20 facts you might not know about 'White Men Can't Jump'

Ron Shelton loves himself a sports movie. He made his directorial debut with Bull Durham prior to directing White Men Can’t Jump. After this film, he would write or direct movies like Blue Chips, Cobb, Tin Cup, and Play It to the Bone.

Snipes and Harrelson star as streetball hustlers in White Men Can’t Jump, but they had actually already appeared in a sports movie together. The two have supporting roles in the Goldie Hawn-led football comedy Wildcats.

Snipes and Harrelson had worked together before, but the first choice for the role of Billy Hoyle was Charlie Sheen. However, Sheen had no interest in basketball. Had Sheen taken the role, he would have reunited with Snipes, who was his costar in Major League.

Sheen turned down the film, and a couple other people were in the running for Billy before Harrelson got the role. That includes David Duchovny and Keanu Reeves. Meanwhile, the studio wanted Denzel Washington for the role of Sidney, but Snipes got the role instead.

Among the actresses being considered for Gloria were Rosanna Arquette and Holly Hunter. Perez really wanted the role, though, and was able to convince the casting department she was right for it. Then, the studio got cold feet about Harrelson’s character having a Puerto Rican girlfriend. Snipes and Harrelson supported her casting, though, and the studio relented.

If you are going to have so many basketball scenes, it behooves you to have some real hoopsters in your movie. Marques Johnson, who plays Raymond, won a national title at UCLA and played in the NBA for the Milwaukee Bucks, Los Angeles Clippers, and Golden State Warriors. Meanwhile, Freeman Williams, who played Duck, played almost a decade in the NBA as well.

The non-professionals playing basketball players could use a bit of help looking like legitimate hoopsters, which meant a lot of practice. To help, the production hired Bob Lanier. Lanier, who passed away in May 2022, was a Hall of Famer who spent most of his career with the Detroit Pistons.

While the people who worked on White Men Can’t Jump are quick to note that Snipes was a good athlete, that’s different than being a good basketball player. Even with all the practice, Snipes couldn’t quite get a hang of it. Rob Ryder, a consultant on the film, told Grantland for its 2012 oral history of the film that they "stayed within his limitations, and I think we fooled a lot of people.”

Harrelson was decidedly better at basketball than Snipes. He had played a bit in college, so he was feeling pretty confident on the court during filming. Then, one day, Lanier suggested he and Harrelson play one-on-one. Harrelson said that his matchup against Lanier was, “the most embarrassing 15 minutes of my life" (h/t IMDb).

There’s an overarching story in White Men Can’t Jump about Billy’s inability to dunk. It all culminates with Billy finally dunking. Harrelson had some hops, but he couldn’t quite complete the dunk on a regulation 10-foot hoop. Instead, the hoop had to be lowered to nine-and-a-half feet.

Some things needed to happen in the basketball scenes for the purposes of the story, but Shelton didn’t want everything to feel choreographed. While filming the basketball scenes, Shelton would shoot the choreographed stuff, and then he would just let the cameras roll and have the actors play real basketball — and had them take it seriously. Evidently, these games got quite intense at times.

Trash talk abounds during the basketball games, including “Yo Momma” jokes. Shelton wrote plenty of these jokes, but he also told the actors to bring their own jokes to the table. The cast had some great ones, the director shared within Grantland's 2012 oral history, but many of them couldn’t make the cut, lest the movie get an NC-17 rating.

Gambling plays a key role in White Men Can’t Jump, and that bled into the filming. According to Grantland's oral history, the actors gambled a lot during shooting, with Cylk Cozart claiming to have won $5,000 off of Harrelson alone. Meanwhile, Harrelson hustled Snipes. He got Snipes to bet against him making the dunk at the end of the moving, of course withholding the information that they had lowered the rim prior to his attempt.

Rosie Perez studies up on foods that start with the letter “Q” for her Jeopardy! appearance, and sure enough, she gets that category when she’s on the show. In 1997, the real Jeopardy! decided to make that an actual category in one game.

Streetball wasn’t as big in 1992 as it would become thanks to things like the And-1 Tour, but White Men Can’t Jump still brought in plenty of people to the movie theater. Off of a budget of $31 million, the movie made $90.8 million worldwide. It was the 16th-highest-grossing film of 1992.

Stanley Kubrick was a perfectionist filmmaker who made dark stories like The Shining and A Clockwork Orange. He also spent most of his life in England. What we’re saying is that he’s not who you would expect to enjoy a comedy about smack-talking basketball hustlers. And yet, Kubrick was on the record as considering White Men Can’t Jump one of his favorite movies (h/t Vanity Fair).

After the movie became popular, they decided to make a video game inspired by White Men Can’t Jump. An arcade-style streetball game, it would not come out until 1995, and even then, only on the forgotten Atari Jaguar console. Reviews were middling at the time, and the game has essentially faded into history.

Back in 2009, Nike released a “White Man Can’t Jump” collection, which included shoes inspired by the film. With a throwback look inspired by the shoes worn in the film, Nike also put the phrase “I’m in the f*#@!ng zone” on the tongue. This phrase is said by Billy Hoyle in the movie.

Have you heard of “Hollywood accounting?” It’s the idea that studios will, shall we say, get creative with the numbers on films to try and save some cash for themselves. Shelton took 20th Century Fox to the task for White Men Can’t Jump. He sued the studio "over profits he said he was owed," per The Los Angeles Times in 1997, and he actually won $9.8 million. Needless to say, Shelton never worked for Fox again.

In 2017, talk began of remaking White Men Can’t Jump, with Kenya Barris and Blake Griffin producing. While the project faded into the background, in March 2022, it was announced that rapper Jack Harlow had been cast in the movie. Harlow then tweeted "Movie done" in June.