We spent six weeks rewatching every movie about basketball. We did this because we are just (slightly) larger versions of children, but also because we wanted to figure out who is the best fictional basketball player of all time.
This is a more overwhelming task than it would appear to be. To organize our research, we needed rules.
They are as follows:
Rule 1: You can’t pick more than two players from any one movie. This is theBlue Chips Rule. Blue Chips was loaded with actual players. In a movie-vs.-movie basketball tournament, Blue Chips waxes everybody.
Rule 2: If someone has played a basketball player in more than one movie, you can pick only one of his or her roles. For example, Marlon Wayans was in The Sixth Man and Above the Rim, and he played basketball in both. You could pick him for only one of those performances — though we can’t imagine anyone would ever, ever, ever pick Marlon Wayans twice for anything.
Rule 3: You can’t pick anyone who was portraying a real-life basketball player. That’s no fun. The legend’s already been written. This is the Earl Manigault Rule.
Rule 4: There is no restriction on the type of movie referenced. It doesn’t have to be described as “a basketball movie”; it only needs to contain some basketball scenes. Remember when Rufio played halfpipe basketball inHook? Remember when Jim Carrey broke the backboard in The Cable Guy? Remember when John Tucker did that flip dunk in John Tucker Must Die? It’s all up for grabs. This is the Fletch Rule.
10. Jimmy Chitwood, Hoosiers
Jason: Jimmy Chitwood. The name itself evokes the susurrus of endless fields of golden Indiana corn swaying gently in the breeze of God’s own breath, with the sun — ripe and red — setting on another bountiful Midwestern day. “Jimmy Chitwood,” whispers the stalks as evening gathers in their lengthening shadows, merging with those of the silos and barns.
All the hours here in the palm of Eden’s hand, from dawn to the deepening dim, are marked by a couplet of sounds that, hand-in-hand, beat out the metronomic and immortal pulse of the land.
Bounce. Swish. Bounce. Swish. Bounce. Swish. Bounce. Swish.
It is the Chitwood, and the Chitwood is the land.
Men, strong men, who fought in places far afield and returned to plow the land and whose pride is as undilutable as the atom, grow silent when the Chitwood passes by.
Women, strong women, who sustained the hearths and stood sentinel at every resting place from crib to coffin, beam with silent pride that among them is one who nursed this child, this man, this Chitwood.
Into this place came Norman Dale, the worst, most boring-est, play-the-right-way son-of-a-bytch garbage coach in the entire state of Indiana. “I want to see four passes before every shot,” says the worst coach ever, whose offense is so tedious that people who spend every minute of their empty lives watching corn inch ever skyward are mortally offended by its pure shyttiness, and resolve to drive Norman Dale from his post and their town.
But it is the Chitwood, his hair swept back with the motor oil from a thousand broken-down tractors, who stays their hands, and whose words strike with the force of thunder above the eaves when he says, “Coach stays, I play. He goes, I go.” The men and the women of the town murmured their discontent but could do no more. The Chitwood had spoken and his words were as timeless and true as Orion’s great belt.
And how did Norman Dale, the worst fukking coach who ever walked the face of God’s earth, show his gratitude to the Chitwood, whose bounce-swish-bounce-swish carried the team, Norman Dale’s team, against all who opposed them and whose words restrained the townsfolk from chasing the coach through the night at the points of their farm implements? By trying to give the last shot of the state championship, the sacred game winner, to Buddy Long. Who the fukk is Buddy Long?
Shea: Did I just fall inside a Norman Rockwell painting? What TF just happened? That was beautiful. I feel so American right now.
Sidebar: What a terrible, terrible play call at the end of Hoosiers. “Hey, here you go, here’s the ball, Jimmy. Just stand there for, like, 20 fukking seconds, then shoot a contested jumper. Good luck, bro.” I gotta believe Hoosiers is Scott Brooks’ favorite movie.
