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SoCalHoops College News Report

Counter-Point: Another View Of "He Got Game"--(May 7,1998)

Those of you who read our little blurb (ours, not the reviewers' we also posted) knows that we sorta, kinda, maybe liked the film as entertainment, but really didn't think all that much of it as a slice o' reality. We noted that the characters were rather flat and one-dimensional, and almost cartoonish at times. And that ending. . . Sure Denzel is a great actor, sure Ray Allen can play, and it was a good story. Sorta. But if you want recruiting "truth", "Hoop Dreams" was shot about 10 years earlier and we think it's a much better film. You want the "seamy" side of recruiting, go rent "Blue Chips". How accurate is "He Got Game" to the recruiting process? We think not very. But then maybe we've led a sheltered life.

So when we came across this article in the Washington Post yesterday, we just had to ask, "Who is this guy anyway?" Who could really believe that "He Got Game" is "dead on accurate" when it comes to recruiting? Never heard of Michael Wilbon? Neither have we. But then he's probably never heard of us.

Here's his take. It's worth it just for the entertainment and counter-point value. We don't believe a word of it. Ok, well, perhaps a few words. Maybe you will, maybe you won't. Here it is anyway:

The Seamy Side of the Hoop Dream

By Michael Wilbon
Thursday, May 7, 1998
Washington Post

If I wasn't so adamantly opposed to folks yakking during movies, I'd have jumped out of my seat four or five times and shouted like a Baptist deacon during Spike Lee's "He Got Game."

If you care about high school or college basketball, see it. If you know a high school basketball player who can't otherwise go, take him. The movie ought to be required viewing for every schoolboy star in America. It probably would be the first and definitely the most jolting reality check the kid will have had.

Now, this is no movie review because I'm no film critic. I'm not versed in the subtleties of cinematography and direction. But I know a little bit about college basketball recruiting and in "He Got Game," Lee got it right. He told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, no matter how unflattering it might be to some, and no matter how uncomfortable it seems to make some viewers. Every scene, every line of it, every nuance is dead on. And he did it without making anybody an extremist, or a cartoon. Anybody who doubts one word of Lee's story is clueless about the importance of basketball and basketball players in urban America, and about what happens with a high school star once the recruiting process begins.

What I like best about the flick is that one by one, Lee picked off everybody, nailed 'em to the wall. I mean everybody. He got the highest of the high-profile high school and NBA coaches to appear -- from George Karl to Rick Pitino to John Thompson, even Dean Smith -- but got them to speak true-to-life lines that give you great insight into a coach's shtick. He got the girlfriend/groupie-type whose primary purpose, even in high school, is to get paid, which often means getting pregnant. He got the super-slick agent. Boy, did he get the agent. He got the smooth-talking neighborhood hustler/athlete protector. He got the coattail-riding opportunist high school coach. And most important, he got the low-life, leech relative whose familial kindness has a price tag. Got him right between the eyes.

That was my favorite part, seeing the uncle of young Jesus Shuttlesworth turning into a money-grabbing slime-ball right before the kid's eyes. You think that's the exception? It's not. It's happened to nearly every kid who isn't Grant Hill or David Robinson, and I'm sure even they could tell you stories.

I know two NBA players who go to great lengths to avoid their mothers because mom fleeced 'em for years. One doesn't go to his home town because he has to avoid his relatives. This season an NBA all-star, at the end of an interview, told me not to leave him alone with a guy who had been standing nearby. Who was it? "My first cousin," he said.

You know where this starts, don't you? High school. At least for the ones who reach stardom early. Late bloomers have no idea how lucky they are. There's one reason everybody around a kid wants him to turn pro out of high school: money. If he got game, they get paid.

The leeches attach themselves so early, they actually expect to get a paycheck from the team drafting their boy. Or shoes from the apparel company he endorses. I swear I'm not making this up. Kids coming out of high school, or out of college after one or two years, ask agents to help them incorporate themselves so their "people" can draw paychecks.

Spike Lee got all that. And he even managed to create a player who, while a decent kid, was no angel. Shuttlesworth did have quite a bit of virtue, but he did take money when he deemed it necessary, and he did take a manufactured grade when it helped. I think most of these kids start out pretty much like Shuttlesworth, played by Ray Allen of the Milwaukee Bucks, then learn from everyone around them how to stick their hands out and develop this notion that having these particular physical talents means the world owes you. Without making the kid a saint or a thug, Lee got that, too.

(The only people I wish he would have stabbed harder are the folks in the media, who compile these vile "Top 100 Prospects" lists and constantly call these kids to ask, "Have you decided yet?", which only adds to the kid's inflated sense of self.)

I'm ecstatic, given the importance of this project, that Lee didn't make a politically correct, feel-good piece of fantasy junk that would have pleased everybody and enlightened nobody. I'm glad he didn't cut scenes -- particularly the ones where Allen's character is tumbling in a water bed with two white "coeds" during a recruiting trip -- because white men and black women objected during pre-release screenings for target groups. They didn't like the scenes? Too bad. It's real. High school recruits being provided women for sex on campus is standard operating procedure. And on a lot of predominantly white campuses, where the only black students are athletes, guess what color their partners are? Get real.

That Lee didn't overload us with basketball footage is also to be commended because it gave him more time to show us a world that -- at least on the screen -- has gone largely unexamined. And it leaves time for us to appreciate an insightful, enlightening, compelling piece of work that does a great job of leaving us appropriately disturbed.