USA TODAY International Edition
25 years ago, ‘Blue Chips’ and its stars arrived in Indiana
Bobby Knight was in the middle of a heated confrontation with a news reporter in the locker room of Case Arena, home of the Frankfort (Indiana) High School Hot Dogs.
Even the director of “The Exorcist,” William Friedkin, couldn’t coax him out. Knight was livid. No one knew exactly what it was about, just that a “damned TV reporter” had ruffled his feathers.
This basketball game wasn’t even real.
But it was a game. Evidently, Knight took Hollywoodcreated basketball games as seriously as he did his real-life Indiana University matchups in Bloomington.
As the crowd of 5,500 extras sat in the bleachers holding its breath, waiting for the filming of the climactic final game of “Blue Chips” at the Frankfort gym to begin — Knight’s IU team versus Pete Bell’s Western University — Knight finally emerged in his red sweater.
“We didn’t know whether that game was going to happen,” said Jim Moyer, the scorekeeper for Frankfort basketball for more than four decades, who played a scorekeeper in the movie. “Knight almost refused to come out. He almost ruined everything.”
When he did take his place in front of the IU bench, Knight still caused “Blue Chips” director Friedkin trouble.
“Knight wouldn’t let Western win,” Moyer said. “He kept taking the lead, taking the lead.”
While the game wasn’t scripted — players were supposed to just play — the ending was. Western was to win with its blue-chip recruits.
With IU up by three points late in the game, Knight and his make-believe players (who included former IU players Eric Anderson, Calbert Cheaney, Keith Smart, Greg Graham and Duke’s Bobby Hurley) huddled near the bench. Knight’s words were recorded on a taping device he wore.
“Let me tell you something, boys,” he said. “We’ve got 24 seconds to play and fate’s got us up by three. We sure as hell aren’t going to lose to a bunch of (derogatory term) from Hollywood now.” But IU did lose. It had to.
This game was out of Knight’s control and in the hands of Hollywood producers, who were quickly finding out just how crazed the people of Indiana were about basketball.
People flocked to Frankfort
The Hollywood producers showed up to the gym with their Gucci sunglasses and sun-kissed skin and their flabbergasted reactions to the state’s obsession with an orange ball.
The producers needed thousands of extras to act as fans and fill Case Arena for the game scenes of “Blue Chips” that would be filmed in July 1993. “What will it cost us?” they asked. “These California folks thought they would have to pay people to come in and sit in the gym as extras. They had no idea what Indiana basketball was like,” Moyer said. “We told them you do not have to pay people. People will pay you to buy tickets to come in. They were aghast.”
From every corner, from every nook and cranny of the state, people poured into Case Arena for those four nights of filming, each paying a few bucks.
This was a basketball movie steeped in Indiana connections: Knight. Larry Bird. IU. Matt Painter. French Lick. Dan Dakich. Matt Nover. It was standing room only.
They had watched as another basketball movie — ‘Hoosiers” had been released in 1986 — became tied to their hoops-enamored state.
They wanted a piece of this one. Frankfort embraced its starring role and became the home of Western University, the fictional team coached by Bell, played by Nick Nolte, and featuring players Shaquille O’Neal and Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway.
On those hot summer days outside of the gym, the local Boys and Girls Clubs sold blue and gold T-shirts emblazoned with Western University. The shirts, $10 each, vanished.
“I never knew when I designed this that it would be this successful,” said Bill Wheeler, who received copyrights to the shirt and approval from Paramount Pictures to sell them, at the time. “I was afraid it might flop.”
The T-shirts didn’t flop. The movie didn’t flop.
“Blue Chips” debuted No. 3 at the box office the day of its release 25 years ago last Monday. The film, which explores the inner workings of college recruiting and illegal player payoffs, is consistently ranked in the Top 10 basketball movies of all time.
Critics have said that has to do with its authenticity. By Roger Ebert standards, “Blue Chips” might not be acting at its best and wasn’t Oscar-worthy. But all of the characters and their rich basketball background, they make it real.
“They wanted people that could really play basketball. They didn’t want actors,” said Hardaway, a former NBA star and now a coach for the University of Memphis, who played Western’s Butch McRae. “I think all of us have some acting in us, honestly. But this was easy because it was basketball.”
