Film Theory: The Looney Tunes CHEATED! (Space Jam)

there are few names in sports as recognizable as basketball legend michael jordan i mean even if you know nothing about sports you've probably heard of the guy not only is he one of if not the greatest athlete of all time he's a spokesman for dozens of different brands he's a billionaire businessman and most importantly he's a meme i mean really is there anything that this guy can't do well yeah it's called acting has anyone here ever played basketball oof it's almost like this guy's a professional athlete and not an actor i really enjoy playing with you guys you guys got a lot of vibes well whatever it is you got a lot of let's just hope that lebron had a better acting coach for the sequel hello internet welcome to film theory the show that always asks y'all ready for this and by this we mean lengthy analytical deep dives into movies he loved when you were in elementary school my dear theorists it should come as no surprise to those of you who know me well that i wasn't exactly the sportiest of children growing up in the 90s they just weren't as interesting to me as video games or movies or math or phantom of the opera you all laugh but that phantom's got himself some mad ups no in all honesty pretty much everything was more exciting to me than watching the old sports ball but there was one notable exception the cinematic masterpiece known as space jam combining cartoons with one of the most popular athletes on the planet talk about a slam dunk now the plot isn't exactly the most important thing but if it's been a while here's the original space jam story in less than 30 seconds some small aliens get sent to earth to abduct the looney tunes and take them back to their alien theme park planets bug's bunny obviously not wanting to be abducted notices that the aliens are small and challenges them to a basketball game in exchange for their freedom good plan except for one thing the alien steal the talent from five professional basketball players on earth to turn themselves into the ultimate basketball team the monstars with their freedom on the line the looney tunes kidnap michael jordan to help him win and after a hard-fought poorly officiated game the toon squad comes out on top also bill murray shows up randomly which might be the most realistic part of the movie idea deity that's all folks this movie single-handedly got me interested in basketball sure i might get picked last in gym class but if elmer fudd can dunk one how hopeless can i be i'll let sniffles the mouse sum up my playing philosophy i'm small but i'll try really really hard to be good at basketball and i always try hard my mom says try your best in everything sure the movie might not have taken home an oscar but it won something better 1.2 billion dollars in merchandising revenue so you can kind of see why a sequel was inevitable starring the new michael jordan aka lebron james so yeah gotta say kinda hype for space jam new legacy now i haven't seen the movie yet so i don't know a whole heck of a lot about the team that lebron has to face other than they look like rejected aliens from men in black but i gotta say these guys have got themselves some huge shoes to fill i mean the monstars in the original movie were an unstoppable team huge intimidating and harnessing the best talent that the nba had to offer at the time lebron had better be thankful that he's not facing up against that right well no looking back on space jam the mom stars were actually a team that was built to fail from the start as scary as they were i'm confident in saying that if the monstars were to play in the nba these days they'd finish dead last in their league don't believe me well let's lace up those air jordans and pour yourself a tall glass of mj's secret stuff cause it's time to come on and slam the monsters as the crummy team that they were and how they'd only be worse in this new movie if they were to return now to really start talking about how good the monstars weren't we actually have to consider their individual players or rather the real nba players that each alien stole their talent from obviously the monsters didn't precisely turn into the players whose talent they stole to the best of my recollection patrick ewing was incapable of breathing fire but based on the original form of the aliens and their ignorance about what basketball even was it's safe to say that the aliens didn't add any sort of basketball skill to the equation so to simplify the argument we're going to say that the tune squad was essentially playing a game against the five players that the monstars stole their basketball talent from individually all five of these guys were good players but together it's gonna make for a strange team the typical positions on a basketball team are point guard shooting guard small forward power forward and center and historically teams have one player at each position playing at any given time guards tend to be smaller faster better shooters and better ball handlers power forwards and centers are bigger and slower they play closer to the basket to block shots get rebounds and score from close range now the monstars clearly valued their big guys since four of the five players they mimic are either power forwards larry johnson and charles barkley or centers patrick