With its labor woes, escalating salaries, gangsta players and greedy hangers-on, pro basketball is ripe for lampooning. The new Showtime series “The Hoop Life” does just that with flair.

“The Hoop Life,” premiering as a two-hour movie at 10 p.m. Sunday before continuing as one-hour episodes, takes viewers inside the New England Knights of the mythical United Basketball Association.

Early on in the premiere, the Knights lose in the seventh game of the league-championship series to their hated rivals, the Los Angeles Legends. Most of the first episode tracks the fallout from that event on the Knights.

Coach Leonard Faro (played by Dan Lauria) is at odds with his former player, general manager Eliot Pierce. The family-owned team is about to be sold to an entertainment conglomerate (think Disney), and there’s a shakeout coming.

Marvin “Big Bucks” Buxton (Mykelti Williamson), a veteran all-star, missed the final shot in the last game, losing the title to his archrival, Owen Davis. He starts an ensuing brawl, and the league, its image damaged by a recent strike, has ordered both players to do a series of PSAs on good sportsmanship. Still the well-intentioned but short-tempered Buxton keeps getting into trouble.

Then there’s Greg Marr (Rick Peters), he of the sweet jumper. His wife, tired of his horndog ways, has kicked him out and filed for divorce, and he’s living in the apartment of his cousin-business manager. His situation worsens when he takes a bat to her divorce attorney’s car, mistakenly believing him to be her new boyfriend.

The Knights hope that their savior is hometown high school phenom Curtis Thorpe (Cirroc Lofton), who is bypassing college to turn pro. Raised by his grandmother, Curtis has a good head on his shoulders. Unfortunately, he has his uncle as his manager, and on the eve of the UBA draft, the uncle signs a contract for Curtis to play in Greece. The Knights don’t find out about this until after making Curtis their first-round pick. Even though his career is in legal limbo, Curtis is still hoping to find a way to earn a spot on his hometown team.

“The Hoop Life” enjoys a talented cast, especially Williamson (“Primary Colors,” “Forrest Gump”) as the star approaching the twilight of his career and Lofton (“Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”) as the naive man-child lost in a strange, new land.

The show is produced by Joe Cacaci (of the underappreciated “The Trials of Rosie O’Neill”), with the premiere directed by Kevin Hooks (who, coincidentally, started as an actor on the basketball-themed show “The White Shadow”). It succeeds in capturing the behind-the-scenes whirl of pro basketball, and shows the problems faced by its stars. While the drama’s setting is sports, with its bigger-than-life stars, its focus is the all-too-frail people behind the glitz and their lives after the buzzer sounds.