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Pop-Culture Playoffs, Round 3: The NBA Shootout
By Jay Busbee | May 21, 2007
Continuing our series in which we analyze the NBA playoffs using any yardstick other than actual gameplay. Pop culture is, by definition, middle-of-the-road entertainment, and you can’t get any more middle-of-the-road than SGS’s Pop Culture Playoffs: 4-4 in round one, 2-2 in round two. So let’s see how our final four competitors stack up. This round’s theme: movie shootouts.
DETROIT VS. CLEVELAND: YOU’LL SHOOT YOUR EYE OUT…FROM THREE-POINT RANGE
Detroit runs out Out of Sight, one of the best of the post-Pulp Fiction ironic-crime-comedy flicks. It’s got several marks in its favor: it’s a watchable Jennifer Lopez flick, so it’s a possible movie-night compromise; it’s got a great techno-lounge soundtrack; and it’s based on an Elmore Leonard book. You can never go wrong with Elmore Leonard. Plus, it’s got one of the most meaningless deaths in movie history (yes, even more than that first soldier on the boat in Saving Private Ryan) — a thug invading a mansion goes running up the broad staircase, trips, and shoots himself in the head. Boom, down.
Cleveland counters with a similar threat executed in a far different way…the “You’ll shoot your eye out” of A Christmas Story. Sadly, Ralph does not in fact shoot any eyes out, either his own or those of that rampaging pack of turkey-thieving Bumpus’s dogs.
No contest here; Ralphie’s cute, but Out of Sight is out of…no, we won’t say it. DETROIT IN A MASSACRE.
UTAH VS. SAN ANTONIO: DYIN’ ENFORCIN’ ABSURD NBA FIGHT RULES AIN’T MUCH OF A LIVIN
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We’re going west for this one. San Antonio is the home of The Alamo, a bloated John Wayne pic that could have been so much better if the Duke hadn’t had such a hammerlock on it. Utah, by contrast, cuts loose with The Outlaw Josey Wales, which — along with Pale Rider and Unforgiven — pretty much repudiated everything that John Wayne ever stood for.
Much like the NBA, The Alamo wanted to whitewash reality. But in the Pop Culture Playoffs, whitewash don’t wash. Jerry Sloan inspires his men with Josey Wales’ immortal words, “Remember, when things look bad, and it looks like you’re not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean plumb mad-dog mean. ‘Cause if you lose your head and give up, then you neither live nor win. That’s just the way it is.” UTAH GETS MAD-DOG MEAN.
Check back with us in two weeks…but we’ve got a sinking feeling we’re headed for another split.
Topics: Basketball, Pop-Culture Playoffs |
