| 25 March 2009
Last week the NBA gave us some pretty horrid match-ups, so I decided instead of forcing my way through a major blowout I would throw a DVD in and watch a movie. This always becomes quite the dilemma for me because trying to pick a movie out of the hundreds that I own is near impossible. I once spent twenty minutes trying to decide if I wanted to watch Snatch for the 527th time, Rounders for the 631st time or Tango and Cash for the 894th time. All those movies have nothing in common except for the fact that I love them. Just like I love all 300+ movies in my DVD collection.
I figured with the tournament going at full tilt and the lack of NBA games that it would be nice to turn on a basketball movie. I figured narrowing down the field to something so specific would help, but it really didn't.
How can you choose between Hoosiers, He Got Game, White Men Can't Jump, Above the Rim, Air Up There, Coach Carter, Glory Road, Finding Forrester, Space Jam, Semi-Pro, Teen Wolf, Blue Chips, Love and Basketball and to lesser extent Eddie, Celtic Pride and Forget Paris (just for the Kareem farewell tour scene and the Spud Webb sighting)? I eliminated Hoop Dreams (which may be the best of the bunch) right away because I didn't want to be depressed for the rest of the weekend.
I've seen all these movies far too many times to count and never get tired of watching any of them. In fact a lot of them get better every time I watch them.
Semi-Pro was much-maligned at the Talkhoops HQ initially after it came out. But it seems to have aged like wine since then. Eddie for all intents and purposes is an awful movie, but it still has redeeming qualities. And My Giant with Gheorghe Muresan...well that movie just plain sucks (Muresan should stick to hilariously awkward SportsCenter commercials).
How can I compare the feel-good, underdog story of Hoosiers to the hilarity that is White Men Can't Jump? Does the fantastic love story in Love and Basketball give it the edge over Samuel L. Jackson's screen presence in Coach Carter? Why should Kevin Bacon have to compete with Tupac?
I don't want to have to choose among Larry Bird's cameos in Space Jam, Blue Chips and Celtic Pride. It just isn't fair.
I feel like Jesus Shuttlesworth deciding between Big State University and going pro. Like this decision will shape the rest of my life, and I can't let all my DVDs and locked-up father down.
The real reason a decision like this is so hard is that all these movies bring something to the table in one way or another and they force me to ponder important questions like: How much money did Scott Howard through away by not riding his Teen Wolf persona all the way to the pros? He would have been a beast (sorry I had to). Who would win in a shooting contest: Billy Hoyle or Jimmy Chitwood? I don't think they ever missed. Why would the Monstars steal Shawn Bradley's "skills?" That haunts me like Christian Laettner on the Dream Team.
There comes a point in this decision where I find myself lying on the floor cradling my copies of Glory Road and Finding Forrester and muttering "It's just too hard" until my wife comes in and shakes me from my catatonic state.
Once shaken she tells me that they're just movies and to pick one. There is no way she understands the gravity of the situation. How could she? These aren't the movies that shaped her. She never had to worry about letting Coach Carter down or pissing off Birdie.
So how do I decide without feeling like I missed out on something? I hate choosing them at random because then I feel like the other movies weren't given a chance to be seen.
Ultimately after 45 minutes of deliberation, I made a decision that seemed like the obvious choice once I turned it on: Dazzling Dunks and Basketball Bloopers. I just can't get enough of the SWAT section, and I have dissected the Jordan-Wilkins dunk contests too many times to count.
Needless to say I was happy with my decision. Hopefully the tape can keep holding up and saving me from these difficult decisions.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
