Pete Bell, a college basketball coach for the Western University Dolphins in Los Angeles, is under a lot of pressure. His team is not winning as often as it once did and his successful program needs to attract new star players. But the brightest stars of the future—the so-called "blue-chip" prospects—are secretly being paid by other schools.
This practice is forbidden in the college game, but Pete is desperate after a losing season. A school booster, greedy "friend of the program" Happy, will stop at nothing to land these star high school players for Western's next season and gets the okay from the coach to do so. This includes offering a new car to the gigantic Neon Boudeaux (Shaq), a house and job to the mother of Butch McRae, and a tractor to the father of farmboy Ricky Roe, as well as a bag filled with cash.
With sportswriter Ed suspecting a scandal, Pete continues to be contaminated by demands from the players and a dirty association with the booster. His estranged wife, a former guidance counselor, agrees to tutor Neon, who has below average grades, but she feels betrayed when Pete lies to her about the new athletes receiving illegal inducements to attend the school.
Pete comes to realize that one of his senior players, Tony, a personal favorite, had "shaved points" in a game his freshman season, conspiring to beat a gambling point spread after carefully reviewing a video of the freshman season game depicting Tony's unusual behavior. Pete is disgusted at what he and his program have become.
Western University has a big nationally televised game coming up versus Indiana, the #1 team in the country, coached by Bob Knight. After winning the game, Pete cannot bear the guilt of having cheated. At a press conference, he confesses to the entire scandal and resigns as head coach. Leaving the press conference and the arena, Pete walks past a small playground with kids playing basketball—he approaches, then helps coaching them.
An epilogue later reveals that the university would be suspended from tournament play for three years. Pete did continue to coach, but at the high school level; Tony graduated and played pro ball in Europe; Ricky Roe got injured and returned home to run the family farm, and Neon and Butch dropped out of college, but both now play in the NBA.
Nolte actually shadowed Bob Knight during many games in 1992 to research the role. Knight appears in the film as himself but has no scripted lines.
West Baden, which is the town adjacent to French Lick, is the hometown of Larry Bird, who plays a scene with Nolte at the outdoor court of Bird's home. This was actually the same court (located on the property that Bird had purchased in the early 1980s) that was used in a Converse television commercial in 1984 starring Bird and Magic Johnson.
In a scene showing Nolte driving to French Lick, local radio station WSLM 98.9 FM can be heard in the car. In the final version, this scene was edited out.
Blue Chips was Friedkin's first film for Paramount Pictures since 1977's Sorcerer, the production of which had strained his relationship with the studio for years. His next three films would also be released by Paramount. Some attributed this to his relationship with the head of Paramount Sherry Lansing.[2]
Filming alongside Hardaway led O'Neal to recommend to the Orlando Magic that they select Hardaway – which they eventually did at the 1993 NBA draft when they traded No. 1 overall pick Chris Webber to the Golden State Warriors for Hardaway and three future first-round draft picks. With both on their roster, the Magic recorded the best record in the Eastern Conference in the 1994-95 regular season and made the first NBA Finals appearance in franchise history.
Al Hoffman was Nolte's stand-in for the Indiana and Chicago portions of the film.
The pep band that performed in the film was composed of students from Lafayette Jefferson High School, Frankfort High School and a small number of local professionals under the direction of Jeff Parthun.
