NCAA Men’s Basketball Edition
Can you feel it?? That’s March Madness, AKA, the NCAA basketball tournament. We’re down to the FINAL 4 this weekend, and we’ll know soon enough who’s gonna play in the championship game on Monday night. In the meantime, I decided it was time to rank my 5 favorite “basketball movies”, even though some of these fit into other genres as well.
5. Space Jam (Joe Pytka) – November 15, 1996
*This is a really fun movie because you have NBA star Michael Jordan playing basketball with Bugs Bunny and the other Looney Tunes characters. There isn’t much plot in this one, but there really doesn’t need to be. The movie is also good because of the other cameos from the likes of Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, and Bill Murray.
4. Teen Wolf (Rod Daniel) – August 23, 1985
*This is the “other” Michael J. Fox movie of 1985. Teen Wolf is about Michael J. Fox being in high school, and discovering that when he gets mad, he turns into a werewolf. The interesting part is that he’s so much better at basketball when he’s the wolf than when he’s just a normal guy. I really believe that Scott “Wolf” Howard was good enough to play in college and maybe just maybe, the NBA. But as far as I know, the NBA doesn’t allow wolfmen to play – lol.
3. Blue Chips (William Friedkin) – February 18, 1994
*This movie is about a college that breaks the rules in recruiting to get the players they want, but then has to deal with those consequences when it’s found out. Nick Nolte is on top of his “game” in this one, and this is the only movie that Shaquille O’Neal has ever starred in that I actually like. In fact, the first scene where we meet Shaq is really bad-ass.
2. Semi-Pro (Kent Alterman) – February 29, 2008
*This is certainly the funniest movie ever made about the sport of basketball. It’s about the Flint Tropics ABA team in the 1970s, right during the time when the league was folding and four of the teams would be brought into the NBA. There are so many great jokes in this one, but the funniest is when we find out that washed up player Eddie Monix (Woody Harrelson) was traded to the Tropics for a washing machine.
1. Hoosiers (David Anspaugh) – November 14, 1986
*No doubt, at least in my opinion, the best and my favorite basketball movie. It’s a true story of a high school team in Indiana that wins the state championship. There are so many great things about the movie, but maybe the two best are, 1, Dennis Hoppers’ performance as an alcoholic dad, and 2, the Jimmy Chitwood scene where he takes like 20 shots, and doesn’t miss any of them. This movie is the epitome of a “feel good” story.
I don’t know enough good basketball movies but Blue Chips had interesting things to say about corruption in college ball and Nick Nolte was on fire “Those boys had haart Goddamnnnit!” and anybody who doesn’t like Gene Hackman in Hoosiers – well they can just kiss my arse. 🙂