Remember the 70s basketball movie, One on One? Robby Benson plays a small town high school baller, recruited to the big city school with the big time hoops program, where he clashes with the hard-nosed coach. He finally gets a chance to play and has a huge game helping the team win a big game.
I always hated that movie (despite the presence of Annette O'Toole, who looked uncannily like an old girlfriend of mine). Why? Because it was so unrealistic. If this guy was so good, why did it take injuries to the rest of the team to get him in the game? If the coach wanted to win, he would have played the guy if he was that good, right?
All this is to say, if you made a movie about Jeremy Lin right now, no one would ever believe it. It does not happen. A guy who played ball at Harvard, who was in the D-League two weeks ago, just finished a week in which he scored 25, 28, 23 and 38 points, leading a once proud franchise that had fallen on hard times back to prominence? And he only got on the floor because of injuries and ineptitude of the players in front of him on the depth chart? And he capped the week with 38 points against Kobe Bryant and the Lakers? Then you add in the whole "only American of Asian descent in the NBA" subplot? Too much. Too much. No one would buy it in a million years.
Stupid Hollywood. So unrealistic.