After high school basketball coach Schmidt (Andrew Dice Clay) has a heart attack, one of his former players, Bilal Irving (Jordan Johnson-Hines), returns to Ontario to replace him.  Bilal, a pro player who has developed a reputation for being a diva, thinks that it will mean some good publicity for him.  Instead, he discovers that coaching a group of scrappy underdogs to the province championship is far more satisfying than being a member of the Timberwolves.

There’s not a sports cliche that goes unused in Warrior Strong.  At first, no one gives the team a chance but then the team shows what they can do when they are properly motivated.  Bilal stop being selfish but then gets a chance to return to the NBA right before the championship game.  The team’s best player quits in disgust and the rest of the players have to prove themselves.  Since this is a Canadian film, there’s a lot of political and cultural content stuffed into the plot.  A local indigenous woman give the team permission to use the Warriors name.  One the team’s stars, Bettina (Macaulee Cassaday), worries about fitting in as a nonbinary person.  Some of it feels awkwardly forced into the story.  Some of it works.  I’ve never been a believer in the idea that “going work” automatically makes a film good or bad.  But there are times that the movie feels as if it was written by someone who was given a checklist of issues to include.

Most people who watch this film will probably be watching for Andrew Dice Clay, cast here as a plainspoken coach.  Clay is believable in the role, even if he doesn’t really do that much.  He plays a decent person who doesn’t curse or recite dirty limericks.  Watching films like this, you have to wonder what his career would be like now if he had never been the Diceman.