Editor’s note: As the World Cup continues in the United States for the first time since 1994, The Athletic is looking back at college sports in the 1990s and how much has changed since then. Join us for a couple of weeks of offseason football and basketball nostalgia.
Throughout the history of college basketball, the biggest stars in the game are often the coaches, and in the early 1990s, no one was more recognizable than Indiana’s Bob Knight.
So when William Friedkin, the acclaimed director of “The Exorcist,” and writer Ron Shelton, famous for “Bull Durham” and “White Men Can’t Jump,” decided to make a college basketball-themed film about a legendary, squeaky clean coach who had been convinced to bend the rules to rebuild his storied program at fictional Western University, the real-life character they decided to serve as the star actor’s teacher was Knight.
“Blue Chips” wasn’t a box office hit, but it arguably has the best basketball scenes of any movie. And that’s because the participants weren’t acting; they were actually playing, and star Nick Nolte was impersonating one of the game’s all-time greatest coaches.
Nolte, a method actor who once lived on the streets with the homeless to prepare for his role in “Down and Out in Beverly Hills,” shadowed Knight during the 1992-93 season to prepare to play coach Pete Bell.
Nolte and Friedkin showed up for the first day of practice that fall, but there was one issue: They were late.
As soon as the Hollywood pair arrived, they found the Hoosiers in the locker room, and captain Chris Reynolds greeted them with a stern message.
If you’re going to be a part of this team, you’ve got to be like us. You’ve got to be on time.
“Just hammering him,” Pat Knight, the coach’s son and a sophomore guard on that team, remembered.
Nolte apologized, saying it would never happen again.
Then the room burst out laughing. Knight had decided to have some fun with his new friends.
But from then on, Nolte was never late and showed up every day in the same outfit — a trench coat, T-shirt, sweats and Nike turf shoes — with a notebook in hand. Knight gave him full access to the program.
Indiana coach Bob Knight (right) helped actor Nick Nolte (not pictured) prepare for his role in “Blue Chips.” (Malcolm Emmons / USA Today Sports)
Pat Knight and teammate Greg Graham say Nolte was there for the entire regular season — Shelton told The Athletic’s Doug Haller in 2019 that it was just eight days — but however long it was, Nolte had the part down so convincingly that one day a manager was in a back hallway and heard what he thought was Knight ripping someone in the coaches’ locker room. The manager hesitated but had to go through to get the team’s laundry, and when he opened the door, he found Nolte.
For the Hoosiers’ assistance, the players were told they would get to play themselves in the film alongside Knight.
Unfortunately, the NCAA stepped in, informing IU that it would be a recruiting advantage and only Knight and his graduated players could appear in the movie. (Someone figured out a clever workaround; the IU game film that plays on a television during several scenes in Western’s locker room is real practice film from Indiana.)
To cast other players for the movie, the producers connected with agents to recruit their clients, particularly those who had just finished playing college basketball. So for college hoops fans, watching “Blue Chips” came with a bonus; it was like a game of “Where’s Waldo,” seeing if you could spot the recently graduated former college stars.
The Western University squad, highlighted by Shaquille O’Neal, who was fresh off winning the NBA rookie of the year award, and Penny Hardaway, who had declared for the NBA Draft that spring after three years at Memphis State, shuttled between Los Angeles and Indiana for the movie’s preparation and filming. In ESPN’s “This Magic Moment,” O’Neal recounts showing up in L.A. and asking, “Who the hell is Penny Hardaway?”
Because the players would be playing real games, Hardaway had an opportunity to make an impression on O’Neal before the draft. “I took advantage of being with Shaq and showing him how much he really needed me on his team,” Hardaway said in the ESPN documentary.
“I was running and would do this,” O’Neal said in the documentary, holding up his hand, “and the ball would be there.”
In the film, Western University was not very good before Neon Boudeaux (Shaq) and Butch McRae (Hardaway) showed up, and the same was true in the games.
After playing together in “Blue Chips,” Penny Hardaway and Shaquille O’Neal teamed up in Orlando. (Jeff Haynes / Getty Images)
The Western University squad was mostly made up of talent from schools near Los Angeles. The fictional Dolphins had some solid players — such as Phil Glenn, USC’s leading scorer that season, and Richard Petruska, a UCLA big man who would go 46th in the 1993 NBA Draft. But the other teams they faced before O’Neal and Hardaway entered the lineup featured some of the best players in college basketball that season.
