The best players money can buy

Blue Chips (1994)

Rated: PG-13

Runtime: 108 minutes

Stars: Nick Nolte, J.T. Walsh, Ed O’Neill, Shaquille O’Neal, Penny Hardaway, Matt Nover, Anthony C. Hall

Director: William Friedkin

Plot: Pete Bell (Nick Nolte) is a sons-a-bitch yellin’, f-bomb droppin’, water cooler/chalk throwin’, god-damn screamin’, two-time National Championship winnin’ coach of the Western University Dolphins. Happy (J.T. Walsh) is a “friend of the program” who provides athletes with stuff. Ed (Ed O’Neill) is a sportswriter that is still out to prove that Western University was involved in a “point shaving” scandal a few years before, and is now “buying” athletes. Neon Boudeaux (Shaquille O’Neal) is a center from New Orleans who doesn’t seem to want anything other than to take a test that isn’t “culturally biased”. Butch McRae (Penny Hardaway) is a point guard from Chicago whose mom wants a house and a job. Ricky Roe (Matt Nover) is a forward from Indiana who wants a bag of money and whose father wants a tractor. Tony (Anthony C. Hall) is a senior on the team who may have been involved in the point shaving incident. The current Dolphin team is not good and Coach Bell is tired of it. He wants to recruit a trio of stars, but he is aware that all the good players are going to other schools that give them money and cars. Coach Bell wants to keep his University clean, but Happy likes to get dirty.

Rating—out of 5 basketballs: 1 basketball for Nick Nolte’s performance.

Tournament seed: 13–15—movie hangs around with higher seed for the 1^st half, but the 2^nd half results in a blowout. Only advances in the tournament if matched up with an overrated team. Pick with caution.

You would think with all the stars and all the plot a lot would have happened in this movie. But it never accomplished what it set out to do. The basketball action was really good, but it only led to one game at the end against Indiana University. The music in the movie was pretty non-existent. “All Along the Watchtower” by Jimi Hendrix is always a pleasure to hear, but other than that we are treated to the “Dolphin Fight Song” a bunch of times. Everything comes together for the big game against Indiana, but after a back-door lob to Neon at the buzzer for the win, Coach Bell feels guilty about cheating, tells the media everything, and quits. Then realizing that they have spent the last 100 minutes boring the viewer, they give a quick 2-minute “look ahead” to tell you that Western University was banned from the NCAA Tournament for 3 years, Tony ends up playing basketball in Europe, Ricky injured his knee and now runs his father’s farm, Butch and Neon dropped out of college and now play in the NBA, and Coach Bell is now coaching high school basketball in the Midwest; which means nothing really bad happened to anyone. The Dolphins were bad and were not going to make the tournament anyway, Tony is playing pro-ball, I am guessing Ricky got to keep the bag of money and his dad got to keep the tractor, Butch and Neon are making millions, and Coach Bell was probably going to retire soon anyway so why not coach where the pressure isn’t as high. So the message I get from this movie is cheat; because even if you get caught, chances are you will end up where you want to be or close enough.

I should have liked this movie more. The only thing I enjoyed was Nick Nolte’s performance, and how it reminded me a lot of my high school basketball coach. He was a tough man, but he cared about his team. I could totally see him cracking a joke about how “The alumni only jerk off when we win” and giving this classic speech Coach Bell gave before the game against the Hoosiers:

Coach Bell: “It’s not what you do God damn it, it’s how you do it. Now, we’re gonna go nose to nose with ‘em and we’re gonna beat ‘em at both ends of the court. And you’re gonna play better than you ever dreamed of because God damn it, that’s what I demand of you.”