The Basketball Fix

 (1951)
Directed by Felix E. Feist
Written by Charles K. Peck, Peter R. Brooke
Starring John Ireland, Marshall Thompson, Vanessa Brown, William Bishop, Robert Hyatt, Walter Sande
IMDB Entry

Law and Order was the first to dramatize events "ripped from the headlines." The Basketball Fix was deliberately based on the college basketball point shaving scandal of 1951, rushed into production to take advantage.

A little background for those who don't follow sports (or even those who do). For many sports, you bet on how many points a team will win by. Thus, an underdog team can still win if they don't lose by too much.

Within ten years of the concept being introduced, gamblers figured out a way to game the system. They would bribe basketball players to miss shots -- not enough to lose the game, but to keep the team from beating the point spread. Point shaving didn't require a team to lose a game, making it easier to convince players that no harm was being done. The scandal erupted when City College of New York (CCNY), which had won both the NCAA and the more prestigious (at the time) National Invitational Tournament (NIT) in 1951,* had several players who were found to be shaving points.

The Basketball Fix follows dominating high school basketball player Johnny Long (Marshall Thompson). Reporter Pete Ferreday (John Ireland) becomes interested in helping Johnny get into college on a scholarship. Johnny doesn't think it possible, since he has to support his little brother Mickey (Robert Hyatt), but manages to convince a local college coach Nat** Becker (Walter Sande) to give him a scholarship. Things go well:  over the summer, he meets Vanessa Brown (Pat Judd) and they start dating. But he also meets Mike Taft (William Bishop), a gambler.

Taft is genial and friendly and very likeable. But when Johnny starts starring for the team, Taft begins to ask for more. At first Johnny resists, but his poverty is the hook to catch him.

John Ireland was a veteran of several classic westerns like My Darling Clementine and Red River and Marshall Thompson reached TV stardom in Daktari. Their roles are workmanlike, possibly due to the rush in putting out the film.*** The ending of the film is clearly rushed; you could have done an entirely new movie dealing with the aftermath.

Director Felix E. Feist directed a bunch of programmers and TV episodes from the 30s to the 60s. His adopted son Raymond E. Feist is a well-known writer of fantasy fiction.

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* The only team to do so, and the only team that will ever do so -- the NCAA switched to conflict with the NIT; expanded the field, leaving fewer teams available; and finally a rule was passed to ban teams from playing in both.

**Note that the coach of the CCNY team was Nat Holman. He was cleared of any wrongdoing; the players had kept him in the dark.

***The scandal broke in February and the film was released in September.