Grantland just put together an excellent Q&A with a former college basketball player-turned-actor named Keith Gibbs. You probably have absolutely no idea who he is. But he's played a role in just about every basketball movie ever. From The Air Up There and Celtic Pride to Space Jam and Blue Chips, he's been in them all. And he's also been in a bunch of movies like The Cable Guy (he taught Jim Carrey how to play!) that featured basketball scenes. It's pretty amazing. Gibbs shared a ton of stories with Grantland and they're all worth reading. Go here to check them out.
The story that we found the most interesting involves Gibbs and Michael Jordan. While MJ was shooting Space Jam, he played in pickup games almost every night, with NBA superstars like Charles Barkley and Reggie Miller routinely showing up to play. Gibbs played in quite a few of these games, too, and, from time to time, he caught the wrath of MJ, who was notorious for talking a lot of trash. And it sounds like MJ really got Gibbs good a couple times during these games. Here's what Gibbs told Grantland:
Did Jordan trash-talk you?
Oh yeah, nonstop. [Laughs.]
He didn’t give a shit who you were. When I was doing Space Jam, we played three days. I thought it was over. I had to go out of town. I get a phone call, they’re like, “Why aren’t you here?” I was like, “Oh, they’re still playing?” I had no idea.
I walk in, and it’s Reggie Miller, Charles Barkley, Alonzo Mourning, Charles Oakley. Grant Hill shows up. Jerry Stackhouse shows up. Now, all of a sudden it’s an NBA All-Star pickup game. Every night. I did that for about a month and a half, two months. Then the UCLA kids came in, and they had just won a national title — Ed O’Bannon and those guys. Just phenomenal. Best pickup games I’ve ever been a part of. It was unreal.
Yeah, so Jordan … I had to guard Reggie Miller and Michael Jordan in back-to-back games. It was so bad. I was friends with Chris Mills and Tracy Murray — we had been to some camps together. One play, I got switched onto Jordan, because Chris was like, “Keith, you take him.” Jordan hit a 35-footer on me. I mean, it was ridiculous: leg out, tongue out, all that stuff … hit a 35-footer on me and goes, “GET THE FUCK OFF THE COURT.”
Pretty crazy, right? We can't say we're surprised, especially after hearing about what MJ said to Reggie Miller during a preseason game back in the late 1980s. But still, did he really have to go that hard on a guy who spent his college years at Cal State Northridge?!
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[via Grantland]