Reception
The film earned mixed reviews from critics.[3][4]On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 40% of 30 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.1/10.The website's consensus reads: "Director William Friedkin is working with a strong cast, but an excess of sentimentality renders this basketball drama more than a little flat."[5]
Hal Hinson of The Washington Post panned the film, writing, "The ostensible subject here is the big business of college athletics, and, just as The Program tried to do with college football, the film's purpose is to expose the corruption behind the scenes of so-called amateur athletics that have transformed the sport into a desperate money grab. But, like The Program, this strident, unconvincing bit of movie muckraking uses our national sports mania to decoy us into sitting through a dreary lecture about ethics and moral corner-cutting. What's most surprising here is that the assembled talent—from the worlds of basketball and movies—is so impressive and, still, the work is so tired. As the coach who exchanges his soul for a winning program, Nick Nolte struts and bellows in a desperate attempt to bring his character to life, and though he works up quite a lather, all he gets for the effort is sweat stains."[6]
Roger Ebert however gave the film three stars. "The movie contains a certain amount of basketball, but for once here's a sports movie where everything doesn't depend on who wins the big game," he wrote. "It's how they win it. [..] What Friedkin brings to the story is a tone that feels completely accurate; the movie is a morality play, told in the realistic, sometimes cynical terms of modern high-pressure college sports."[7]
In the years since the film was released, it has received more positive reviews. Since 2020, the Rolling Stone,[8]Yardbarker[9] and The Athletic listed it as one of the best sports movies of all time.[10]
In 2023, Jason Diamond of the Esquire wrote a favorable review of the film, writing "Blue Chips suffered because it was ahead of its time." and "Eventually, a new generation that had read none of the bad reviews (nor would probably care about them) discovered Blue Chips. It is frequently counted among the best sports movies ever made and earned new accolades in 2019 when media outlets did 25th anniversary retrospectives."[11] The same year, Jason Guerrasio of Business Insider listed it as one of the 35 sports movies to watch in your lifetime.[12]
Accolades
Shaquille O'Neal was nominated for a Razzie Award for "Worst New Star". The film ranked No. 3 on Complex Magazine's Best Basketball Movies list.[13]
Box office
The film debuted at number 3 at the US box office.[14] It went on to gross $23 million in the United States and Canada but only $3.7 million international for a worldwide total of $26.7 million.[15][1]
Friedkin later admitted the film was "weak at the box office. It's hard to capture in a sports film the excitement of a real game, with its own unpredictable dramatic structure and suspense. I couldn't overcome that."[16]
Shaquille Rashaun O'Neal, known commonly as Shaq, is an American former professional basketball player who is a sports analyst on the television program Inside the NBA. He is a 7-foot-1-inch (2.16 m) and 325-pound (147 kg) center who played for six teams over his 19-year career in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and is a four-time NBA champion. O'Neal is regarded as one of the greatest basketball players and centers of all time.
Robert Joseph Cousy is an American former professional basketball player. He played point guard for the Boston Celtics from 1950 to 1963, and briefly with the Cincinnati Royals during the 1969–70 season. A 13-time NBA All-Star and 1957 NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP), Cousy was a core piece during the early half of the Celtics dynasty winning six NBA championships during his 13-year tenure with the Celtics. Nicknamed "The Houdini of the Hardwood", Cousy was the NBA assists leader for eight consecutive seasons, introducing a new blend of ball-handling and passing skills to the NBA. He is regarded as the first great point guard of the NBA, and was the first to reach the 4,000, 5,000, and 6,000 career assists milestones.
Anfernee Deon "Penny" Hardaway is an American college basketball coach and former professional player who is the head coach of the Memphis Tigers men's team in the American Athletic Conference (AAC). Hardaway played college basketball at Memphis and 14 seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA), where he was a four-time NBA All-Star and a three-time All-NBA Team member.
The 50 Greatest Players in NBA History, also referred to as NBA's 50th Anniversary All-Time Team, were chosen in 1996 to honor the 50th anniversary of the founding of the National Basketball Association (NBA). It was the third anniversary team in the league. Fifty players were selected through a vote by a panel of media members, former players and coaches, and current and former general managers. In addition, the top ten head coaches and top ten single-season teams in NBA history were selected by media members as part of the celebration. The 50 players had to have played at least a portion of their careers in the NBA and were selected irrespective of position played.
Jerry Esther Tarkanian was an American basketball coach. He coached college basketball for 31 seasons over five decades at three schools. He spent the majority of his career coaching with the UNLV Runnin' Rebels, leading them four times to the Final Four of the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, winning the national championship in 1990. Tarkanian revolutionized the college game at UNLV, utilizing a pressing defense to fuel its fast-paced offense. Overall, he won over 700 games in his college coaching career, only twice failing to win 20 games, while never having a losing season. Tarkanian was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013.
James Arthur Boeheim Jr. is an American former college basketball coach and current Special Assistant to the Athletic Director at Syracuse University. From 1976 until 2023, he was the head coach of the Syracuse Orange men's team of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). Boeheim guided the Orange to ten Big East Conference regular season championships, five Big East tournament championships, and 34 NCAA tournament appearances, including five Final Four appearances and three appearances in the national title game. In those games, the Orangemen lost to Indiana in 1987, and to Kentucky in 1996, before defeating Kansas in 2003 with All-American Carmelo Anthony.
The 1987 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament involved 64 schools playing in single-elimination play to determine the national champion of men's NCAA Division I college basketball. It began on March 12, 1987, and ended with the championship game on March 30 in New Orleans, Louisiana. A total of 63 games were played.
NBA Live Legend All-Stars Teams is a video game feature on the NBA Live video games series. It gathers five teams, each representing a decade, starting from the 1950s. Each team consists of great players from that era. Most of the players had been inducted into Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame or named NBA 50 Greatest Players.
