The Big Picture
- Hardball satirizes and sidesteps the trope of the white savior by showing that the inner-city children are already good as they are.
- Keanu Reeves' character, Conor, becomes a coach out of survival rather than any desire to be one, leading to an organic coaching style.
- Conor empowers the children by reacting to their circumstances and treating them as worthy individuals, without imposing his own agenda on them.