Have you ever heard of actor Keith Gibbs? Probably not, but he's the white guy in the pic above and he's played with everybody from Shaq to Michael Jordan to a bunch of skinheads. Gibbs is the go-to actor in Hollywood when it comes to basketball movies and Grantland recently did a great interview with him about his resume which includes everything from Blue Chips to American History X to Rebound to BASEketball to Space Jam. But it's his work with MJ in Space Jam that produced the greatest story.
Did Jordan trash-talk you?
Oh yeah, nonstop. [Laughs.]
He didn’t give a shit who you were. When I was doing Space Jam, we played three days. I thought it was over. I had to go out of town. I get a phone call, they’re like, “Why aren’t you here?” I was like, “Oh, they’re still playing?” I had no idea.
I walk in, and it’s Reggie Miller, Charles Barkley, Alonzo Mourning, Charles Oakley. Grant Hill shows up. Jerry Stackhouse shows up. Now, all of a sudden it’s an NBA All-Star pickup game. Every night. I did that for about a month and a half, two months. Then the UCLA kids came in, and they had just won a national title — Ed O’Bannon and those guys. Just phenomenal. Best pickup games I’ve ever been a part of. It was unreal.
Yeah, so Jordan … I had to guard Reggie Miller and Michael Jordan in back-to-back games. It was so bad. I was friends with Chris Mills and Tracy Murray — we had been to some camps together. One play, I got switched onto Jordan, because Chris was like, “Keith, you take him.” Jordan hit a 35-footer on me. I mean, it was ridiculous: leg out, tongue out, all that stuff … hit a 35-footer on me and goes, “GET THE FUCK OFF THE COURT.”
Although Space Jam is loved by many hoop fans and rumors of a sequel with LeBron keep popping up, Michael Jordan actually hated making the movie. Thankfully it only took up 8 weeks of Summer and was a box office success. It's $230 million gross is almost 100 million more than any other film starring a basketball player and it made more on opening day than Kevin Durant's Thunderstruck made ($587k) during it's entire theatrical run.