Coast University, which beats Western in the opening scene, had future NBA All-Star Allan Houston; Rodney Rogers, the ninth pick in the 1993 NBA Draft; plus second-rounders Thomas Hill, who was a starter on Duke’s back-to-back NCAA title teams; and Adonis Jordan, the point guard at Kansas on the 1993 Final Four squad. (A not-so-famous-yet recent Purdue grad, Matt Painter, was also on the squad.)
“When I look back on it, I wish I had taken it more serious, to be honest with you,” Hill said, “because it was kind of like you were interviewing for the draft.”
Texas Western had first-rounders Rex Walters and Chris Mills, plus Rick Fox, who had already spent two years in the NBA.
“I had Rick Fox goggles the whole night,” Walters said, “like, just get him the ball and let him go to work.”
Walters nearly had a bigger role in the film. An agent who was trying to sign Walters also got him a chance to read for the role of Ricky Roe, the farm boy shooter who was the third star Bell was chasing for his redemption team, who eventually signed for a duffel bag of cash and a tractor for his dad. Walters didn’t end up signing with that agent and didn’t get the role.
“I blame it on the agent and not my poor acting skills,” Walters says, “but they still wanted me in the movie.”
Walters also heard that Knight had suggested Indiana’s graduating center, Matt Nover, for the role, and the rumor was that Knight refused to be in the film unless they cast Nover as Roe. “Oh, yeah, I guarantee that happened,” Pat Knight said. “I can see my dad saying, ‘I won’t do it if you don’t hire my guy.’”
Walters was at least on one of the winning teams, coached by Rick Pitino, who he said took his role seriously and coached like he would in a game.
“We beat them pretty good,” Walters said. “If they would have had Shaq and Penny, it probably would have been a little different.”
O’Neal says that playing with Hardaway convinced him to tell the Magic they needed to draft Hardaway — they ended up making a draft-day trade for Hardaway, giving up No. 1 pick Chris Webber — and those who got the first real look at the duo were fans at a packed Frankfort Senior High, the 5,000-seat gym that was transformed into Western’s home arena.
After actually losing the first two games, the stage was set for Western to play a team of mostly Hoosiers alumni, which included 1993 national player of the year Calbert Cheaney and Duke’s Bobby Hurley at point guard.
“To see Bobby Hurley in the Indiana uniform, it was weird,” said Graham, who was the second-leading scorer on IU’s 1993 Big Ten champs.
The Hoosiers took pride in getting to wear the uniform one more time, and Graham even played through a hamstring pull he’d suffered just before filming during a workout with the Los Angeles Clippers.
The two teams were set to play two games, and Knight got extra motivation when he heard that Nolte and legendary coach Pete Newell, who had been hired as a technical advisor and had worked with the Western team during a training camp ahead of filming, said they were going to beat Knight.
“My dad was not having it,” Pat Knight said. “Coach would call timeout, and he jumped their ass: ‘We can’t let these f—ers beat us.’”
“And we beat the s— out of them,” Graham said.
Pat Knight said Nolte and Newell were so upset they didn’t even shake Knight’s hand afterward. He wasn’t finished messing with them, either.
The only staged basketball scene was the final one, in which Hardaway was supposed to throw an alley-oop to O’Neal to win the game.
“Coach told us not to let them run it the first time,” Graham said.
Hurley (to Haller in 2019): “This was after the game, so we kind of wanted to get out of there. We’re in the huddle, and Coach just says: ‘Don’t let them freaking get it.’ He told us to grab Shaq on the lob. No one was going to disobey an order from The General.”
When the film came out in February 1994, the IU team went to see it to watch their old teammates, try to spot themselves and look for a few Easter eggs.
The Western locker room was a carbon copy of the IU locker room, even down to the signs. Before the 1992-93 season, someone gave Knight a bull scrotum with a sign that read, “It will take big balls to win the Big Ten,” which Knight hung in his office. The sign made the movie.
“That’s how exact they were on attention to detail,” Pat Knight said.
The film grossed only $23 million, but it became one of those movies that got a rebirth on cable and is a nostalgic watch for any basketball fan. Walters says he gets recognized more often for being in the film than for the seven years he played in the NBA.
Jim Boeheim, who played himself recruiting McRae in the film, is continually reminded of the experience when he gets a residual check in the mail. “I got a check the other day, actually,” Boeheim said, “for $1.49.”
Boeheim also came across the movie recently while channel surfing and watched the beginning, with plans to watch the rest. He said the premise of cheating to get players was exaggerated, but “there’s some truth in everything.”
Times, of course, have changed, and athletes are now allowed to be paid.
“That was minor league,” says Boeheim, laughing. “That doesn’t even count where we are now.”
