Standing a hair shy of 6-2 during his first year of high school,¹ Will Ferrell was a shoe-in for MVP of the freshmen basketball team. As a senior, he captained the varsity team and then played intramural ball at USC before going on to a wildly successful career as a comedian and actor. Now things come full circle, as Ferrell takes on the role of Jackie Moon, a one-hit-wonder singing sensation who relishes his role as owner, coach and power forward of the Flint² Tropics, a fictional team³ in the American Basketball Association. In the movie Semi-Pro, the Tropics are faced with the real-life dilemma that met the ABA in 1976—the league’s merger with the NBA. Ferrell’s character tries to rally his team to make an 11th-hour push for acceptance and glory rather than disbanding.

What is it you like about the game of basketball?
In terms of watching it, I like the pure athleticism, all the strategy, the matchups, and the pace of the game. It’s such a creative game to play, as well.

You’re a Los Angeles guy, but you lived in New York when you were doing Saturday Night Live. Were you ever torn about whether to root for the Knicks or the Lakers?
Lorne Michaels, the executive producer of Saturday Night Live, had very nice Knicks seats. On occasion, we’d get to go sit in those. It was fun to pull for the Knicks, but there was never a doubt when the Lakers came to town that the Knicks got booed by me.

Semi-Pro is a comedy, but unlike your last sports film, Blades of Glory, it’s not a farce. It’s incredibly respectful to the ABA. How do you have fun but still play homage to the sport?
We’re extremely accurate in the look of everything—the style of play, the uniforms,⁴ the feel of the league. Yet, there’s still a lot of comedy there because the ABA billed its reputation on being outlandish at times and being really creative with not only the personalities in the league but also the style of play. ... Within that authenticity, we found it was really a gift to pay attention to all that stuff because we found a lot of comedy within it.

In filming this, was there a particular basketball moment that stood out for you?
We had built this field house. There were times we had close to 2,000 people in the stands and we got to just roll the cameras and play. We called it free play, where we weren’t actually running designed plays that were meant for the camera. We just played up and down. There was a moment where I hit an open jumper and the whole crowd went crazy. For just a moment I really got the feel of what it would be like to hit a shot in a situation like that.

Who were the players you idolized growing up?
I loved the Lakers even before Magic Johnson, when it was Norm Nixon and Jamaal Wilkes, even Mark Landsberger and Jim Chones. Guys like that. I was lucky in the sense that I was in junior high and high school when it was Lakers and Celtics or Sixers almost every year in the Finals. You really got spoiled with those great Laker teams and players.

You’re probably too young, but did you ever see an ABA game?
I never saw a game, but our director Kent Alterman’s family was a 1 percent shareholder in the original San Antonio Spurs. He’s actually on the cover of one of their programs. He was known as “The Kid.” He would go to every home game and he was a merciless heckler. In fact, Bill Walton came to the set one day and there was a story in which Dave Cowens went into the stands to go after this kid heckler, and that was Kent. Obviously, the ABA was very near and dear to his heart.

Semi-Pro, Blades of Glory and Talladega Nights: what is it you love about doing sports movies?
It just happened to line up that way. It is fun to combine two things that I probably love the most. Especially to actually get to do a sport movie where it was a sport that I participated in and really didn’t have to learn the game or the jargon. ... Sports movies are fun because you can work on both levels. You have humor and you have the story of this struggling team, and people get wrapped up in the journey of the Tropics.

From the Mar/Apr 2008 issue