‘HOOSIERS’ AND THE WAY WE WERE . . .

A surprise hit with audiences and critics , “Hoosiers” has been the season’s Cinderella story. Set in the ‘ 50s, the film is loosely based on a true-life giant-killer saga: the 1954 Indiana tournament drive of minuscule Milan High (enrollment: 164). For many, it distills the heart and soul of hardwood floors, screaming cheerleaders and furious rallies. Six Calendar writers--Lawrence Christon, Dennis Hunt, Patrick Goldstein, Max Jacobson, John Voland and Michael Wilmington--played basketball during their fast-faded high school careers. Here they ruminate on “Hoosiers” and the way it was on all those long-ago Friday nights.

Lawrence Christon, 5’ 10” guard. Brentwood (New York) High, Senior varsity 1958, 1959. (Set school single season scoring record.) Long Island Press and Newsday All-Suffolk County starting team , 1959 . Fredonia State College 1960. On roster of Houston Rockets in Cal State pro-am summer pro league 1972.

Two broken ankles, a broken wrist, facial lacerations, numberless sprains, shattered teeth and corneal abrasions--this is the price of 25 years of diving for loose balls and driving the lane after faking a jumper at the top of the key or deep in a corner, in a career that began in high school and ended, after a pre-exhibition week with the Lakers, in the Cal State Pro-Am Summer League in 1972 (I still get out for hoops occasionally, one of L.A.’s oldest gym rats).

I look at basketball movies, when I look at basketball movies, the same way a combat veteran looks at war movies. To me, they always fall short in conveying not only what the game feels like, but what it really looks like, when making a basket is not an isolated spasmodic act (as in close-up of ball swishing through net), but a dancelike culmination of movement, collective and individual, played in the air.

“Hoosiers” has its charms, and held a certain evocative quality for me. The first college I went to was very like one of the movie’s gyms; you had to know where you were when you went for a loose ball--you could plow into a wooden wall or maybe hurtle down a flight of stairs. I liked the walnut dark look of sweat-stained basketballs, the creaky gym floors, the thrill of stepping out onto a big-time field house floor for a regional game, silently calculating the shooting angles.

I liked the way the movie caught, in the character of Jim, the pure shooter’s haunted look, the manifest loneliness of hours and hours of practicing long jumpers on any hoop you can find, away from everybody, dreaming your game. I liked the way Dennis Hopper held his right hand when he sidled over to Gene Hackman in the diner. The long wrist, the delicately flowing fingers--that’s a shooter’s hand. I can recall the image of the team bus slowly traversing a winter road, and the misery of my high school coach when public opinion turned against him.

“Hoosiers” is loosely based on a true story, but it’s not essentially a basketball story. It’s an old-fashioned formula vehicle that plays to our current mania for depictions of winning. Who was this Gene Hackman character with a shadowed past? What did he do away from the game? What specifically did he teach these preposterously overmatched small town kids, so that they could become champions of the most basketball-mad state in America? How did he get them to overcome their terror?

There are other dramaturgical questions one might ask as well. But the hoops veteran in me laments how the soul of a team coming together is never explored. Winning really isn’t everything; it’s only what happens at the end.

John Voland, 6 feet 4, c enter/forward . Millikan (California) junior high JV (1973) and Ulysses S. Grant high JV (1974); Center, Street Beagles, Chicago city league co-champs , 1980-81 .

As one of those tallish (six feet by age 15) boy-men who get drafted to play basketball in spite of their shocking lack of talent, I’m reminded by “Hoosiers” most of all of the sounds of the game.

I’m not talking so much about the omnipresent fingernails-on-chalkboard skreak of the sneakers turning fast on the wooden floors--you can hear those for hours on weekend TV. What I remember is the thung of a missed jumper, a sound especially loud when the coach is watching; the whoof s of other guys panting like old Buicks to get down the floor to cover the fast break; the soft poingk of the ball as it’s being dribbled by the first player on the floor before practice itself starts--he moves like a dancer through the empty gym. “Hoosiers” really did justice to the kinetic, restless acoustics of the game.

It’s too bad John Waters’ “Odorama” notion--of bringing scent into the movie house--didn’t take in the industry, because I could well imagine adding in the acridity of the sweaty socks, the well-used uniform, even the closeness of the antique gym itself. These are all part of the basketball experience (especially in cold-weather climes), and so clinically right did director David Anspaugh’s look for the film seem that I almost took the smells as a given--something I don’t even think about with less engaging movies.

Heck, there are problems. You never really get a sense of how physical this game is. As a player whose outstanding virtue was that he filled up the lane--something like an immobile World War I-era tank--I can attest that the action under the basket is rough . Elbows, sure. Head-butting. Tripping. Knees into soft, vulnerable places. “Hoosiers,” in this respect, is rather like the Cinerama version of Biblical Palestine. There’s no grit beneath the legend.

