I need to get one thing off of my chest. I really miss basketball. Considering that we’re coming up on the time when the playoffs would be happening, all I can do is live in the hypothetical and wonder what would happen. Would The Los Angeles Clippers finally be picking up steam after spending most of the season practicing load management? Would The New Orleans Pelicans slide into that eighth seed and get into the playoffs, giving Zion Williamson a chance to be seen on a larger than ever platform? Better yet, can ANYONE beat The Milwaukee Bucks this year? If you had to ask me, I would say that this is Giannis Antetokuompo’s year to beat.
There was so much that I was looking forward to. Everything was already in motion for this great season of the new class rising to dominate the NBA. Instead, we’re stuck in a pandemic, where everything has been shut down. I applaud the NBA on being one of the first sporting institutions to close in light of events, but they haven’t exactly made the downtime any more encouraging. Besides the great Hardwood Classics playing all day every day (and the 30 For 30 documentary The Last Dance coming this Sunday), they’ve pretty much made the most maligned entertainment out there. They’ve played NBA 2K games, which was kind of good. Then came the HORSE Tournament that was plenty underwhelming.
Nothing really competes with the game itself, and that’s the energy that comes with watching White Men Can’t Jump (1992) during this time especially. As much as basketball is about the game, I can’t deny that there is a certain attitude that is brought to it that you need to make it feel more personal, like every trick shot matters. There is a lot of personality in watching someone like Steph Curry play that goes beyond the stats. He’s a showman, knowing we’re as much there to get lost in a wave of emotion. The best of players bank on this, and that’s what’s sorely missing right now. Sure some of them can transcend these personalities into their everyday lives, but without a court, there’s something missing.
It is what makes any five minutes stretch of this movie so refreshing. The story essentially updates the conman nature of The Sting (1973) to an early 90s urban basketball setting. Billy Hoyle (Woody Harrelson) enters the story onto Venice Beach, CA dressed as a dweeb. He starts the film clueless, playing into that out-of-touch white man persona that is necessary to make his con work. It’s the equivalent of picking your team in gym. You want the BEST players. If you look at Billy, he’s average on a good day. However, as one encounter with Sidney Deane (Wesley Snipes) will show, he is hiding a massive amount of talent underneath.
This isn’t director Ron Shelton’s first time with the sports genre. He also released the baseball classic Bull Durham (1988). There is something to his eye that goes beyond the sport and gets to the heart of things. Whereas Bull Durham got to the competitive philosophy of America’s beloved pastime, White Men Can’t Jump is even more layered in its meaning. It joins the likes of He Got Game (1998) in exploring the socio-economic basis for why urban communities take up the ball. It isn’t just to see who has the coolest moves, but use it to better their lives with careers and contracts that extend their self-worth.
But of course, Shelton’s first milestone in the film comes with the style. Our introduction to Sidney is full of the most electric trash-talking set to film, featuring such exchanges as “Your mother was an astronaut,” meaning that she’s dumb. The constant negating of your opponent informs Sidney’s dynamic, trying to make his smarmy personality pop. You can’t help but laugh because some of it is too savage, and the fact that everyone’s in on the joke only makes the punchlines sweeter. There is no animosity when the game is on. They’re just guys having fun. Had the film been solely watching Sidney on the sidelines tearing down other players, this would’ve been close to a masterpiece. With everything else, it’s immortal.
I don’t know if Snipes and Harrelson did all of their own shooting, but Shelton shoots it so convincingly that I have to believe that they’re just that good. They may talk the talk, but watching the game is a wonderful creation. With limited examples, basketball in cinema has rarely been this fun to watch. Shelton knows where to put the camera to emphasize the trickiness of a shot, or when to pull in close and linger on Billy’s poker face, lying to strangers that he’s terrible at basketball. His currency is to undermine others for money, and he’s really good at it. Having Billy and Sidney team-up is the film’s best move and it makes for one of the sports cinema’s greatest duos.
The film is largely based on Billy’s personal struggles. The majority of them are economic, and they all come with confrontation. He owes money, winding up staring down the barrel of a gun at a point. However, it’s his passion to get back out there and try that makes this one of Harrelson’s best performances. He seems meek. However, this is perfectly paralleled by his personal status. To his girlfriend Gloria Clemente (Rosie Perez), he is weak because he has traveled around, trying to make that money through uncertain ways.
Then again, Gloria is no better. Just when you think that this film was going to win me over just by watching Billy and Sidney wander around my backyard in the early 90s, they go and include another subplot. Much like Billy and Sidney are chasing money, Gloria is doing so in a way that is more legal, but arguably less reasonable. She is trying to audition for Jeopardy! and consumes her life with nonstop trivia. Every time Billy enters a room, she wants him to test her on something. Her walls are splattered with facts, pictures of past presidents hang on printer paper. She is as determined as Billy to get out of their situation.
