Fictional Hooper Bracket: Hickory Region

The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh may be more of a cult classic, but it helped spark Shaquille O’Neal’s interest in basketball. Why? Because Moses Guthrie was played by Dr. J. The pisces leader of the Pittsburgh Pythons/Pisces was every bit as cool as Dr. J is in real life. When Toby Millman accused Gutherie of being an adolescent that only knew how to count in twos, Guthrie responded to her like a quiet storm DJ, “What wrong with twos? Noah believed in twos.” He plays the game just as cool with the fluid layups and smooth yet powerful dunks. Did you see Dr. J at the Philadelphia 76ers, Brooklyn Nets game last Thursday? He’s still that cool. Then we have Mary Camden who is impressive in her own right. She was a promising basketball player who got hit by a car as a freshman. Camden would eventually recover, and get back to not only making shots but also sending opponents’ right back in their face. Unfortunately, she ruined her basketball career by making a stone stupid decision. Her coach, played by notorious Los Angeles Lakers meddler Kurt Rambis, pulled a Coach Carter and locked the gym when the teams’ grades dropped. Her and her teammates’ response, instead of doing the work to improve their grades, was to break into the gym and vandalize it. It resulted in Camden losing her college scholarship. Not quite the championship happy ending that Guthrie had. - Stephen Knox

Let’s be real, Air Bud is a limited basketball player. He’s a good boy, but can’t run an offense or create his own shot. A solid point guard is necessary to set him up, but goodness, if you think P.J. Tucker is dangerous shooting the corner 3, Air Bud is destruction on four legs. Run him off two screens and send the ball to the 3-point line before he even turns around. Steph Curry has a quick release right? As soon as Air Bud sees the ball, off the nose, over the defender, nothing but net. Still, that’s not to say that Malcolm Turner is less reliable. His profession is FBI agent, but he might have missed his calling as a hooper. Sure it was just some local talent at the playground that he dominated, but the man was wearing a fat suit that could’ve fit him and a baby kangaroo — that likely would never be approved by a studio in 2022 — and still annihilated his competition outdoors in the Georgia sun with only a small child as his teammate. The fact that Turner finished the game without even needing an IV is enough for an NBA team to bring him in for Summer League, regardless of his lack of height. Turner dunking in that suit is at minimum five times more impressive than Cole Anthony taking 20 minutes during All-Star Weekend to land a dunk while wearing a pair of Timberlands. - Stephen Knox

It took a lot for Kyle Lee Watson to get his game together. For all of the work that he put in on his own time to become great, it took him almost the whole movie to learn one of the hallmark lessons of a good basketball movie, it’s a team sport. Watson dribbled the ball for nearly the entire first half of the movie, but the kid’s goal was to play for John Thompson at Georgetown. At some point, he was gonna learn to apply a four-letter word to his game — pass. At least he starts the movie with that nasty handle. That can’t be learned, while a nasty attitude can be unlearned with the proper experience and supervision. Saleh had no attitude problems. The man is an honorable warrior and 20 years ahead of his time on a basketball court. In today’s NBA, 6-foot-9 players with wingspans that stretch across the lane are desired. In 1994, those players were mostly a dream. A dream that was turned into a movie in which a Kenyan Tribe plays a basketball game to fight against imperialism, while an imperialist on their own team is trying to take away one of their best citizens. Every coach in the world would’ve stopped in their tracks had they seen Saleh on the street, and if they saw him play, in 2022 the NIL bag he would’ve received might have been enough to buy out the imperialists. - Stephen Knox

This matchup is oozing with self-confidence and ego. Scott doesn’t want to pass, and he doesn’t want to raise your kids… he doesn’t even like kids. The Utah Jazz guard played by Damon Wayans was ahead of his time because even though he parodies Charles Barkley’s famous “I’m not a role model” commercial and was clearly designed to be a less trusting Michael Jordan, he played like Kobe Bryant to the point that his teammates were so caught off guard when he passed that the ball literally hit them in the face. (Celtic Pride came out in April 1996, a couple months before Kobe was drafted and then traded to LA.)

Also, my guess is the reason Scott wears a purple-and-yellow Jazz uniform instead of a purple-and-gold Lakers uniform is because the producers had to go with the closest approximation to L.A. colors because Los Angeles probably refused to let them use its likeness for the antagonist of a Celtics movie.

