Kennedy Ryan is having a moment that deserves to be said out loud and celebrated properly. Earlier this month, Before I Let Go landed a series order at Peacock with Malcolm D. Lee as co-creator.
Her novel Score from the Hollywood Renaissance series became an instant New York Times bestseller earlier this year. And now, in a highly competitive bidding situation, Netflix has won the rights to her Hoops trilogy for drama series development.
Two streaming platforms. Three properties in active development. One author who has been writing for women with complete intentionality for years, and who is finally getting the Hollywood attention she has always deserved.
Netflix won the rights to the Hoops series in a competitive bidding war, which says everything about how seriously the industry is taking Kennedy Ryan right now. The project hails from Kennedy Ryan, writer Adrian Dukes, Will Packer Media, Chris Paul’s Ohh Dip!!! Entertainment, and Tracey Baker-Simmons.
Who Is Kennedy Ryan?
If you are just arriving in the Kennedy Ryan fandom, welcome, and please understand that you have a deeply satisfying reading list ahead of you.
She is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author who began her career in self-publishing, building a devoted readership long before traditional publishers came calling. She writes, as she herself has described it, for women from all walks of life, empowering them and placing them firmly at the center of each story and in charge of their own destinies.
Her accolades are extraordinary. She made history in 2019 as the first Black author to win the RITA Award, the highest honor in romance publishing. In 2022, she made history again by winning the Audie Award for Best Romance Audiobook, again as the first Black author to do so. She won a second Audie Award in 2025 for This Could Be Us from her Skyland series.
The Hoops series, published between 2018 and 2019, predates the Skyland books that brought her to the widest audience.
But for readers who have been with Ryan from the beginning, these three novels are deeply significant. Long Shot in particular has a reputation in the romance community as one of the most devastating and powerful sports romances ever written.
Book 1: Long Shot
The first book in the Hoops series is the one that readers describe as the gut punch they did not see coming.
Iris DuPree and August West meet in a sports bar during their last semester of college. The connection is immediate and undeniable. But the timing is completely wrong. August is about to be drafted to the NBA, and Iris is involved with someone else, specifically basketball’s golden boy and August’s long-time rival.
They go their separate ways. August enters his all-star life of wealth and fame. Iris’s perfect public relationship quietly becomes something much darker and more dangerous behind closed doors.
The book is not simply a will-they-won’t-they romance. It deals directly and unflinchingly with an abusive relationship, with the specific ways abuse can be hidden behind a polished public image, and with what it costs a woman to find her way out. One reviewer described it as devastating, surprising, and delightful in equal measure, and noted that it transports readers from the highest highs to the most harrowing lows. The praise is entirely warranted.
Book 2: Block Shot
The second book shifts focus to a new couple connected to the world of professional basketball, following sports agent Jared Foster and Banner Morales.
Jared has built his career on the assumption that no never truly means no, and he applies that same relentless persistence to Banner, the woman who has been making his supposedly frozen heart skip for longer than he has been willing to admit. Their dynamic is sharper and more verbally combative than Iris and August’s slow-burn, and the forbidden element of their situation gives the whole book a different kind of tension.
Each book in the Hoops trilogy stands alone while remaining deeply interconnected. Characters introduced in Long Shot return and continue to develop across the series, which gives the world a cumulative richness that rewards readers who go through all three.
Book 3: Hook Shot
The third installment takes the series into different emotional territory with a single-dad romance that has its own devoted following.
Kenan Ross is a veteran basketball player traded to a losing franchise, divorced, picking up the pieces of a life that has blown up publicly and painfully around him. When he meets Lotus DuPree, a wildflower in his own words, she is everything he told himself he would never want again. A woman he cannot resist. A risk he cannot afford. A feeling he promised himself he would never trust again.
Hook Shot is set partly in the world of professional basketball and partly in high fashion, and the combination gives it a visual richness and an energy distinct from the first two novels. Kenan and Lotus became scene-stealers the moment they appeared as secondary characters in Long Shot, which made their eventual full-novel treatment one of the series’ most anticipated moments.
The Creative Team Behind The Hoops TV Series
The producer lineup is genuinely exciting, and one name in particular is worth watching.
Chris Paul, the NBA Hall of Famer, is executive producing through his Ohh Dip!!! Entertainment alongside CJ Paul and Jacqueline Taylor. Paul’s direct involvement brings a level of authentic access to the professional basketball world that very few productions could claim, and that specificity matters enormously for a series built around the NBA.
Will Packer and Sabrina Wind executive produce for Will Packer Media. Packer’s track record, which includes Girls Trip, Ride Along, Think Like a Man, and many others, speaks for itself. He builds projects for Black audiences with genuine cultural resonance, and the Hoops series is very much the kind of material his company does exceptionally well.
Adrian Dukes, who is writing and executive producing, previously served as a co-executive producer on All American and as a producer on Prime Video’s Motorheads, with additional credits including BET’s The Quad.
No cast, showrunner, or premiere date has been announced. The project is currently in early development.
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