Indeed, these movies are basically the same movie, with plots from Horatio Alger and psychology from Freud for Beginners. Against impossible odds, and goaded by the desire to avenge his dead or absent father, a nobody toils heroically to become a star. He learns both to be himself and to merge with his team. His team will lose early and win late, fall behind and catch up. They are carried off on the shoulders of a cheering mob - just the way we'd all like to end our workday.
Somebody wins, and somebody loses, and that's it.
I watch all kinds of sports, but as a sport, not as a morality tale. I don't think Shaq O'Neal is a better human being than the players he jumps over. Most people lose. That doesn't make them any less human. And it's precisely that humanness that the new sports movies, with their pat victories and their egregious ethnic stereotypes, are incapable of exploring.