Here’s a look at some of the people involved in “Glory Road,” the story of the 1966 Texas Western basketball team and that championship season.
Josh Lucas (Don Haskins):
Position: Coach
Stats: Made an impact in “Alive,” “The Deep End” and “A Beautiful Mind,” but broke through as Reese Witherspoon’s husband in “Sweet Home Alabama.”
Post-game comments: (Jerry Bruckheimer is) a very quiet, unassuming guy, but he’s a totally passionate filmmaker. He’s bringing his fingerprints to this film in many ways. Particularly, he understands how important humor is. A movie like this could be quite heavy, but he wants it to be acceptable and playful the entire time.”
Lucas knew nothing about the the 1966 Texas Western Miners, but when he started work on the movie he realized “how deeply passionate some people are about this story, about Haskins. I ended up writing a letter to the El Paso newspaper saying, ‘I will do everything in my power to get it right.”‘
He said the real Haskins “is unrelenting in his moral fiber, his integrity and his intensity. What’s so off-setting is that the man can terrify you just by the way he looks at you. The weird thing is having the ability to scare someone and yet the people who are not being scared by him are roaring with laughter.”
But he said there were other intimidating aspects about playing such a legendary figure. “I had basketball royalty – who know the sport so well, who are bored by movies that portray coaching in a generic way – watching me tell their stories. Someone would come up and say Haskins never allowed players to speak on the basketball practice court. But, hey, you have to develop the onscreen relationship with the guys somehow.”
Derek Luke (Bobby Joe Hill)
Position: Point guard
Stats: It doesn’t get much better than coming off the bench of the Sony Studio gift shop to take the lead in Denzel Washington’s directorial debut, “Antwone Fisher” (2002). Luke won the Independent Spirit Award for best actor. In 2003, he played an oasis of calm for Katie Holmes’ character in “Pieces of April.” Before Luke hit the boards as Miners’ guard Hill, he juked the gridiron as running back Boobie Miles in “Friday Night Lights.”
Post-game comments: Luke said he was stunned as he read the script. “I wanted to be part of something special, but I didn’t know why it was important to tell the story until I read it. I didn’t want to believe it was true. Someone said it earlier today, it almost seemed prehistoric. Like it never happened. At first I wasn’t sure about the role, but my heart, my heart – follow the DNA of your heart and you’ll always get where you got to go.”
Luke grew up in Jersey City, but set off for L.A. to follow his dream. “I said to myself one day, growing up in the inner city I want to believe my future is bright, but if I don’t do something about it right now, I’m gonna go out with a bang. I was serious. I was a mummy walking around with no hope, no dream. I need to do something. I needed to get out of Jersey. Everybody was dying. Everyone was hustling. Pregnant.”
So what’s his sports love – basketball? “Racquetball, I love racquetball.”
Mehcad Brooks ( Harry Flournoy Jr.)
Position: Power forward
Stats: Coveted role on “Desperate Housewives” as Matthew Applewhite, son of Alfre Woodard’s character. All-state basketball player in Texas before studying at USC’s media school.
Post-game comments: Brooks calls Texas Western star Flournoy “the voice for African-American discontent” in the movie. Then Brooks adds with a sly grin, “He’s also a mama’s boy.” Flournoy was as ignorant of white people as most El Paso residents were of blacks, before coach Don Haskins recruited him for the underdog team, Brooks said.
“He had his own prejudice to get over, against white folks,” Brooks said. “Haskins was the first white guy he sat down with and trusted.”
Re-creating and re-living the racism of Southern basketball in 1966 is a far different world from the contemporary suburban fantasy land of “Desperate Housewives,” Brooks said. “I learned how much I didn’t know. That motivated me. I mean, to look up into the stands and see a black man holding a sign that says, ‘I am a man.’ What kind of world do you live in where you have to make a sign saying that?”
The intensity of the game and practice scenes is all real, Brooks and the other player-actors made a point of saying. As if the constant basketball drills under movie management were not enough, they brought in the aging Haskins one week to sit under the basket and yell at the actors while they tried layups and rebound moves.
“Don Haskins could still beat me up,” Brooks said. “No kidding.”
Al Shearer (Playing Nevil Shed)
Position: Shooting forward
Stats: Perpetual class clown, the Howard University grad got a break by marching into the chief’s office at Black Entertainment Television and declaring he was the channel’s future. He won a part in a BET series, then went on to “Punk’d” and v-jay roles for MTV.
Post-game comments: Like the other players, Shearer was stunned by the level of racism the team endured in 1966. With disarming honesty, he says his class-clown self was not built for those times. “I don’t have the temperament” for living under that pressure, he said. “Hats off to them to take all that, and succeed at that level.”
Shearer’s clowning continued on the set and during publicity tours, in between the demanding practice sessions. Once they learned Shearer’s background, everyone was trying to punk everybody else, he said. They lured star Josh Lucas’ brother into a limo with a phone call, and had him on the way to the airport, before revealing the star wasn’t really having a nervous breakdown on set.
