Thompson: Love & Basketball at 20 still inspiring generations of hoopers

Paige Bueckers has 465,000 followers on Instagram, more than two 2019 NBA All-Stars. The top 10 videos of her highlights have amassed 8.4 million views combined — all since September. That includes a “Day in the Life” documentary by beloved basketball rag SLAM Magazine.

If you’ve never heard of Paige, she’s a walking bucket. Her handles marry her sweet shot in a way that makes her a highlight machine. She gets to where she wants on the court and breaks down defenders in the process and finishes the move with the jumper. But most of all, she is one confident young woman. Some say arrogant. There is a rhythm to her crossover like there’s a trap beat stuck in her head. Her tongue is ready to unleash banter, but she doesn’t even have to say a word. It’s in her walk, her style of play, her expressions. She just drips it, which is probably why her nickname is P. Diddy.

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All this has made her a burgeoning star in the hoops world. The unique part: She’s still in high school in Minnetonka, Minn. Timberwolves stars Karl-Anthony Towns and D’Angelo Russell showed up at her game with a couple of teammates in early March. Towns went back to her high school three days later to present her with the Gatorade National Player of the Year award.  

“We were talking about it, me and D-Lo, James Johnson and Josh Okogie,” Towns said at the news conference for the Gatorade award. “I was telling them, ‘I want you to understand her impact to this community. She has this gym filled. Not one single seat. The top, standing level is filled. And it’s for a women’s basketball game. Take time to think about that. You never hear about that. That’s the kind of impact Paige has.”

Such a reality was made possible for several reasons. One, the increase in cachet for women’s hoops due to the visibility of the WNBA and elite college basketball programs like UConn. For this current generation of high school kids, women basketball players as stars are a familiar sight and they’ve entered the game with that confidence.

Another reason is, in part, because of one influential woman. Twenty years ago, on April 21, 2000, she was introduced to the world. She gave a face, a personality, a story to women hoopers and girls who didn’t fit tidily into cultural norms. She developed a cult-like following and empowered young girls while earning the respect of young men. 

Over time, she proved to be one of the pioneers in opening the doors of larger basketball culture to women. The issues have not disappeared, by any means. But the representation helped tremendously. Her heart, her talent, her passion for the sport, earned a respect that would supersede gender. In many ways, she lit the spark that led to women ballers being embraced.

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Her name was Monica Wright. She was so ahead of her time.

“Love & Basketball” is a romantic drama released 20 years ago today chronicling the journey of two fictional hoopers — Monica and Quincy, played by Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps — who fall in love. In the movie storyline, they met at 11 years old, in the early 1980s, when Monica’s family moved from Atlanta to Los Angeles and right next door to Quincy, son of Los Angeles Clippers guard Zeke McCall. 

Young Quincy was playing on the court in his yard with a friend when Monica showed up wanting to play. They welcomed the new neighbor until she took off her hat, revealing uncombed hair that would’ve made most Black mothers cringe. Once they realized she was a girl, they made fun of her for even wanting to play and mocked her boyish looks. 

But young Monica, played by Kyla Pratt, could ball and schooled the boys — badly enough that Quincy fouled her hard. Her fall into the bush left a scar on her right cheek. But the blacktop encounter sparked a romance. It started cute and innocent, lasted through Crenshaw High and to USC. It survived a breakup, years of separation as they ventured into their respective careers, and led them back to each other. Back to the court in the yard.

The film, produced by Spike Lee’s 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, had a $20 million budget and grossed nearly $28 million worldwide. Including more than $8 million on opening weekend. But its real impact came after the release, after the reviews, after its run in theaters. Its greatest impact came, arguably, through VHS. That was how most people saw the movie. That was how “Love & Basketball” infiltrated the psyche to impact two generations.

Erika Ringor almost missed out. A friend told her about the auditions. She had done a few short films already. She was done with bit parts. So she initially shot down an opportunity to be in a Spike Lee Joint. 

“I don’t do cattle calls,” Ringor said. “That’s exactly what I said. I was just over it. I had been doing extra work. I was ready for my role.”

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She changed her mind on the day of auditions. She threw on some Lakers shorts, a cutoff shirt, put her hair in a ponytail and put on some hoop earrings and lip gloss. She showed up at the auditions at her former high school and saw her former coach running two-on-two games as part of the auditions. This was the easy part.

The Inglewood native didn’t play organized ball past St. Bernard High. She played intramural at Long Beach State. But she is a streetball legend. Since she was 14, she was playing pickup throughout the Los Angeles area and around the country against men. For her, dominating the basketball portion of these auditions was easy. It was mostly actresses who had no business being on a court with her. She and another hooper were asked to stick around and work out more actresses.

