Issues with Blue Chips

Yesterday, I was whipping up some Eggplant Parm which turned out quite well, I have to say. While preparing dinner, I had the good fortune to stumble across the film Blue Chips on HBO. I've seen this film somewhere around 67 times. Around 59 of which were in college when I should have been studying. It's just one of those movies that comes on and sucks you in inexplicably. Sort of like PCU. Anyway, I had this on in the background. If you haven't seen this film, you can probably skip this post, but you should rent it. Where else can you see a skinny version of Shaq and Penny Hardaway before he sucked, impersonate 18 year old basketball players in their mid-20s?

Now, getting on to my commentary here. Blue Chips is about a coach, Nick Nolte, who runs a "clean" NCAA basketball program at what we are led to believe is UCLA. It's in California, has the same color unis, and is called "Western University" in the film. He's tormented by his first losing season. He goes out on the recruiting trail and finds himself 3 ringers. Butch McRae (Hardaway)- a silky smooth point guard from the Chi, Ricky Roe - a female-obsessed, tall Indiana farm boy with a jump shot, and Neon (Shaq) - a raw, unknown, 7'4" center from the Bayou. Now, Butch and Ricky are on the top of every coach's list. They both really like Western but they require "a little something extra" to land. This isn't the case at all for Neon. No one knows about him. This is where my problems start.

So we are led to believe that this supposedly saintly coach can't handle the losing to such an extent that he endorses his boosters via any means necessary to land him the top 2 prospects out there along with Neon. He then coaches one game against #1 Indiana (which Western wins) and has such a crisis of conscience that he confesses to the whole thing and resigns. This is what gets me. Did he really need Butch and Ricky? To beat Indiana, maybe. To have a strong team - definitely not. Butch was a great player, no doubt, but he didn't fit well with the offense. He even gets so frustrated at one point that he threatens to leave school. Ricky was clearly the third wheel of this bunch also. The best player in this recruiting class was Neon and he was getting Neon anyway. Neon even turned down a Lexus they tried to give him. With Neon, he's already on his way back to the top of the college game. His program is back on the map. There is no need to risk this paying off of players. This drives me crazy and makes absolutely no sense.

Also, in the big game against Indiana they cast the real Bobby Knight and Calbert Cheaney which is fine. Calbert went to Indiana, BUT they also cast Bobby Hurley as the Indiana point guard. He doesn't even have a different name. He plays himself! How does Bobby Hurley roll with this? How does Coach K not kick his ass for this? What a traitor. How do you play yourself in a movie but play for a different college coach and team? Did this contribute in a karmic way to Hurley's accident and the end of his career? I say so.