Oh man, so get this. I got a shot at becoming coach of the Knicks and I nailed the shot! Well … no I didn’t, I actually slipped, faceplanted, and imagined the whole thing. And I sustained a concussion and can’t remember a thing to boot. Do you remember what happened in Eddie?
Pop Quiz Hot Shot!
1) You, of course, know Eddie as the first female coach in NBA history. But can you even remember the beginning of this film? What was her original job?
2) How does Eddie become the coach though?
3) But … surely there is a rule against just replacing your coach right before the game?!
4) What does Eddie do to turn things around?
5) Oooooooh the big bad businessman is going to move the Knicks. Where?
Bonus Question: Well, it’s about 25 years later. What’s Eddie been up to?
Answers
1) She was a limousine driver … or really a dispatcher moonlighting as a limousine driver play-by-play announcer, but she’s forced to occasionally drive people around by her boss it seems.
2) There is a ludicrous promotion in which if one of three fans hits a free throw (!) they get to be honorary coach for the second half. But guess what? The crowd loves her. They really do. Even after she gets a T for walking on the floor to confront a ref. Ultimately though … the owner wants to get the head coach to quit, so he hires Eddie.
3) Hmmmmmmm. Nope, nothing in the rulebook that says Eddies can’t coach basketball. We’ll allow it.
4) Well. He teaches Ivan how to take a charge (absurd). He talks to Rick Fox about cheating on his wife and teaches him to apologize to his wife (absurd). And of course she benched Stacey Patton (not absurd … until they claim it is the first time he was benched all season so we are back to being absurd). But don’t worry he turns things around for Patton as well. He gets him to play some pickup and he was all ship shape again! Hooray!
5) St. Louis (absurd). Yes, let’s move the Knicks to a smaller market. That makes sense. And yeah, let’s not have an NBA team in New York City. Here’s the thing: he can’t just do that. He would have been nixed by the other owners or the commissioner. You need permission for these things. You can’t really be like “I’m going to move the team to my hometown and they’ll play at the high school gym, fuck you.”
Bonus Answer: Well, she’s coming off a successful stint as the Commissioner of the WNBA. Now are are going to do the thing where Eddie is involved with the WNBA because she’s a woman? Kind of, but here’s the thing. The NBA is struggling and they are looking for new blood and who better to be the Commissioner of the NBA than Eddie? The new owner of the Knicks, Frank Langella’s son, played by Zac Efron, is a new type of owner. He’s young, and very much into the social media high level integration of the league. Eddie, on the other hand, is just looking to shake things up. Dinging Efron for a low level tampering violation, Efron tips his hand: Eddie, we are looking to push out the old guard by expanding the league internationally and then contracting the teams which aren’t pulling their weight. San Antonio, Sacramento,etc. All the small markets are out. If she plays ball, Eddie will see a fat payday. And if she doesn’t? Well, that’s why they got a dinosaur of the old guard, they’ll destroy her on social media, and install Efron himself as Commissioner to “save the league” and get it done. Eddie has a different idea though, she’s going to go to the New York Stock Exchange trading floor and filibuster the opening until the world sees what is going on. The traders all come to the floor too, slow clap, and Efron has the Knicks taken from him and given to the people. Eddie retires to be the first coach-owner of the Knicks and restore them to glory. The End.
I threw up in my mouth a bit at the end there. The first half sounded suspiciously realistic, like I saw the Eddie 2 script in a vault at Netflix Studios.
Bad Movie Twins 