An appreciation of all of Blue Chips’ basketball cameos

Blue Chips hit theaters 25 years ago, yet it remains widely overlooked as a great sports movie.

As the FBI and the law in general descends on widespread misdeeds in college basketball recruiting, Blue Chips practically stands up as a forward-looking documentary. It also happened to hit theaters 25 years ago, on February 18, 1994, so it’s time to bring some attention back to it as a quality sports movie.

The story centers on Western men’s basketball coach Pete Bell, played by Nick Nolte, who goes to great extremes to bring his once great program back to prominence after a losing season. Real-life basketball players Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway (Butch McCrae), Shaquille O’Neal (Neon Bodeaux) and Matt Nover (Ricky Roe) are the apples of Bell’s recruiting eye, with jobs, houses, cars and tractors given out to curry favor and secure their commitments.

Nolte said he drew inspiration for his character from then-Indiana coach Bobby Knight, after following Knight and the Hoosiers, as prominently evidenced by a scene in the movie where he kicks a basketball into the stands.

Blue Chips is filled with notable basketball people in cameo roles, including Bob Cousy and Larry Bird along with real-life coaches Jim Boeheim, Jerry Tarkanian, Lou Campanelli and Knight himself. Nover played for Knight in real life at Indiana, and his story parallels Bird’s in real life as the proverbial “Hick From French Lick.” Real-life former Indiana players Calbert Cheaney, Keith Smart, Eric Anderson and Greg Graham played for Knight’s fictional IU team in the movie.

There’s also a bit of alternate reality in Blue Chips. Former Duke point guard, and current Arizona State head coach, Bobby Hurley plays for Knight and Indiana in the movie. Purdue head coach Matt Painter also landed a part as a player on one of the other opposing teams, so the basketball ties are deep and as realistic as can be.

Western’s light blue and yellow color scheme echoes the colors of UCLA, which is of course a prominent real-life college basketball power (at least historically). That was surely not an accident, even as an inspired bit of fiction.

Speaking to the Indianapolis Star for their 25-year retrospective on Blue Chips, Hardaway cited how often he gets asked about the movie.

“All the time,” Hardaway said. “People still talk about that movie all the time.”