Ringor said she was called back to audition for Monica. She had the game they were looking for, and the striking looks to go with it. When she didn’t get the part, she was asked to come back to audition for the role of Sidra O’Neal and nailed it.

Twenty years later, she can’t go to the gas station without being recognized. She has plenty of credits since then — playing a convincing officer/ detective type in television shows like “CSI: NY,” “Cold Case,” “Hawthorne,” “Sons of Anarchy” and “Moonlight” — but will always be Sidra, Monica’s college rival at USC turned friend overseas.

“Even when I go to WNBA games,” Ringor said. “One of my really good friends has courtside seats. Dead center. When teams are running by, they have that look like, ‘Wait a minute. Is that?’ Or I can see them on the bench and they’ll be glancing at me. So I’ll throw them a peace sign. It never gets old. I got recognized with my mask on the other day. There’s levels to this. I had no idea it would be this impactful.”

It reached all the way to Germany.

Satou Sabally just fulfilled her childhood dream of making the WNBA. Last week, the Oregon star was taken No. 2 overall by the Dallas Wings. That dream began in Germany. Born in New York, she moved to Gambia at 2 years old when her family relocated to her father’s home country. When it was time for elementary school, they moved to Berlin. She was 9 when a local coach recruited her because of her height. She was the only girl on her youth team. She didn’t even play with girls until she was 13.

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You can imagine the awe when she would watch “Love & Basketball” with her older brother Robin.

See, unlike with men’s hoops, you can’t just turn on the television and come across a women’s game. Especially not in the early 2000s. The WNBA, which began play in 1997, wasn’t a global phenomenon. The Connecticut women’s basketball program is perhaps the most popular women’s team in America. Those games weren’t airing in Berlin.

So imagine how Sabally’s eyes widened, how intensely her attention was seized, in this unique instance where the woman was the star on the court, the person being revealed.

“It was so cool,” Sabally said in a phone interview. “She just reminded me so much of myself. That was me. A complete tomboy the whole time. I would walk around just like her until I was 13.”

Gabby Williams, the Chicago Sky forward who starred at UConn, had a similar connection to Monica growing up in Nevada. 

“I had plenty Quincys growing up,” she said from the balcony of her apartment in France, where she was playing professionally before quarantine. “I was that tomboy playing against the guys, talking mess to each other, but I probably had a crush on them and (they) probably had a crush on me. You should’ve seen me in high school. They use to say to me, ‘Gabby, if you just lose that attitude.’ I still have my moments. Monica is my best friend. Monica has gone through everything I’ve gone through. If me and Monica were to hang out, we’d have the greatest time.”

“Love & Basketball” is a partial autobiography. Writer and director Gina Prince-Bythewood had a story to tell and wrote a script based on her own life. Monica was inspired by her own life as an athlete. Prince-Bythewood, 50, played basketball and ran track growing up and kept her track career going at UCLA. On the court, on the track, was where she felt the most authentic. She could be herself: emotional, aggressive, relentless.

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In her day, such an approach was met with resistance. Women were supposed to be cheerleaders. And delicate. And fresh. And amenable. So this writer-director set out to attack those limiting ideologies.

“So many times I was called a tomboy and told that who I was and what I loved, that there was something wrong with me,” she said in a recent interview with former Stanford hooper turned broadcaster Ros Gold-Onwude on the online show “The Boardroom.”

“To grow up like that kind of jacked up my self-esteem a bit. … So much of ‘Love and Basketball’ was my hope to just reframe what it means to be a female and that all these things that made me who I was — normalize those for other girls who I know was going through the same thing.”

The experience of Monica indeed mirrored that of countless girls who had an infatuation with basketball. Many of them had a greater passion for playing than presentation. Many of them had traits and mannerisms society had prescribed exclusively for boys. So they were often ridiculed, prodded for defects and rejected. They saw that on screen with Monica.

Watching the movie 20 years later, the treatment of Monica, especially as a little girl, felt so harsh. Young Quincy and his friend said she could only hear a dog whistle. Her own mother, played by the incomparable Alfre Woodard, said she “would be pretty if you did something with your head. Don’t know why you wanna run off with your hair looking like who shot John and forgot to kill him.” 

Gabrielle Union, in one of her first movie roles, has perhaps the line of the movie as Shawnee, a pursuer of Quincy at Crenshaw. Monica shows up to the spring dance in a tight dress, surprising everyone who knows the cornrow-wearing ballplayer. Shawnee rejected Monica’s moment at the rim.

“Damn girl. I didn’t know Nike made dresses.”

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But little girls also get to see Monica pushing back by continuing to be herself. Sanaa Lathan’s impressive performance dually captures the emotional instability of a teenager constantly being criticized and the wondrous resolve of a person who won’t be deterred. It feels like 40 percent of the movie she is on the verge of tears yet she is strong enough to constantly stand up for what she believes.

