POSSIBLE WORLD EXCLUSIVE - MUST CREDIT ALOTT5MA: At about fifty-six minutes into Eddie Murphy's Coming to America (1988), Prince Akeem of Zamunda is introduced to two American myths presented as fact -- a competitive St. John's basketball team and a gratuitous hand-job from his date for the game, Patrice McDowell, sister of his eventual bride Lisa (accompanied to the game by Darryl "Soul Glo" Jenks, played by ER's Eriq LaSalle). Inspired by recent research on Ferris Bueller's Day Off and The Town, I wanted to try to determine: what game was it?
As it turns out, this wasn't that hard to determine: the Redmen were facing the Marist Red Foxes at the Garden, something they did twice in the years preceding the filming. Indeed, Marist's Rik Smits (#45) is immediately recognizable during the sequence, with the Dunking Dutchman delivering the kind of powerful 7-foot-plus performance the silver screen would not see again until Shawn Bradley's work in Space Jam nearly a decade later.
And pretty clearly, it's the December 28, 1987 game, the first round of the 36th ECAC Holiday Festival Tournament. The players we see match up with the box score -- including Boo Harvey (#3), future NBAer Shelton Jones (#31), and future NBAer/defendant Jayson Williams (#11). Most tellingly there's a scoreboard ad for "Knicks vs. Phoenix, Tue. Jan. 5 - 7:30 P.M" -- a game the Knicks indeed played (and lost).
In conclusion, as Akeem said at the game: Yes! In the face!
If I was a darker person, I'd combine that last line with a Jayson Williams joke.
ReplyDeleteYes, but was a 13 year old Alex Rodriguez at the game as well?
ReplyDelete--bd
Nice work, Adam.