Thoughts on Basketball Movies, Hustle and Rise, and a Stats Widget Implementation Attempt

Also, I've seen two of the basketball movies lately, Adam Sandler and Juancho Hernangomez's Hustle, and Giannis' movie, Rise.  I like them both, though I'd say Hustle in my opinion is slightly better.

The basketball play is much more intense and action-packed for Hustle, and it is more built for people who are true basketball heads, because you get close to realistic depictions of the basketball world and life of scouts.  

For Rise, it is more centered around the emotional arc and backstory of Giannis and his family, and what they had to deal with as they grew up in Greece.  The basketball scenes didn't always feel as authentic, because they had actors in the basketball roles instead of basketball players, so there were very limited shots of Giannis dunking because if it's unclear if the actors had the physical ability of either doing it or coming close to resembling what had transpired in reality.  It was also seemed to be transpired for a mass audience through Disney Plus, so they simplified a lot of basketball stuff and the draft process, so that non-basketball people can follow along.  So there were some slight liberties taken, as where in real life, after Jonathan Givony's DraftExpress piece on his journey to discover Giannis, there would've little doubt about Giannis being drafted in the 2013 draft.

Hustle works, and Adam Sandler did a great job in his role.  I came in thinking it'd be a goofy film in the mold of Semi-Pro, but Hustle is actually a serious, hard-hitting basketball film.  It had some really good heartfelt moments, Juancho was incredibly believable as a hidden gem that becomes a top prospect, and Anthony Edwards did a great job as a super prospect/antagonist in this movie.  Edwards' performance was very good, and I'd be interested to see if they were to do a sequel and explore his character in greater detail as has been rumored in some sources.

It's a great mix of drama and humorous moments.  There were good performances all around, and they did a good job of inserting enough NBA people and players without it becoming overbearing or too obvious.  They fit them in seamlessly and integrated them into places and roles where they're supposed to be.  If you like basketball, both movies are worth checking out.

Rise is a very likable movie because it really shows the emotional journey that Giannis went through, but it at times seemed to oversimplify the basketball scenes, and they didn't feel quite as impactful.  They really didn't show Giannis dominating his peers enough or the vast potential he had in real life.  At times, it seemed as if Thanasis was a better player, but not what they were trying for, which was Thanasis started out better, but Giannis caught up to him and surpassed him.

An old game of Giannis from YouTube user, George P 08 that DraftExpress discovered back in the day.  At the 3:19 mark of this video, Giannis grabs a defensive rebound from near one end of the basket, and scores in basically eight seconds using tremendous speed, ball handling, and athleticism.

On the Wayback machine, DraftExpress rated Giannis as the 9th best player on their top 100 big board in late June, and hats off to them for helping to discover him and put him on the NBA draft radar in 2013.

Meanwhile, here was an old post of mine when I first saw him play, watching the above video back in 2013.

In all, I enjoyed watching both Hustle and Rise, and I highly recommend you guys to check both of them out.

A less important thing...I tried to install a stats widget page for the basketball website, but things clashed and didn't work out.

So, I tried to implement a stats widget for pages to test it out on the basketball website.  I went to the Sports-Reference to use this widget, and used Short Code to try to implement it.

It showed up in the preview, but not in the actual post.  

So now, I'll have to delete that part, since the widget isn't working.  My theory is that it conflicts with the don't paste and copy, content lock that is installed on the page, but that it conflicts with the widget, which likely prevents users from scrolling, but the widget we tried to install either would've had a scroll or a clunky layout.  My other theory is that the ads may have interfered with the widget, but we'll never know for sure.

In any case, I liked the idea for a Stats Widget feature, but it seems like it's not working out.

In any case, this is what that feature would have looked like, more or less:

Caleb Love's Stats Page: Oh well. Maybe someday it can be a feature on the basketball website. For now, I'd recommend users to Sports Reference or Basketball-Reference to get stats on college or NBA basketball players.