9. Jim, The Basketball Diaries
Shea: I’m going to toss three things out here:
1. I cheated here. I broke Rule 3. I’m sorry. It’s just if I have the opportunity to talk about a movie in which someone masturbates on a roof, then I’m going to take advantage of that opportunity. Sorry. I’m sorry.
2. There was Pre-Junkie Jim and Post-Junkie Jim. Post-Junkie Jim is playing in the video above. I’m specifically talking about Pre-Junkie Jim here. He was a basketball panther. He was super-skinny and slight, but so is Kevin Durant. Pre-Junkie Jim is White Kevin Durant, and you’re crazy if you think I’m not buying up all of that stock.
3. Michael Rapaport played a skinhead in two movies … IN 1995.
8. Neon, Blue Chips
Jason: Blue Chips isthe story of how the coach of the fictional Western University resuscitates his team by subverting NCAA rules. Shaquille O’Neal essentially plays himself while everyone else in the movie has to call him Neon. Neon Boudeaux is from Louisiana; Shaq went to college at LSU. Neon scored 520 on his SATs (960 after tutoring); Shaq scored 780. Neon left school early for the NBA; Shaq is Neon.
Neon basically dunks everything. He’s unstoppable. His shooting percentage is probably something in the low 80s. When Western’s coach needs a play out of a timeout with 12 seconds left in the game to beat no. 1 Indiana on national television, he goes with the dude who has literally not missed a shot for the entire movie, ShaqNeon Boudoneal, for the game-winning dunk. I’d put him higher, but Blue Chips was Shaq’s first movie and the subsequent damage his film career has done to humankind is pretty much beyond measure.
Shea: This feels way too high for me, but I’m willing to concede that I might feel that way because I just don’t think I can ever forgive Shaq for trying to ruin Inside the NBA. God, he’s the worst. He’s like if a bowl of oatmeal could talk. I need Shaq to sit on top of a missile and then I need that missile to be shot straight TF to Neptune.
7. Shorty, Sunset Park
Shea: He is super-quick, fearless, invested in winning, and had a super-big heart and just the right amount of craziness. He’s the movie version of Allen Iverson.
Fredro Starr had the best bone structure of anyone in the ’90s. I’m not sure how he’s gone so underappreciated as an actor. I mean, I understand that he has only one note, but he plays the shyt out of it.
Also, when he was in The Wire, his nickname was Bird. Tupac’s nickname inAbove the Rim is Birdie. All of a sudden I have a lot more respect for birds, bro.
When Shorty’s team loses in the championship game, that was one of the first times I ever had my heart broken by sports. I just didn’t understand why anyone would make up a story and not have the guys who were supposed to win at the end actually win. It seemed completely ridiculous. It still does. I am not a fan of the Good Guys Lose outcome.
6. Dream Fletch, Fletch
Jason: Admittedly, evidence of Dream Fletch’s actual skills are scant. He makes a nifty through-the-legs layup and bites a guy’s arm (legal in the ’80s), but that’s really it. My reasoning here is simple, though. The NBA salary cap for the 1984-85 season — the first season the cap was in effect — was $3.6 million. The Lakers had to figure out how to divvy that paltry (from a 2015 perspective) stack among the likes of Magic Johnson, James Worthy, Kareem, and a small forward phenom who we will call Dream Fletch. According to the legendary Chick Hearn in the above clip, the Lakers signed Dream Fletch to a contract worth $4 million a year. So, (1) the Lakers effectively made a mockery of the new salary structure, and (2) Dream Fletch was the highest-paid player in the league that season, nearly doubling Magic Johnson’s salary. The guy has to be very, very good.
Of course, highest paid doesn’t necessarily mean best. But listen to Kareem in the video. No hint of jealousy, no sign of discord. In fact, just the opposite. He praises Fletch’s rebounding and defense and says, “I don’t know where we’d be without him.” The 1984-85 Lakers would go on to win the title. Fletch, no doubt, played an integral role.
Shea: This is the best argument I’ve ever heard.
avon on his goon days
