Investment Lessons from Slam Dunk? 3 Financial Resilience Tips from Ryota Miyagi''s Underdog Story

Slam Dunk came out in theaters last year, but as someone born in the early ’80s (a “7th graders” generation in Taiwan) and a father of two, I couldn’t make it to the big screen. Still, I feel incredibly fortunate to have grown up with Slam Dunk — an absolute classic of anime. The original manga’s showdown against Sannoh was already legendary, but I never expected the movie adaptation to be this spectacular. Each of the five main characters had their backstory beautifully revisited — every scene hit hard.

Slam Dunk Got Me on My Elementary School Basketball Team

The movie opens in Okinawa, which caught me completely off guard — wasn’t the original set in Kanagawa? Turns out, Okinawa is the backstory setting for Miyagi Ryota’s upbringing, and he essentially becomes the narrator of this film.

There’s a scene where he returns to his childhood hometown in Okinawa, and it instantly transported me back to my own childhood. Inspired by this series, I practiced basketball tirelessly, joined the school team, and even represented my school in one of the few elementary-level tournaments at the time — we won the championship.

Standing over 165 cm tall in elementary school, I naturally became the team’s starting center. Combined with my track and field training in events like high jump, I secured a spot as a starter.

Scenes in Slam Dunk That Made Me Cry

• The coral stone houses in Okinawa reminded me of my family’s old home in Penghu
• The opening moment when hand-drawn characters transform into animation
• The scene where Miyagi gets a noise complaint for playing basketball after moving
• Miyagi breaking through the zone press — twice
• Sakuragi’s counterattack rhythm that fired up the entire team
• Mitsui Hisashi remains my all-time favorite character
• Miyagi’s mom carrying all the burden alone
• Coach Anzai bringing out each player’s unique abilities and traits

I won’t go deeper into the plot to avoid major spoilers.

Slam Dunk Is Like Miyagi’s Career Journey

If you think of Miyagi as someone looking for a job, he found a small company. His coworkers each had their strengths but were all quite eccentric. The manager, Akagi, seemed authoritarian at the start. The boss, Coach Anzai, appeared to be a hands-off leader. There was Rukawa — incredibly talented but so quiet he came off as a loner. Then Sakuragi, the new hire who only caused trouble. And Mitsui — a former close friend who went down a dark path before finding his way back.

Miyagi Ryota: The Perfect Narrator

Miyagi’s story was the ideal choice for the movie’s connecting thread and highlight reel. He’s the shortest player on the team, not great at shooting, average on defense — his biggest strengths are speed and steals. Plus, his personality and background are the least dramatic, making him the most relatable entry point.

Sakuragi Hanamichi: Down but Never Out

Seemingly clueless about basketball, Sakuragi was the protagonist of the original manga. In the movie, he still serves as the comic relief role that makes you chuckle. While his screen time doesn’t carry the same protagonist glow as in the manga, he remains the clutch player at critical moments.

Mitsui: Forever My Favorite

Mitsui’s portrayal in the movie is about 98.7% faithful to the original — a man who once lost himself, then found his way back, swinging the team’s fate with his three-pointers. Fun fact: because of Mitsui’s three-point shooting, I ended up becoming a fan of Steve Kerr in the NBA — another quiet but clutch three-point specialist from that era.

Akagi & Rukawa: The Best Supporting Cast

I don’t have particularly strong feelings about these two from the movie, since their characters don’t deviate much from the original. But the more detailed cinematic storytelling lets you really feel Rukawa’s transformation from playing solo to passing the ball, and Akagi’s journey from hesitation to stepping up to the challenge.

Slam Dunk Through a Financial Planning Lens

Miyagi’s Family Should Have Had Enough Insurance

The Miyagi family had it rough. His dad passed away. His older brother vanished at sea. He carried the weight of being told he wasn’t as good as his brother, had a distant relationship with his family, and pushed through life with nothing but basketball. His mom barely seemed to have a job throughout the entire movie — she mostly appeared walking along the beach.

Financial Goals Sometimes Lose Their Way

In the moment Miyagi discovered the goal his brother had left inside a bag, he came alive again. It’s as if he’d been living without any financial goals — not knowing what he was living for, playing basketball just to pass time, with no idea what the next goal should be. It wasn’t until he returned to his hometown of Okinawa and found his brother’s life goal — “Beat Sannoh” — that he found his own purpose through that journey. He then began disciplined training.

Mitsui’s Three-Pointers Are Like Disciplined Investing

What’s a three-pointer? It’s one more point than a two-pointer. When your opponent scores 2 and you score 3, you’re ahead by 1. That seemingly small 1-point gap, compounded over 10 rounds, puts you 10 points ahead. This is a lot like what we talk about with disciplined investing — long-term holding. While others are buying and selling and maybe making money too, scientific evidence shows that disciplined investing outperforms stock-picking and market-timing with far less effort.

Further Reading

Lazy Da’s Conclusion

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金融科技新創 CEO | 獨立財務顧問

Although this movie is a reconstruction of the original storyline, when I first watched it at 12, I just thought it was incredibly exciting and impulsive — it made me pick up basketball. Now, watching it again near 40, I see so many more layers and perspectives.

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