White Men Can’t Jump gets a lot right about basketball as a sport. It may not cover anything regarding a professional NBA career, but you feel like that will solve the problems. People wear Michael Jordan jerseys as this form of style and power, hoping that it will rub off on them. Until that day, Billy and Sidney perform their con in every available court in Southern California, entering tournaments that they feel they can best. It almost doesn’t matter at a point how much money is riding on this moment because it’s exhilarating to watch every time. The only thing dated is the wardrobe and soundtrack. The rest regarding mentality has never gone away.
Both Billy and Sidney are vulnerable deep down. As much as they see this sport as passion, their inability to have any stable income eats at them throughout the film. You begin to understand why they have to put on a show around others. Somehow demeaning in a friendly manner lets out this repressed energy that they can’t express anywhere else. They need it, even if you could argue that they might be able to make money easier somewhere else. Then again, it wouldn’t be as thrilling.
To the film’s credit, Gloria saves the day when she appears on Jeopardy! with an Alex Trebek cameo in tow. Most films have referenced the great quiz show in some form before, but there is a stock film quality to it. They feel like they’re pulled from something else. Not here. In White Men Can’t Jump, the game is so crucial to the third act that there is a whole build to the cameo. Billy actually sacrifices Gloria’s chance at being on the show over a free throw. The literal stakes of money are clear. You begin to question if Billy has any luck still to pull from.
It turns out he does, though what follows feels like another example of money’s power over mentality. It imprisons us to sometimes humiliating or selfish decisions. The Jeopardy! sequence with Gloria is wonderful, playing out as the perfect game. She sweeps a category and finds that trivia is just as competitive of a sport as basketball. This is all a quest to earn enough money to live happily and, in the case of Gloria, that involves independence. Billy is a loudmouth and a screw-up who only has basketball in his future. She needs something greater to move ahead.
The decade for Snipes would be full of great performances, whether it be the Blade (1998) trilogy, or To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (1995), he redefined masculinity over the decade. He could be tough, but there was something to him also being vulnerable. When you look at Sidney, you get this rich dynamic of a character who is more likely to find trouble than happiness. His family has no faith in him, forcing him to get real jobs that are dehumanizing, where he lacks passion and has to wear these ugly uniforms and get a goofy-ass haircut. Sidney doesn’t look like he’ll make it into the 9-to-5 world. He needs to be free to make yo mama jokes, to know what it feels like to be alive.
That is the ultimate divide in the film. It’s not just the mentality of money, but how you come across it. In the land of America, we all deserve to follow our dreams. That is why there’s an emphasis on “The Venice Beach Boys,” which is a barbershop quartet who sing around Venice Beach for tips. Everyone here is hustling for some dough because they believe in themselves. They are the new economy and one that still dreams about signing that million dollar contract like Jordan, or winning big time on Jeopardy! one day.
It may explain one of Shelton’s most ingenious moments in the entire film. With the story now winding down, the feel of the credits on the horizon, Billy and Sidney walk to Venice Beach yet again, ready to play another game. Billy asks Sidney why he keeps doing it. When Sidney responds “If I don’t take of my brothers, who will?” the music kicks in, emphasizing clarity in the film’s theme beautifully. Basketball is more than a sport with opposing teams, it’s a whole mentality and everyone needs to stick together. It may cause somebody to rob a liquor store or pull a knife on you, but it’s the risk of a sport built so personally on egos and personal capabilities.
There is so much about this film that plays like the perfect comfort food. There may be more involved sports dramas out there, but I don’t know that one has captured the intensity of a street basketball game as well as this. It’s almost fluid, existing without a point for long stretches other than to hear Sidney crack jokes. Shelton’s ability to recreate this world with authenticity and life is an accomplishment that has made it resonate. We are drawn to the sport with the hope of being a hero for a game, impressing complete strangers with that impossible shot. It’s better than working in an office because let’s face it, who’s going to remember you there? On a court, you could be Billy Hoyle by walking on a court with zero expectation and come out a new king.
There have been endless films that have correlated the struggles of urban communities to their excellence in basketball. It’s become a trope. Still, the best films capture this heart of an underdog willing to go above and beyond for that shot of glory. It’s what basketball has done so well, and there’s no moment sweeter than when you take that shot. The ball’s not in yet, but it’s just flying through the air and you’re wondering if this will be the game-deciding shot. The world is focused on your accomplishment for a few seconds, and it could be longer if it goes in. You pray it goes in, and that’s where White Men Can’t Jump exists. The shot is still flying through the air, and we want to know whether Billy and Sidney have made it. The only thing that’s certain is that they’ll keep trying until they do.
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