ewing and sean bradley and the monstars had no middle ground because their fifth player is muggsy bogues the shortest man to ever play in the nba at just five feet three inches tall so it's not a roster with a lot of balance but hey weren't those just the five best players in the league not exactly barkley and ewing are hall of famers sure but in 1995 and 1996 the season that space jam takes place in they'd both been pros for a decade and were well past their prime as for the other three players they're all better basketball players than i'll ever be to be sure but sean bradley mugsy bogues and larry johnson were named to the nba all-star team just two times combined in 36 years of playing professionally the point is that the monstars were a horrifically unbalanced team consisting of players who were far from the five best non-jordan players at the time and that's just talking about the error that the movie came out i've seen a lot of people bummed out about the fact that the monstars aren't returning for this new movie but i gotta tell ya they'd be a far worse team now because of the way nba basketball has evolved over the past 25 years in fact if they did reprise their role in space jam new legacy they'd get blown out not just by lebron james but by even mediocre teams because one they're too slow on the defense two they'd tire out too easily and three they can't shoot let's take these one at a time shall we issue one the monsters would be too slow to play modern nba defense a number of factors are crucial for playing good defensive basketball but speed and quickness are arguably the two most important if you can't keep up with the player on offense that you're supposed to guard you're gonna be giving up easier shots when players go around you and you'll have trouble recovering when the offense runs a play to exploit your lack of speed the monstars despite being explosively strong athletic and creatively violent aren't very quick now speed and quickness can be hard to quantify so we're turning to an old friend to do the job for us video games nba live 98 is the oldest nba game with comprehensive ratings on player attributes grading on between 50 and 99 on everything from awareness to dunking ability the game was released about six months after space jam hit theaters so it's a pretty good data set for us to use now nba live 98 has some great things to say about mugsy bogues's speed and quickness rating him at 82 and 97 respectively for the other four players though their speed averaged out to 63.8 and their quickness was an anemic 52.8 even if you exclude sean bradley who at a whopping seven feet six inches is one of the tallest but slowest players in nba history those numbers only jump to like 67.3 for speed and 58.7 for quickness still well below the average so what would this mean for the monsters in a typical game well for one it means that they would be awful at defending the fast break where the opposing team gets a rebound and sprints to the other end of the court to score as quickly as possible but even in a slower game the lack of quickness would be problematic take for example one of the most popular actions in the nba the ball screen in a ball screen the offensive player with the ball leads the defender into a screen set by their teammate to get away from the defender then the teammate who sets the screen most commonly rolls to the basket known as a pick and roll leaving the ball handler without the option to pass drive or shoot without the foot speed to handle ball screens switch defensive assignments or defend against the fast break the monsters would be given up tons of points no matter how many shots they block around the rim because they're playing against a much faster team a team that's literally led by rabbits issue number two the monsters would get exhausted in every game they play another odd decision by the aliens was to only steal the talent from five players nba rosters typically have 13 though the past season it was expanded to 15 and it's exceedingly rare for fewer than eight to play in any individual game so without any players on their bench all five monstars are forced to play the entire 48 minutes of the basketball game which is far more than any of these players would typically play issue number three they can't shoot if you watch an nba game these days you'll notice how much work teams have put into getting open three-pointers it wasn't always that way though the three-point line was introduced into the nba in 1979 but it wasn't all that popular at first coaches hadn't factored it into their offensive strategy and players hadn't grown up practicing it so it took decades for it to become as popular and as effective as it is now and while each of the monstars had some elite skills none of them were good three-point shooters in the 2020-2021 nba season the average three-point shooting percentage for all players in the league was 36.7 percent the year before space jam came out only one monstar larry johnson even approached that number shooting 36.6 everyone else on the team is far below charles barkley 28 bradley 25 mugsy bogues 20 and patrick ewing shooting a ghastly 14.3 and here's the thing those numbers are actually inflated seeing just how unpopular the three-pointer was in the 80s and early 90s the nba actually moved the