As for the thrill of small-town David rising to fell big-city Goliath, well . . . it was a Hollywood movie, after all. But as the member of mostly lousy teams (the Street Beagles were graced with two terrific, unbeatable guards, and therefore we outclassed the competition), I can attest that victory against the odds is as sweet as life gets.

Michael Wilmington, 5 feet 9 , Guard . Williams Bay (Wisconsin) High School: Junior High, 1959, 1960; Varsity, 1961,1962; Senior varsity 1963, 1964. ’64 team record: 13-6 , Sub-regional champs.

In the early ‘60s, my time was spent on three activities: reading, writing and playing basketball. “Hoops”--in a small Wisconsin town like Williams Bay (pop. 1,114 then)--had the same significance it did for “Hoosiers”’ mythical Hickory. It was one brief burst of glory for the whole town: maybe the only one we’d ever know.

Oh, sure there was marriage, children, jobs. But, when you’re 16 or 17, how could those dimly perceived milestones, compare with basketball? Take the Bay’s great ’59 team: That year, the Bulldogs had the No. 1 and 3 scorers in their conference. (No. 2 and No. 4 were ex-Bayites who’d transferred away.) The team beat five larger schools on the way to the state tourney sectionals. They nearly made it to the semifinals, most of our 1,114 behind them. Screaming. Not quite like Milan, Indiana--the real-life inspiration for “Hoosiers.”’ But close.

There’s real glory, real blood and sweat. One of my best memories has nothing to do with movies. It’s this: The Bay vs. Union Grove, ’63 season, last quarter. I’m just back of the half court line, when the crowd begins the countdown. I let it fly; it arches up to the ceiling, and drops through, swish. All net. No rim.

Writer-producer Angelo Pizzo and director David Anspaugh, two Indianans, really understand that kind of backwoods passion, the tidal pull of this great, elegant, fiery game. They know the soul-charging significance high school ball has for many small-town midwesterners. (Especially in the ‘50’s. Now, with TV’s mass culture changing the towns, many of them absorbed into consolidated schools, the tournaments split into levels, it’s a different ball game.)

“Hoosiers” is a fairy tale. It’s idealized and compressed. It’s made the way we want it to be. But at least some of it could have happened. (It did for Milan.) The least acceptable part is the most movie-bound: Barbara Hershey’s idealistic, but oddly unbullied, schoolteacher advising the star player to sit out the season. (With that stance, Hershey, more than coach Gene Hackman, would have been a hate campaign target.) But the games convince you as most movie basketball doesn’t.

Last-second heroics--which seem ridiculous in dozens of other movies--can work here. In high school basketball, they happen.

Though, uh, not always. Take my own Homeric shot. In the movies, that half-courter would have won the championship, or at least the game. Not in Union Grove. I was a junior bench-warmer, and we were being slaughtered by 20 points. Panicking, I released the shot at the start of the countdown, with 10 full seconds left. It’s lucky I made it--or I would have looked like a complete fool. Today, Michael Jordan could probably score nine points or so in the time remaining after it fell through.

Max Jacobson, 6 feet 2 , guard/forward. Malden (Massachusettes) High School Varsity, 1966. Piispalan Pulteri (Finland) Semi-Pro 1972. Gargano’s Pizzeria (Madison, Wisc . ) City league team, 1974, 1975, 1976.

I may have dreamed of playing varsity basketball at the University of Wisconsin, but I lacked the physical skills--such as height and jumping ability. Also, frankly, I ate too much. (Perhaps the Clippers’ Benoit Benjamin should follow my lead and become a food critic, too.) Instead, I got my kicks by teaming up with lean, mean Paul Glancy, a high school buddy from Malden, and playing two-on-two with bigger, stronger guys, often ex-varsity players, themselves. Beat ‘em, sometimes, too.

But basketball is, in essence, a team sport, and individual effort is inevitably overshadowed by group effort. Paul and I played in precisely one final in city league play, and we watched slack-armed and helpless as we were humiliated by a short-handed (but long-armed) team of only four experienced athletes--who played a disciplined, patterned game, and ground out a 20-point win, taking most of their shots from less than eight feet away. We never had a chance.

“Hoosiers” stresses the importance of team play, and that’s why--hackneyed as it may sound--it’s a movie every young player should see. After all, tiny Milan really did play the giant-killer in an Indiana state tournament, although it couldn’t happen today (when tournament play is restricted by school size.) Will does emerge triumphant against all odds . . . sometimes, anyway.