At 11 years old, when she and Quincy kissed for five seconds, he wanted to make their relationship official by taking her to school on his bike. She refused and rode her own bike. 

In high school, when Monica got a technical foul for taunting, Quincy told her she needed to calm down on their ride home. She fired back by railing against the inequity.

“You jump in some guy’s face, you talk smack and you get a pat on your ass. But because I’m a female I get told to calm down and act like a lady. I’m a ballplayer. OK.”

When she got to USC, Monica had to fight back against Sidra, the senior point guard who hazed the freshman threatening to take her spot.

But the biggest fight was for Quincy. She lost him in college because she prioritized basketball over their relationship (more accurately, he was in his feelings and being unreasonable). The movie climaxes with her making a last ditch effort to get him back before he marries his fiancée. She offers to play him a game of one-on-one for his heart. If he gets to five first, she gets him a nice wedding gift. But if she wins, he calls off the wedding and gives her another try.

Oddly enough, she got the idea from her mother, who spent most of her life riding Monica for not adopting her debutante ways. But in the end, her mother admired her resilience and told her to go after Quincy, violating the very ladylike principles she had been trying to instill.

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“In the beginning, I hated her mom,” Sabally said. “Throughout the movie, I realized her intentions were good and she just didn’t really understand. I felt so bad for her mom because in a way she was being misunderstood, too.”

Sky guard Allie Quigley competed against NBA players in the HORSE competition ESPN televised during the shutdown of sports. Gabby Williams read about her teammates performance and made her way to the comments. It was the latest reminder of how this road still needs some paving.

“I was reading the comments on something,” Williams said. “It was like, ‘Who raised these kids?’ Now I see it is getting better. Kids are younger than me. I honestly do see it. I have two younger brothers — Matthew is 18, Dominic is 14 — and they are big fans a lot of female basketball players. I love it. I’ve seen it the most, too, with Paige Bueckers. With Sabrina Ionescu.”

Women who play basketball have become an accepted part of sports society but still face some of the same issues this movie addressed years ago. But Prince-Blythewood is no longer a lone rebel getting this message out. Monica is not alone.

The legion of unabashed ballplayers is growing in the women’s game. And so is the appreciation from their male counterparts who consume the lion’s share of the fame and adoration. When Monica said, “I’m a ballplayer,” she was declaring her right to be just as dedicated to the game as any man. She was commanding respect for her passion — and not relinquishing her womanhood in the process.

Fast-forward 20 years and women are being celebrated for being real ballplayers like never before. Ionescu is taking legit star power to Barclays Center in Brooklyn, where the New York Liberty will play. Her college games drew superstars to watch her play so they can ogle her game. She’s a ballplayer.

Oddly enough, Lathan had never touched a ball when she auditioned. Spike Lee and Prince-Blythewood were adamant about getting a real basketball player. Serena Williams and Marion Jones were on the wishlist. It came down to Lathan and former Georgia Tech star Niesha Butler. Lathan had never played hoops before, so she got a basketball coach. Butler needed to improve her chops on the screen, so she got an acting coach. Prince-Blythewood wrestled over whom to chose. Lathan was clearly the better actor and Butler was clearly the better player.

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In the end, with guidance from her husband, Prince-Blythewood chose Lathan. Because this wasn’t a basketball movie. It was a love story. And while Lathan could learn basketball, Butler couldn’t learn how to deliver the emotion the way Lathan did. And since Lathan and Epps were dating privately, their chemistry jumped off the screen.

“Sanaa made the movie,” Prince-Blythewood told Gold-Onwude. “She really did.”

Perhaps that’s the reason Monica was so impactful. The layers and depth Lathan brought to the screen drove home the message that the basketball world, the sports world, needed to see. Women ballers can be just as riveting and just as worthy. They are talented and work hard and sacrifice. They love and hurt, laugh and struggle. They can be dramatic and fiery, yet also vulnerable and sensitive. They can be strong and chiseled, pretty and sexy. They can fall in love.

When she played Quincy for his heart, first one to five, she had the game-winning layup after blowing by her hobbled friend. Oh, the angst after she missed it. Knowing she blew it on something as easy as a layup made your stomach drop for her.

And after he beats her, and she walks off heart broken, your heart swelled when he said “double or nothing.” Because you saw her the same way Quincy did.

That’s what Monica did, before it was cool to do so: provoke people to see her. To get over how her looks might violate sensibilities and really see her, understand her. It’s hard not to root for her. For the last 20 years, people who love basketball have welcomed Monica into their hearts. And the girls who have come after her, more of us can actually see them, too.

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