Lewis goes up against a man so confident on-and-off the court that he has no problem usurping leading roles the night of the production or telling you he just sharted. The overconfident, washed up, one-off actor Sandy Lyle, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman (RIP), was really the only reason to watch Along Came Polly, a mid-aughts rom-com starring Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston. He steals every scene he’s in, including the pick-up game sequence where he clanks jumpers and throws up wild layups while yelling phrases like “Let in rain!,” “Old school!,” “Raid dance!” and “White chocolate!” If only everyone had the swagger to respond to a request to play two-on-two with, “You douchebags bring your A game?” - Sean Beckwith

Steve Urkel is the plucky Ivy League school kid that goes overlooked in March. The betting favorite is a time-altering, basketball-playing robot with the shooting stroke of Damian Lillard. He was my least-hated part of the new, largely forgettable Space Jam movie, but I’m a Trail Blazer fan so I’m biased. I’m honestly not sure what the Goon Squad was supposed to be. They’re robots with the games of NBA and WNBA stars created by Don Cheadle because LeBron James couldn’t come up with his own basketball movie?

Is no childhood intellectual property sacred? The only reason they can’t reboot Urkel is because he’s one of one, like Screech from Saved by the Bell. (That and my guess is no one wants to be type-cast as the weirdo-loser-nerd for the rest of their acting career no matter how lovable.) How many buzzer beaters and game-winning dunks does Urkel have to make to not get picked last on the playground? He didn’t even really need Grandmama’s help to win those Bulls tickets. Grandmama wasn’t the ringer, Urkel was Keyser Söze all along.

I would say let’s see if he can come up David against another Goliath, but Chronos has no idea what kind of hell awaits him. - Sean Beckwith

We don’t really get to see much basketball from either player. Kickball not Basketball is the game of choice during Recess at Third Street Elementary School. Vince is outstanding at both and everything else he plays in the series, including golf and dodgeball. He’s the kind of all-around athlete that starts playing a game and within 10 minutes is the best at it in the whole school, the kind of kid that a mortal 10-year-old would selfishly like to see trip and fall just once. If you had to pick the sport that he sticks with, it would have to be basketball. He can already bury half-court shots, and when his buddy Mikey got a case of the “copycats,” the sport that he took on was basketball. On a more serious note, we only saw brief snippets or Cornbread’s game because he was only in a third of the movie. But in that third it was clear to see that his game was ahead of its time. He could make all the passes, shots, and could throw it down if he gets a head of steam toward the basket. He would’ve had to learn to mind his own business — in real life he’s not flushing drug dealers’ product down the toilet — and stop drinking so much orange pop. Unfortunately, he never made it to college because he was gunned down from behind by police officers. His death rippled throughout the community so much it caused a riot, and little Lawrence Fishburn’s testimony made many people in the movie — unfortunately not nearly as many in real life — take a real hard look at police brutality. - Stephen Knox

This matchup is deceivingly closer than on paper. Chitwood misses one shot in the entire movie, saves Norman Dale’s job and sinks the game-winning buzzer-beater for Hickory High in the state championship game. Calloway is a professional player, compared to a prep prodigy, but has to deal with all of the baggage of his exuberant lifestyle. Chitwood is just a teenager in small-town Indiana. Would Chitwood’s skill be good enough to make it to the NBA? No way. Could he have been a major contributor to a college team? Absolutely. Calloway is rarely seen playing basketball on the show, giving us little data to go on for his basketball past. However, no one makes it to the NBA without a spectacular prep career, look at the show’s executive producer, LeBron James, for example. There is no chance Calloway’s skill touches King James’. Chitwood is his town’s LeBron, dazzling 1950s rural Hickory. Chitwood’s ability to defeat larger teams and help a ragtag group of players to glory gives him the win. - Eric Blum

Do not call Lola Bunny a doll. Like Michael Jordan, she is capable of taking a slight and using it like $7 per gallon premium gasoline to rev her engine up to run over her competition (SN: It’s time to break back out the Zoom hangouts, we as a nation should come together, for once, and refuse to make any unessential trip over two miles, and carpool for ones we can’t avoid.) She barged into the Looney Tunes’ gym never having appeared in a Mel Blanc cartoon, but ate up the Tunesquad. She can use both hands, can cross over, and can finish in traffic or knockdown a jumper. Lola is as good as it gets for the Tunesquad — not saying much because who thinks of Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and Elmer Fudd as hoopers. Still she was their best player who wasn’t an all-time NBA legend. Nathan Scott had all the promise in the world. For all of the drama on One Tree Hill, the only thing everyone could be certain of is that he is an outstanding basketball player. He hit a game-winning free throw while staring his opponent dead in his eye. However, this show is a teen drama so of course Scott has to navigate enough unfortunate circumstances to fill eight seasons. That includes his brief paralysis after a fight that cost him the opportunity to be a lottery pick in the NBA Draft. He came back to play in what was then the “D-League,” but the big-time wouldn’t be in the cards for Scott. - Stephen Knox