series.
Co-director Matt Howley, who created the series, said that a feature on the head coach Raul Mendoza that ran in the New York Times in 2017 inspired him to look further into Chinle High School’s basketball team and Rezball.
He said in an interview that he thinks "Basketball or Nothing" will bring the team’s story not only all over Arizona, but also, with the help of Netflix, all over the world. The docu-series was translated into 30 different languages.
Chinle High School made it to the semifinals the year that the documentary series was being made in last year’s season.
