by Samuel Nichols, Contributing Writer
A million factors go into a basketball game: health of a team, shooting percentages, referee’s accuracy, and where the game is taking place, just to name a few. Some of these factors are controllable, and some are not. But ultimately, in the NBA, any team can win a game if the chips fall their way. And in a regular season that lasts six months, some crazy stuff happens. During the 2011-2012 NBA season, the Charlotte Bobcats had what many experts consider to be the worst season of all time. Winning only seven out of 66 games, the team has the lowest winning single-season winning percentage of all time. In Secret Base’s documentary The People You’re Paying to Be in Shorts, a group of sports historians break down the story around this team and their prolific owner, none other than Michael Jordan himself.
The documentary itself goes into incredible detail on the history of this franchise, its locational predecessor, the Charlotte Hornets, and its future following this catastrophic season. Some other aspects are looked into, especially the roster and staff of team. A few notable figures are talented big man Boris Diaw, who essentially quit on the season, coach and son Scott and Steven Silas, and rookies Kemba Walker and Bismack Biyombo. Topping the notable figures is Jordan, the recent owner of the Bobcats. On top of this cast of characters, a great deal of analysis is used to explain just how statistically awful this team was. Combine all of this together, and you get the most detailed breakdown ever for why a team was awful.
Credit where credit is due. This YouTube documentary leaves no stone unturned when it becomes to this hodgepodge team. Everything gets put under a microscope, from the players to individual games. The attention to detail is absolutely incredible. Where it would become very tedious, the charm of the documentarians keeps the subject interesting and fun. In particular I appreciate the filmmakers’ ability to tell short stories from this team. One that comes to mind is about a scuffle that Biyombo got into with Memphis Grizzlies player, Rudy Gay. When Biyombo tried to play with honor and say, “This is my house” during a home game in Charlotte, Gay clapped back with, “You have five wins. This is everyone’s house.” It’s an absolutely perfect picture of the Bobcat’s resolve and the esteem the rest of the NBA held them in. In addition, there is quite a bit of niche comedy that fans of the Secret Base YouTube channel will recognize and appreciate.
Creatively, this is a very different kind of documentary. With the exception of a few in-game highlights and news clippings shown, almost all of this movie is set in a CGI backdrop over a graphic showing all the key players in the season and their schedule. The camera pans and zooms to focus on a specific date or player who the focus is on for that segment. It is almost like being shown the giant conspiracy theory bulletin board from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It’s an inventive way to put all the details of this tale in front of us, while allowing us to pull in and focus on each of them individually when needed.
Where the film struggles to work is with the narrative point it is making. One of the writers and narrators, Jon Bois, addresses a lot of his dialogue directly at Jordan. While the nature of it is intended to be funny (and some if it is), all of it comes across to me as a kind of groveling before MJ. I am not going to make this a conversation about Jordan’s personal basketball talent in his playing days, but it appears that this has kept the documentary makers from being completely objective. Perhaps some of that is due to the massive shadow that Jordan’s career casts over all aspects of his life. At one point near the end, Bois makes a point that Jordan could not have known everything that would have gone wrong with the Bobcats. This attempt at washing Jordan’s hands of this teams failures does not sit well with me. If the entire point was to tell the tale of this team and outline the reason for their poor wining record, then these makers have to be objective in Jordan’s part in it. His poor leadership skills as a team owner are part of the cause for why the team had such a poor roster and employed a coaching staff with lackluster experience.
As a matter of fact, I think the documentary itself takes a lot of liberties in how it views the subject matter. Not always do documentaries need to take a big picture view of their source material, but when it comes to sports stories, the facts need to be laid bare and the let viewers decide for themselves who or what they stand by. Otherwise, it becomes more of a form of eisegesis than exegesis as it were, with the makers forcing their opinions on the audience, instead of just letting them come to their own decision. Still, it has plenty of important stats and stories that keep my attention as a basketball fan. Not to mention the creative making of the documentary adds a lot to the value of the movie. All in all, it is worth a watch, but it’s not nearly as good as I had hoped.
Score: 7/10
The People You’re Paying to Be in Shorts is currently streaming on YouTube
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