NBA Movies: Where Amazing Rarely Happens

When the NBA has dribbled into the movie business, its record has been less hit than miss.

“Forget Paris” (1995)
Directed by Billy Crystal

One of my NBA movie pet peeves: nobody sweats. Anyone who’s played or watched basketball knows it’s a sweaty sport; anyone who’s watched basketball movies knows that the players often look as dry as the Sahara. For instance, take “Forget Paris,” where Billy Crystal plays a cantankerous NBA ref. Here’s what Patrick Ewing looked like on a typical night with the New York Knicks. Compare that with his appearance in “Forget Paris” at around the 1:27 mark of the following clip:

Besides looking unrealistic, the impossibly unsweaty players are also indicative of some of the larger problems that loom in “Forget Paris.” A longtime Clippers fan, Crystal has a good handle on the stormy relationship between players and officials, but he seems to have forgotten the fact that basketball is also an athletic competition. Here, NBA games are just a series of wisecracks because, in “Forget
Paris,” everything is just a series of wisecracks. Crystal meets Debra Winger, they wisecrack. They fall in love because of their mutual wisecracks. Then they fight because they get annoyed at each other’s wisecracks. There’s a distinct lack of stakes here, both on and off the court.

“Eddie” (1996)
Directed by Steve Rash

If the sheer idea of a female livery driver getting hired as the coach of the New York Knicks wasn’t absurd enough, the conclusion of “Eddie” — the film which casts Whoopi Goldberg in that very role — sets some kind of record for third act ridiculousness. After revitalizing the woeful Knicks, Whoopi’s Eddie Franklin has the team within one win of the NBA playoffs when the team’s owner “Wild” Bill Burgess (Frank Langella) drops a bombshell: he’s going to sell the team and move them to St. Louis if they make it to the postseason. Enraged, Eddie stages a crazy protest: in the middle of a timeout in the fourth quarter of the deciding game, she grabs a microphone, steps onto the court, announces Burgess’ plan to the entire world, and threatens to forfeit the game if he doesn’t change his mind. Shamed by the vocal Madison Square Garden crowd, Burgess relents, the game continues, and the Knicks win on a dicey charging call. (Someone call Billy Crystal!) Because, as Seattle Sonics fans know, that’s exactly how this sort of thing works. If “Eddie”’s ending were a person, it would be immediately committed to an insane asylum and put on a broad spectrum of psychotherapeutic drugs.

“Semi-Pro” (2008)
Directed by Kent Alterman

Given its status as a goofy and (to my mind, unfairly) maligned Will Ferrell vehicle, you don’t go into “Semi-Pro” expecting an accurate portrait of the American Basketball Association’s 1976 merger with the NBA. But compared to the way other NBA movies futz with reality, “Semi-Pro” is practically a documentary. Even the stuff in it that seems like outrageous inventions of screenwriters are based in fact, right down to the outlandish and borderline dangerous promotions designed to fill seats. (That bear wrestling stunt? Totally happened.). Little touches like the film’s signature promotional image, that of Ferrell’s splayed naked on a locker room bench with a ABA ball covering his privates, are drawn from reality as well; the shot’s a riff on a famous photo of ABA heartthrob Wendell Ladner. Ferrell’s Flint Tropics are a work of fiction but they’re heavily drawn from the real Miami Floridians, a lowly ABA franchise mostly fondly remembered for their bikini-clad ball girls (The Tropics’ ball girls appear in replicas of the Floridians’ ball girls signature swimwear). I guess the NBA doesn’t technically appear, but three of the four ABA franchises that survived the merger (the Spurs, Nets, and Pacers) do, which is good enough for me. If we grandfather it in on that technicality, this might be the best movie ever made featuring real NBA franchises.

[Additional Photos: "Like Mike," 20th Century Fox, 2002; "Celtic Pride," Hollywood Pictures, 1996; "Forget Paris," Columbia Pictures, 1995; "Eddie" Hollywood Pictures, 1996; "Semi-Pro," New Line, 2008]

Pages: 1 2