But it was also the darker side of basketball — off the court.
The gist of ‘Blue Chips’
In the movie storyline, Western’s coach Bell had always followed the rules and that had always worked. His team had two national championships and a passel of conference titles under its belt.
Bell’s winning and fiery coaching style — the opening scene of the movie shows him storming in and out of the locker room kicking and screaming — was inspired by Knight.
For “Blue Chips,” Nolte spent two weeks of the 1992 season following Knight as he coached in Bloomington.
Nolte told reporter Jimmy Carter after the filming that Knight was his inspiration for the character.
“We went to Knight to discuss what the integrity of the coach is. Where is the starting point for Pete Bell before he takes the fall? What are the values?” Nolte said. “I mean is it just about winning? What is collegiate athletics about? What should it be about? What isn’t it about?”
The movie, after all, focused on a coach who follows all the rules until his team starts to lose.
To turn around Western’s program, Bell violates NCAA rules as he brings in blue-chip recruits — Hardaway, O’Neal (Neon Bodeaux, who turned down the car that was offered to him) and Nover (Ricky Roe) — giving cash, a home and a tractor to the players and their families.
But after doing that and beating the Knight-coached team in the final game of the movie (and first of the fictitious season), Bell is overcome with guilt. During the postgame news conference, he reveals his secret, quits his coaching job and is last seen teaching kids on a playground court as the credits roll.
A realistic plot
Purdue coach Matt Painter said that even at 22, he thought the gist of the movie was “appropriate.”
“As players, you know the programs that do it the right way and you know the programs that don’t,” said Painter, who had just finished up his Purdue playing career when he landed a part in “Blue Chips” on the Coast team. “The movie kind of acknowledges that.”
The game Painter played in for the movie was the game that ended Western’s season and nudged Bell into his illegal-recruiting spiral.
“The things they were doing in this movie to try to get these guys to the school, it wasn’t the first time it had been done in basketball,” he said. “So (the plot) was realistic.”
Nover: ‘It fell into my lap’
When the “Blue Chips” casting director visited the NBA tryouts in Phoenix the April before filming was to begin, he asked Matt Nover to read lines. Nover’s crew-cut hair and youthful look fit nicely into the script.
“I’m basically playing myself,” Nover said during filming in 1993.
He had just finished his senior season helping IU to a 31-4 record and Elite Eight appearance in the NCAA tournament when the 6-8 forwardwas cast. His only previous acting experience was King Louie in a sixth-grade production of “The Jungle Book.”
Nover was cast as Ricky, a farm kid from French Lick who had broken all of Larry Bird’s high school records there.
In the movie, Ricky isn’t sure about leaving the farm and playing for Western, which is set in Los Angeles. Nolte makes a recruiting visit to the town, where Bird makes his acting appearance in the movie as a friend of Bell’s.
“It’s all really amazing and sort of overwhelming,” Nover said at the time of the filming. “This is one of the greatest opportunities I could have. So many people try to get into acting, and this just sort of fell into my lap. I love it.”
A gracious cast
That was the beauty of “Blue Chips,” said Ed Niehaus, Frankfort’s athletics director, who was the girls varsity basketball coach at the time of the filming.
The cameo appearances of real people playing — almost — themselves: Jim Boeheim, Lou Campanelli, Jerry Tarkanian, Bob Cousy.
And the athletes playing athletes. It seemed Hardaway, O’Neal and Nover were there not as actors but as ballplayers, he said.
“They were always gracious,” Niehaus said. “There was never anyone acting pompous or arrogant.”
There was increased security during filming. Everyone wanted a meeting with the then-Orlando Magic’s O’Neal, who was NBA Rookie of the Year.
They wanted to see Hardaway, the No. 3 pick in the NBA draft by Golden State a month before, who would also end up in Orlando.
“Of course, I had the baby face and looked all of 16,” Hardaway said.
The look was perfect for playing the role of a young college recruit. After Hardaway went out to Los Angeles to audition and got the part, he worked with an acting coach.
But he made his name for the next 14 years in the NBA.
Yet 25 years later, “Blue Chips” is brought up by friends and random strangers he meets on the street.
“All the time,” Hardaway said. “People still talk about that movie all the time.”