Fast Break starts with Gabe Kaplan, of Welcome Back, Kotter fame, as David Greene. When the film starts, Greene is playing pick up ball in Brooklyn before hitting the bar with a bunch of young players. In the midst of their conversation, he breaks down their game and explains Bob Cousy to them.
On a lark, David is offered a coaching job of a newly formed men’s basketball team at Cadwallader University. The school, more of a sham than anything, offers Greene $50 per win and the promise of a $30,000
a year contract for three years if he is able to beat Nevada State, a top ten school.
Greene begins by gathering a ragtag group of New York street ballers who will get “scholarships” to attend Cadwallader. The team includes Hustler, played by Hall of Fame Bernard King, Preacher, played by two-time NCAA Champion Michael Warren, D.C., played by Harold Sylvester, the first African American to receive a basketball scholarship from Tulane, and “Swish” performed by Mavis Washington, a basketball and volleyball coach in her only professional film role.
Greene and his players drive across country in a station wagon. At one point, a police car comes racing with sirens and lights, forcing them to eat a pound of marijuana before discovering the cruiser was just passing by.
Upon arriving to the campus, they find a run down buildings with a broken down gym. Greene and the New Yorkers meet the current players on the roster, slim pickings
As it stands to reason, a film with Gabe Kaplan is written and performed as a comedy, the humor coming from the circumstances of the players, the fish out of water aspect, and one-liners.
In the film’s climax, Greene gets his shot against Nevada State, but the team’s rise in popularity has alerted NYPD, who come to the game to arrest D.C.
Even in its day, Fast Break was considered passé yet entertaining. Complete with disco-based hits and 70s gags, the ending is predictable but satisfying all the same. Definitely a good Saturday afternoon throwback flick.
The film also features Laurence Fishburne in one of his earliest roles.
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