The 1996 NBA All-Star Game was the 46th edition of the NBA All-Star Game, an exhibition basketball game played on February 11, 1996. The event was held at the Alamodome in San Antonio and was a part of the 50th season of the NBA. The game was televised nationally by NBC in the United States and by CTV in Canada. There were 36,037 people in attendance. Michael Jordan put on a show for the fans in his first game back from retirement and ended up receiving the game's most valuable player award.
The 1993–94 NBA season was the Magic's fifth season in the National Basketball Association. The team narrowly missed the playoffs the previous season, but as a result, received unexpected good fortune. Despite having the worst odds, the Magic won the NBA draft lottery for the second consecutive season. The Magic drafted Chris Webber from the University of Michigan with the first overall pick in the 1993 NBA draft. They would eventually swap Webber to the Golden State Warriors in exchange for the rights to University of Memphis guard Penny Hardaway and three future first-round picks.
The NBA All-Star Game Kobe Bryant Most Valuable Player (MVP) is an annual National Basketball Association (NBA) award given to the player(s) voted best of the annual All-Star Game. The award was established in 1953 when NBA officials decided to designate an MVP for each year's game. The league also re-honored players from the previous two All-Star Games. Ed Macauley and Paul Arizin were selected as the 1951 and 1952 MVP winners respectively. The winner is voted upon by a panel of media members, who cast their vote after the conclusion of the game. The fan voting accounts for 25% of the voting. The player(s) with the most votes or ties for the most votes wins the award. In February 2020, Commissioner Adam Silver renamed the NBA All-Star Game Most Valuable Player in honor of four-time winner Kobe Bryant, who died in a helicopter crash a few weeks earlier.
The 2012–13 Big Ten men's basketball season began with practices in October 2012, followed by the start of the 2012–13 NCAA Division I men's basketball season in November. Conference play began in early-January 2013, and concluded in March with the 2013 Big Ten men's basketball tournament at the United Center in Chicago. All conference regular season and tournament games were broadcast nationally. For the 37th consecutive season, the conference led the nation in attendance.
Shareef Rashaun O'Neal is an American professional basketball player who last played for the NBA G League Ignite of the NBA G League. The son of Hall of Fame player Shaquille O'Neal, he attended Crossroads School in Santa Monica, California. As a senior forward, O'Neal was ranked among the top high school basketball players of his class. He was a redshirt during his first season in college with the UCLA Bruins, when he underwent heart surgery. He played as a reserve for the Bruins in 2019–20 before transferring midseason to the LSU Tigers.
The 2017–18 NCAA Division I men's basketball corruption scandal was a corruption scandal, initially involving sportswear manufacturer Adidas as well as several college basketball programs associated with the brand but now involving many programs not affiliated with Adidas.
Matthew Joseph Nover is an American former professional basketball player. He played college basketball for Indiana University and later professionally, including for C.B. Polaris World Murcia in the Liga ACB and for Sydney Kings in the Australian NBL. In 1994, he appeared in Blue Chips along with Nick Nolte, Penny Hardaway, and Shaquille O'Neal.
The 1990–91 NCAA Division I men's basketball season began in November 1990 and ended with the Final Four at the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis, Indiana on April 1, 1991. The Duke Blue Devils won their first NCAA national championship with a 72–65 victory over the Kansas Jayhawks.
Basketball: A Love Story is a 2018 sports documentary film series directed by Dan Klores and distributed by ESPN Films. The 20-hour series features 62 "short stories" distributed across 10 episodes, with each story varying from five to more than 30 minutes in length and exploring various topics from all aspects of the sport of basketball, including the NBA, ABA, WNBA, college basketball, and the international game, as well as a broad variety of social and cultural issues related to or influenced by the sport. All 62 shorts were originally made available online via the ESPN App on September 18, 2018, and subsequently also aired on ESPN in a serialized format of four-hour blocks over six weeks, beginning October 9 and ending November 13, 2018.
The ABCD Basketball Camp was a youth basketball camp founded by Sonny Vaccaro that was held from 1984 to 2006. The camp gathered the highest ranked high school players of the United States, and was considered one of the top events of high school basketball. ABCD stood for Academic Betterment and Career Development.
↑ Lovell, Glenn (December 25, 1994). "The Past Picture Show the Good, the Bad and the Ugly -- a Year Worth's of Movie Memories". San Jose Mercury News (Morning Finaled.). p.3.
Friedkin, William, The Friedkin Connection, Harper Collins 2013
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