One Shot: Overtime Elite Review 2023 Tv Show Series Cast Crew Online
A montage of tense sense inside the Overtime arena and locker rooms, as dramatic music throbs and players talk about the stakes of the game. It’s a hype reel for the show itself, and sets the tone of what’s to come.
The pilot of One Shot: Overtime Elite works to introduce some of the players that OTE hopes to make stars–TikTok star Eli Ellis, high-flying junior Jahki Howard, future NBA picks the Thompson twins, and so on. But a lot of the episode’s airtime is also given to OTE’s management–the recruitment and player-development staff that’s building this league essentially from scratch. It’s very slickly produced, and feels a good bit like a recruitment video for the league itself.
One Shot: Overtime Elite is a kind of sports-documentary miniseries we’ve seen a lot lately–an attempt to turn a real sport into a reality show. There’s been big successes, like Netflix F1-focused Drive To Survive (and its golf- and tennis-focused clones, Full Swing and Break Point). There’s been other basketball ones like this, too–Top Class, which follows Bronny James’ Sierra Canyon Trailblazers, Destination NBA: A G League Odyssey, and Last Chance U: Basketball, to name a few.
That is to say–One Shot: Overtime Elite is stepping into a crowded genre, and it’s hard to see exactly how it’s going to break away from the pack.
The series is an infomercial of sorts for Overtime Elite, a two-year-old professional developmental league for top-flight young players between the ages of 16 and 20. OTE is working to establish itself as an alternative to the traditional high school-to-college path to the NBA, and it’s got a compelling pitch to players: they’re getting paid. (There’s also a scholarship path for players who want to retain eligibility should they choose to play in the NCAA.) Though the league is relatively new, it’s already proven itself as a path to the big-time, with twins Amen and Ausar Thompson (who played for OTE’s City Reapers) getting drafted back-to-back in the top five of the 2023 NBA Draft. OTE is for real, and with that success, it’s sure to attract more players looking for a path to the NBA where they can get paid fairly along the way.
The only problem is that the show is rather dry. There’s a lot of serious narration, dramatic score and slick production values. It just doesn’t offer a ton to grab casual viewers in, or to get you invested in the success of the players it’s supposedly introducing you to. Instead, it almost feels geared toward convincing other future players that Overtime Elite is for real. It succeeds on that front, but it’s less successful as entertainment.