But, from a player’s standpoint, there are a few obvious flaws. First, some of those guys just didn’t look like ballplayers, even the sloe-eyed superstar, whose shot trajectory matches my grandmother’s. Second, the only action we see is usually the ball swishing through the net; that’s like a TV show of Horowitz playing piano, where the camera never leaves his face.

But--despite a predictable ending--”Hoosiers” is a lot better, more real, more full of emotion, than a dozen pieces of the usual “Rocky,” karate or ersatz sports hero nonsense. Hit it, Hickory.

Patrick Goldstein, 6 feet 2, Guard. Miami, Fla., Country Day Junior High. Miami Edison Sr. High School (Red Raiders). Junior Varsity, 1968 - 69.

I’m still a pretty decent weekend basketball player, but seeing “Hoosiers” the other day reminded me why I can’t make free-throws anymore.

Our high-school basketball team stunk. We lost at home. We lost on the road. Once we played a practice game against our football team and they beat us too. Our jerseys weren’t retired. The cheerleaders stole them, tore them up and used them as placemats at their bake-sales.

“Hoosiers” is loaded with the edgy drama of high-school ball--the last-moment heroics, the dramatic (and unlikely) comebacks.

We had no such glory. No pressure games, no tension-filled trips to the free-throw line. I wouldn’t have been part of it anyway. If the game was ever on the line, I was on the bench, with a towel over my knees, so no one could see them knocking.

For us, the real action--the true hoopsmania--came on Saturday afternoon at the playground. This is where we got our thrills, where we settled our scores. If one of our forwards had been fouled in a big game, this was where he got his revenge--with a sneaky shove in the small of the back--not on hardwood, but on asphalt.

Better still, this was where we had an audience, an audience that mattered--girls. They’d lounge in the bleachers, pouring peanuts in their Coca-Colas, watching our fancy bounce passes, our graceful 20-foot base-line jumpers.

One afternoon we took revenge on some guys from rival Jackson High, who’d run up the score in our league match-up. Our star--a scrawny, 6’3 center with pimples across his back--swept the boards, tipping in our wildest jump shots. Just as we were setting up for the winning shot, one of the Jackson kids stole the ball. We stole it back. Suddenly, everyone came up fighting. I grabbed my nearest opponent, who promptly elbowed me in the head. I went down in a heap.

By the time my head cleared, the brawl had ended. It was agreed that we’d shoot a free-throw. If we sunk it, we won. If we missed, we lost. The Jackson team picked the shooter.

The decision was easy. Me. As I softly bounced the ball up and down, I experienced that strange elongation of time athletes always mention when they recall a pressure situation. I remember every silly detail: Tommy O’Donnell wiping blood on his gray gym shorts, Sly’s “Everyday People” wafting from someone’s transistor radio and Susan Hould sitting in the bleachers, her broken ankle set in a cast, propped up on a pile of fashion magazines.

I took a deep breath and let fly. The ball sailed up, up . . . and in. Swish!

My beaming teammates rushed over to congratulate me. In a burst of infectious good will, I offered my hand to one of our rivals. He glared at me, then stuck out his hand and . . . smashed me in the face. Another melee ensued. I sat this one out too, with a sore jaw.

I’ve still got the memory, but like I said, I was never much good at shooting foul shots ever again.

Dennis Hunt, 6 feet 2 , offensive tackle, (football), Central High School, Philadelphia, Pa. 1956-59.

Watching “Hoosiers’ triggered a memory----an unpleasant one--about high school basketball. Like the movie, it happened back in the ‘50s.

I hadn’t thought about that incident in years. But Gene Hackman--particularly in the scenes when he was counseling his players--reminded me of a coach I knew in high school.

I should mention that I never played high school basketball. I wanted to but I was the wrong size. My bulk was ideally suited to football, my real passion. But I would play pickup games with some of the local high school varsity basketball players.

The incident occurred in a nearly empty locker room of a playground gym in late fall. A coach--the one Hackman reminded me of--was talking to a young white player named Eric. Sitting where they couldn’t see me, I overheard their conversation.

This is roughly what he said. “I like Negro kids. But too many of them won’t be good for the game. In 20 years basketball will still be a white sport. White kids like you have to show them who’s boss.”

In the course of his spiel, the coach casually interchanged the words “Negro” with “nigger.” Eric, who had several black friends, didn’t say much.

But, as a “Negro kid,” what he said upset me. After Eric walked away I came out of the locker-room shadows on my way to the basketball court. The coach immediately knew I had heard what he said. Sheepishly, he greeted me and wished me luck in an upcoming football game. I didn’t say much to him.

This man had a reputation for being a good guy--particularly among the black players on his team. Later he became a successful coach for a college in the South.

Eric, a guard with a deadly jump shot, got a scholarship to a Big Ten school. But in his freshman year he was kicked off the team for fighting--with a black player.

I lost track of him after that.