The National Basketball Association marked its golden anniversary this season by compiling an all-star squad of the 50 greatest players ever. Missing is a name many of those on the list say was the finest of all – Earl Manigault.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, regarded by many as No. 1, says without equivocation that Manigault was the best. The former NBA great not only saw Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, he played against them.
Abdul-Jabbar also faced Manigault on the paved playgrounds in New York’s Harlem, where Manigault – “The Goat” to those who know him – became a mythic figure. The late Pete Axthelm, in his acclaimed book The City Game, quotes several NBA superstars as saying The Goat was The Man.
Manigault’s omission from the NBA all-timers roster is not a surprise. He never played pro ball. The puzzler is, how could someone of such spectacular ability escape widespread notice?
The answers are in the The Legend of Earl “The Goat” Manigault, a film that transcends its genre. The story is engrossing, if often depressing. The performances are all-pro caliber. Even the basketball scenes are credible, a rarity in sports films. A squad of NBA players serving as extras contributed to this. A soundtrack of Motown hits completes the thoroughly entertaining package.
Rebound is also the finest kind of cautionary tale. It graphically demonstrates the deadend of drug abuse without ever resorting to sermonizing. It’s the kind of film that would make worthwhile viewing for high school assemblies but will never be shown in such a forum because its language is coarse, vulgar and laced with more racial epithets than a Mark Fuhrman audio tape.
Don Cheadle, best known to TV audiences from Picket Fences, soars as The Goat, a nickname derived from a mispronunciation of his character’s surname. The Goat was one of those youngsters who haunt playground basketball courts, waiting a turn to show his stuff against the big guys. The difference with The Goat is the show he puts on from the first time he is invited onto the court at age 12.
ER’s Eriq LaSalle is doubly marvelous. He moves ahead his ambition to direct with a polished turn at the helm of Rebound and is superb in a supporting role as one of the older players mesmerized by the youngster’s play. A gravity-defying double dunk – Manigault slams the ball through the hoop, catches it, then dunks it again on the same leap – makes The Goat an inner city legend.
Alas, The Goat’s maturity on the basketball floor is far more advanced than it is off the court. The athletic prodigy isn’t equipped to handle the temptations – sex, drugs and booze – thrown at him because of his basketball prowess. He falls in with the wrong crowd, gets strung out on junk and is expelled from high school on the eve of what might have been his greatest triumph.
Holcolm Rucker, a cherished figure in New York playground circles for his work helping young people through basketball, sees what is happening to this extraordinary raw talent and tries to intercede. He arranges to get Earl off the streets and into a prep school in rural South Carolina. The escape from the temptations of the big city leads to a brief turnaround. However, Earl lacks the strength of character to see things through when the going gets tough. A girl he falls in love with gets pregnant; he is caught in a bait-and-switch college recruiting deal and his mentor dies.
Cheadle is the pivotman who handles the ball for Rebound the majority of the time but, like any great player, his work would be for naught without a solid group of teammates. Cheadle gets sterling support from Forest Whitaker as Holcom Rucker; James Earl Jones as Dr. McDuffie, the headmaster at the South Carolina prep school who uses tough love to turn around Earl; Clarence Williams III as Coach Pratt, an unimaginative, by-the-book martinet who doesn’t know how to handle such a fabulous talent; and Michael Beach as Legrand, the conscienceless neighborhood drug lord.
With his life in turmoil, Earl falls back on drugs as a crutch. He promises himself he is taking only a temporary respite from building his future but winds up a hopeless junkie, his bright promise extinguished. He has to bottom out before he develops the willpower to bounce back.
A trap non-sports fans should not fall into is dismissing Rebound as a basketball flick. It’s not, any more than Hoosiers was, or Raging Bull was a boxing movie or Bull Durham was a baseball film. Rebound is a tale of great achievement, greater despair at the squandering of extraordinary talent and Hollywood-style redemption, which is all the more satisfying because it is authentic. It’s slam dunk entertainment.
