I Love Watching Basketball Players Kinda Play Themselves in Movies Like Blue Chips (1994)

When Uncut Gems was announced a few years ago, I was very excited, as you might imagine. I had just seen (and loved) Good Time, plus the story of a hard-luck jeweler in New York City sounded appealing. And as we discussed last week, my childhood admiration of Adam Sandler still lingered a bit.

But the tipping point from intrigued to invested was a bit of stunt casting. “They got Kevin Garnett in this thing!?” I said to myself. A highly entertaining basketball player who played with such a ferocity and spoke without a filter. I loved the idea of seeing him play himself in a prestige drama.* And ever since the film came out, I’ve bemoaned the fact that this is yet another lost cinematic art: the art of athletes playing (a version of) themselves.

Which is why I decided to seek out Blue Chips, a basketball drama that had evaded me to this point. Well, one of the reasons. I’ve been watching a lot of NBA playoffs lately, and taking a break from real basketball to watch fictional basketball sounded appealing, because I’m ridiculous. Also, my editor John suggested I watch Blue Chips for good luck** because “Penny Hardaway is in it and he’s Memphis and it’s basketball,” and I couldn’t argue with those facts.

Let’s start with Penny, because he’s actually pretty good here! Before I watched Blue Chips, my only exposure to Penny’s acting skills was a series of commercials for regional meats purveyor King Cotton, like this one where he lies to children by telling them that hot dogs will make them grow taller.*** In this film, Penny is one of three real young basketball players who are kinda playing themselves, and he’s actually given the most dramatic weight to lift, including a scene where he tells his coach that he’s homesick but he doesn’t want his mother to lose her house that the university bought her. For a 21-year-old athlete who (I assume) didn’t have much formal training, he sells it fairly convincingly.

And then there’s Shaquille O’Neal, Penny’s teammate at the time on the Orlando Magic, who apparently convinced the team to draft Penny one year after him because of how impressed he was during the filming of Blue Chips.**** Everyone knows that Shaq had a long, weird career as an actor, and mostly for all the wrong reasons. But in his first acting role here, he’s actually pretty great too. Yes, he’s playing a basketball player rather than a genie or a cyborg or whatever, and he’s mostly asked to just be charming and say that various things are “culturally biased,” but he’s good at doing both of those things. If Shaq had made better decisions (like he did with He Got Game), he could’ve had a decent acting career.

The third member of the trio of young actor-athletes is the most curious one, because you wouldn’t know Matt Norver unless you watched Indiana basketball in the early 90s. He isn’t a very good actor, and apparently he wasn’t a very good basketball player either, because he didn’t get drafted and he never played in the NBA.***** It’s even more curious because Indiana is the only real college basketball team featured in Blue Chips. Did Indiana University cut Paramount a deal where they could use their team likeness but only if they agreed to cast a beloved Hoosier? And did Paramount pick Norver because they “needed a white player to sell tickets” or something? I have many other questions.

But my biggest lingering question is this: Why aren’t we casting rising basketball stars in real movies anymore? I don’t care about Kevin Durant’s movie or Kyrie Irving’s movie or Blake Griffin’s movie or any other movie starring a current member of the Brooklyn Nets.****** Why aren’t we casting guys like Zion Williamson or Scottie Barnes or LaMelo Ball or my beloved Memphis unicorn Jaren Jackson Jr.? And more importantly, why aren’t legit filmmakers writing parts for guys like this?

Fine. I guess I’ll do it. (Someday.)

*And he’s great in Uncut Gems, by the way. It made me angry that he hasn’t fully bought into a second career as an actor.

**My beloved Memphis Grizzlies have a chance to advance to the next round with a win tonight. Please watch Blue Chips today to join me in summoning good fortune on the behalf.

***They will not.

****Am I saying that William Friedkin accidentally altered the course of the NBA forever? Yes, I suppose I am.

*****He did play in Italy, Switzerland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Australia, Japan, Portugal again, Spain, and then Portugal a third time, in that order. He even became a Portugese citizen and played for their national team. There are worse ways to make a living!

******Except for maybe Patty Mills. Or Joe Harris. I could see it.

Blue Chips is now available on Amazon Prime, Paramount+, and DirecTV, and it is available for purchase elsewhere.