Fictional Hooper Bracket: Venice Beach Regional - Round 2

Can Billy Hoyle and Neon Boudeaux advance to the Sweet 16?

PublishedMarch 22, 2022

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The first round of the Venice Beach Regional went mostly according to the seedings, with an easily predicted upset (12-seed Buggs beating the 5-seed Pound in a Space Jam rematch), and one I didn’t see coming (13-seed Clarence Withers toppling 4-seed Quincy McCall). At the top of the bracket, Billy Hoyle is in a battle of smart asses with Jim Halpert, and the winner will get a double-digit seed regardless, as the aforementioned 12 and 13 hoopers face each other to continue their Cinderella run.

Toward the bottom, we’re getting delightfully close to a Butch McRae-Neon Boudeaux/Shaq-Penny duel that would pit the former on- and off-screen teammates against one another. Neon has NBA Street’s Stretch, and McRae faces The White Shadow’s Ken Reeves.

Picking your favorites is only going to get more difficult as the tournament progresses, so make sure to check out @Deadspin on Twitter to vote on the next round of games (or simply read on and vote via the embedded Tweets). And, thank you, tweeters, for logging more than 3,000 total votes in the Venice Bracket alone.

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1) Billy Hoyle (White Men Can’t Jump) vs 9) Jim Halpert (The Office)

Billy Hoyle and Jim Halpert are lovable smart asses who can’t seem to figure out their relationships. The best seasons of The Office were when we still didn’t know if Halpert and Pam Beasley would get together. Pam shutting down Jim’s advance during Casino Night was every bit as heart-wrenching as Hoyle’s inability to listen to Gloria. (Hoyle isn’t stupid, he’s dangerous… to himself.)

However, this isn’t a contest of love lives, it’s about basketball, and even though Jim eventually marries Pam, and Gloria leaves Billy, Billy is the better on-court player. Additionally, I’m 100 percent more fascinated with what happens with Gloria and Billy because you know that couple isn’t over. We’ve all been in — or at least witnessed — a relationship that isn’t healthy for either party, but they love each other too much to ever end it. Pam and Jim are so perfect and annoying by the end of The Office that people flipped on TV’s power duo.

As iconic and beloved as both of these properties are, Billy Ho isn’t falling for Jim’s behind the back crossover more than once, and he also consistently beat/didn’t struggle with guys bigger than Roy and Darryl. (Technically, Dunder Mifflin’s office-based workforce prevailed over the warehouse crew, but Michael got intimidated out of the spoils of victory. Same with Jim. He impressed Pam and was the best player on the court*, but Pam still went home with Roy — even twisting the knife with the, “Let’s get you in a hot bath” comment that Jim absolutely overheard.)

*Kevin Malone was not on the court.

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12) Bugs Bunny (Space Jam) vs 13) Clarence Withers (Semi-Pro)

Ah yes, the upset matchup, Bugs Bunny vs Clarence Withers. The voting for these two characters shows that after decades of television and movies, people can still be swayed by a compelling underdog story. I mean Bugs Bunny vs. Clarence from Semi-Pro, they aren’t even the most memorable characters from their respective films. However, neither movie is the same without them. In this Looney Tunes movies the ever sly Bugs saves the whole lot of them from becoming slaves on a different planet by turning a bottle of water into a placebo that gives the cartoon characters just enough juice to keep the game close so human beings Michael Jordan, Bill Murray, and Newman can carry the team to victory. Clarence, the best player on the Flint Tropics, threw caution to the wind at the end of Semi-Pro. Not only did he fake an injury so he wouldn’t have to play against the team he loved, but he actually voided his own contract to basically play in a professional basketball game for free, and got to go back to the team he quit on after the game. These two made the necessary halftime move to change the tide in both games after lopsided first halves. If not for their efforts, not only would the endings of Space Jam and Semi-Pro leave you puzzled and unsatisfied, but neither movie gets the green light from Hollywood executives. Both characters make their respective movies not only work, but also beloved by fans.

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3) Butch McRae (Blue Chips) vs 6) Ken Reeves (The White Shadow)

Butch may have only been a college freshman, at a time when it wasn’t common for players that age to carry basketball teams, but the Western Dolphins would have a hard time functioning without him. This 6-foot-7 point guard is ahead of his time throwing down reverse dunks and still using his height to run an offense. Reeves is absolutely a product of his time with an NBA career ending due to injury. He then did what Penny Hardaway would later do, coach after his professional career ended involuntarily. However, in the 20th century no one knew what would happen to Hardaway, and the movie informed viewers that McRae made it to the NBA. The White Shadow is a classic to those who followed the show for three seasons, but Blue Chips is far more likely to be found in a DVD collection. Blue Chips shows a guard who was recruited in a way that was technically underhanded, but he had the talent to revolutionize basketball. In The White Shadow, Reeves’ impact was more on his students — of course we encourage role models for the youth at Deadspin — than it ever was on the game as a whole. Also, which player would most people take when choosing sides in a pickup game? And which project would excite the average television viewer if it was released on their favorite streaming service?

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2) Neon Boudeaux (Blue Chips) vs 7) Stretch (NBA Street)

The Shaq-on-Shaq matchup garnered the most votes of any duel in the Venice Beach Region’s first round, so clearly the Big Aristotle’s impact on pop culture resonates across generations. The lasting impact of Stretch is purely nostalgia based as it’s more difficult to revisit a video game on an out-of-circulation console than it is to queue up Blue Chips on a streaming service.

Those of us who mastered the computer AI to the point that the only challenge of beating Street was doing it as fast as possible obviously spent too much time playing video games, and it’s our own fault we sucked all the fun out of the game. It feels good to put your friends on tilt, but a man can only get drubbed by Chris Whitney’s Denver Nuggets so many times before he breaks a controller, accuses you of cheating, and refuses to play even though it’s his system.

Also, Shaq was in NBA Vol. 2, and he was every bit the cheat code as the Blue Chips iteration. Boudeaux actually was a cheat code because of outdated NCAA rules and the fact that he was an All-NBA center facing movie extras. Simulating this matchup via PS2 wouldn’t be entirely on the level because Boudeaux wasn’t Lakers Shaq yet, but I still think he was on the proper side of his prime to destroy Stretch. (As previously mentioned, Stretch isn’t even the toughest boss in his own game.)

If the upset happens, it’ll be a glitch on par with the Honey Dip dunk. (L1+L2+R1+shoot. I still have the controls memorized… as sad/impressive as that is.)

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