Love & Basketball

I've done five or six little features on different girls around the area -- on Cannon, Junaid, Mostafa, Piekielski, etc. -- and part of the deal is asking dumb questions about players' favorite foods, music, and movies. And just about every time, the girls mention L&B, a movie I have never seen.

Well, I got in from work at like 1-1:30, and the flick came on cable, so I decided to watch. I'm now sitting here on my couch with the laptop on my lap, tapping out random thoughts:

Nice line: She disses the Clippers, saying "Last time they won, Dr. J was a nurse." Pretty sweet.

There's no way she'd get T'd up just for staring an opposing player down. I'm guessing they're trying to make the point that girls are treated differently, that the bravado boys find commonplace isn't tolerated in the girls' game, but I don't think that's true. Well, maybe in 1987, or whenever this is supposed to be set. I was like 10 years old then.

He's not that good. The same actor was a hotshot tailback in the Program a few years before this, and he was a lot more believable in that role. I wonder if he ever worried about being typecase as a cocky athlete. But in this role, he's not doing it for me. There's no way a dude that small gets to the rim that easy. He's no AI.

I don't get it. I know it's just a movie, but how does she go from not being recruited at all to getting a ride to USC? Not likely. Maybe East Stroudsburg, or Towson State, or Wabash College. Not a Pac-10 program, though.

I think they're setting somebody up for a knee injury. Maybe it's just the fact that I've torn up my knees twice or three times each, and that's the way I always think. I don't know which one is going to get it, but it's a feeling I have.

Uh oh, his mom's a drunk. Or the dad's a womanizer. That's life in the Association, I guess. Even the Clippers have groupies.

Hey, the USC men are playing Temple!! This is the obligatory "she passes him in overall awesomeness" montage. Why do the men play in an arena and the women in what looks a whole lot like a high school gym? I don't know any big-time schools where the women don't play in the same building as the men's team. They may never fill the seats like the men can, but they play on the same court.

She takes a charge to win the game. Nice. Shows the maturation process. It's a lost art. I can't figure out who the opponent is, but the colors suggest Louisiana Tech, which was indeed a huge power back in the late 80's.

Temple wins! If you were here, you'd hear me singing the TU fight song right now.
I'm not feeling all that sorry for Q. As I mentioned above, he never had much game to begin with, and now the spell is broken. On the flipside, I'm now feeling like Monica's the one that's going to get injured.

I feel bad for the PG than Monica went and Wally Pipped. (If you don't understand the reference, just google it.) Some coaches hold to the idea that you can't lose your spot because of injury, but others call those rules off. Personally, I think it doesn't make much sense to worry a player about his or her spot on the team so much that they rush themselves back from injury. I think it's usually better to assure a player that the place will be there when he or she is fully healthy, but not before.

Wow. Q's mom was a groupie too. Now he's gonna declare for the draft. I'm thinking bad idea. Ever since the plays of Sophocles and before that, pride has never been rewarded in any moive or play I've ever seen. I'm guessing the moral of this film isn't going to be, "School is for suckers."

The guys in Q's room are playing a decidedly old-school video game, and now Q is stepping out on Monica. That's pretty cold. He isn't even trying to hide it. I've long since lost my patience with him. I'm not really understanding why she loves him, to be honest. His game is his only redeeming quality, so far as I can see, and if that's why she likes him then she's just the same any everybody else.

The commercials have been on for like 40 minutes.

So now it's 1993, and Monica is playing in Europe. I guess she didn't make the 1992 Olympic team, or they would have shown us that.

Oh look, it's Wally Pipp. A loser again, this time for some Italian team. Monica's lonely and Q's a scrub. Whoops, it is him with the knee injury. His mom cut her hair, he hasn't see his dad in five years and it's a torn ACL. I'm surprised. I really thought it was going to be Monica who blew out a knee.

She's back. With flowers. This actress has done a good job affecting the growth of the character. She seemed like a high schooler when she was in high school, and now she seems like a self-actualized adult. It's a subtle progression, but nicely done. The actor playing Q made no such arc, but then again, I think that's sort of the point of the character. He doesn't grow up.

And in walks the obligatory chicken-headed fiance, wiggling that ring finger. Monica is disappointed, but I'm not. He's not worth it.

Here's the mom-to-Monica talk: "You never appreciated me." "You sold yourself out." Ouch, mom sluggs her. "You never came and watched me play." "I always thought you were pretty."

Now Monica's working in the bank, and Q is rehabbing. I can tell you from real experience that rehabbing an ACL tear is painful business. The ache is nauseating sometimes, especially in the weeks right after the inury. Every time you twist it just barely wrong, you could go blind it hurts so bad.

Now where's the WNBA in all this? Did that not start until 1996? Maybe that's what happens at the end of the movie, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I remember the league started up on the heels of some Olympics or other, and I thought it was Barcelona but I guess it was Atlanta. That would make sense, since I know Rebecca Lobo was in the first draft class, and she was a junior or a senior at UConn when I started as a freshman at the University of Missouri, in 94-95. On a related topic, how much does it suck that Philly doesn't have a WNBA franchise? This must be the biggest market in the country without a team, unless Chicago doesn't have one either. Off hand, I can't think of the team's name, if they do.

She's loved him since she was 11, and it just won't go away. She should see a doctor about that.

One-on-one for your heart. Cute.

So do they play with a women's ball or a men's? I can't tell. He's not moving all that well. It's game point and she misses a layup. He pulls a spin move and wins the game with what should have been an called an offensive foul. She had position.

Double or nothing? Aw. The chicken-headed stweardess is benched.

Monica Wright-McCall. Clever. Sitting right there next to Lisa Leslie. And courtside baby makes three. I figured she'd finish in the WNBA. We never find out if he made it back from the knee injury or not. I'm guessing no. He was talking about going back to school, so maybe he lacked the desire. It's hard enough for stars to overcome that sort of thing, let alone a scrub who isn't getting any help from anybody.

So that's the end of the flick. Not bad. I guess I can see why its appeal to so many players in that it's one of the few sports movies I can think of that's skewed even a mildly a "chick flick." Most of them align themselves more closely with war movies than romances. Plus, the main characters in the movie harbor and live the same dreams that most young players do, of recruitment, college glory and a place in the pros.

I will say that they made it all look way too easy. When they were 11, they just said, "Im going to be a great baskebtall player." They weren't partcularly good when they were 11 -- or at least he wasn't -- and they made it seem like desire was all that the kids needed. For a more truthful account, I'd refer anyone to one of my favorite movies, Hoop Dreams. Of course, that one's lacking most of the romantic storyline.