three-point line almost two feet closer to the basket for three years from 94 to 97. factor that into the calculations and the entire monstar's roster would shoot 25.4 percent from three no single team in the nba has shot that bad in this century and it's not just the rate at which the monsters would be shooting those threes that would hurt them it's the sheer number of threes a modern opponent would be shooting against them in the last year before space jam with a standard three-point line nba teams only attempted 10 threes per game last year they attempted 35. so even if the monstars somehow didn't get tired and figured out how to defend in spite of their lack of quickness the fact that even an average team in today's nba scores much more efficiently means that the monsters would get crushed over and over and over again lebron should hope that this mysterious goon squad in the new movie is exactly as good or i should say not good as the monstars were now maybe you're thinking that if the monsters were really as bad as i'm saying they were wouldn't michael jordan and the toon squad have blown them out of the water in the original movie and it's certainly a reasonable thought but go back and watch the movie again when i watch the game again as an adult i can't help but feel that it's been a bit rigged i mean come on look at all the fouls that the referee isn't calling here and remind me again who was the referee oh yeah marvin the martian but matpat he's impartial because he's both toon and alien you really expect me to believe that the looney tune whose primary objective in all his cartoons was to disintegrate other looney tunes and also blow up earth wasn't pulling for the aliens tell them what i think about that logic mj stop it get some help but hey that's just a theory a film theory and you know i've actually been doing a lot of binge watching and prep for this new space jam movie not only does it feature all our favorite delusional doodles the looney tunes but there are just a ton of cameos from a lot of other warner brothers classic characters we're talking scooby-doo and the whole mystery incorporated team pennywise the clown are those the droogs from a clockwork orange what what i'm saying is that in order for me to be fully ready to comprehend the massiveness of this movie i've got a lot of catching up to do and luckily today's sponsor nordvpn is here to help nord is the trusted online security solution used by over hundreds of thousands of internet users worldwide myself included did you know that with a vpn like nord you're given access to streaming sites around the world that's right with nordvpn you can get access to other countries versions of your favorite streaming sites giving you the ability to stream movies and shows that may not be available for you at home with over 5 400 servers in 59 countries you can essentially unlock a never-ending streaming library nordvpn is literally the only reason i've been able to watch every season of rupaul's drag race internationally there's so many of them at this point australia thailand uk they're impossible to watch here in the us but guess what with nordvpn just one click boom and suddenly my internet looks like it's coming from a completely different place where all those seasons are available to me to watch at home what i love most about nord is that it helps me stay safe on the internet with nordvpn your info stays safe behind a wall of next generation encryption it masks your ip so that you can keep your browsing to yourself so let's just say you're studying the fine nuances of lola bunny's redesign for research no one will have the ability to track that data not even nord with their strict no logs policy they don't track collect or share your private data your business stays and remains your business so get in order today and also help support this channel by clicking the link below in the description or going to nordvpn.com film theory that's f-i-l-m-t-h-e-o-r-y use the code film theory to get yourself a two-year plan at a huge discount plus a free bonus it's all risk-free with nord's 30-day money-back guarantee again that's nordvpn.com film theory and use the offer code film theory at checkout to take advantage of nord's worldwide servers and ensure your privacy online and cuts

Channel: The Film Theorists

Views: 2,440,025

Rating: 4.899961 out of 5

Keywords: space jam, space jam 2, space jam a new legacy, space jam new legacy, space jam trailer, space jam 2 trailer, lebron james, michael jordan, space jam legacy trailer, space jam new legacy trailer, space jam the new legacy, new space jam, michael jordan space jam 2, rick and morty space jam, goon squad, toon squad, lola bunny, lola, bugs bunny, looney tunes, space jam 2 rick and morty, film theory, film theorists, matpat, trailer

Id: v7ssRs3LLT4

Length: 13min 25sec (805 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 22 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to /r/GameTheorists!

Make sure to read the rules and we also have a discord!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/shikas_song]

I hate that the title is more click bait than normal; in most videos it is at least referenced or fits the discussion of the video, but for this one, there is absolutely no connection between the title and the theory covered.