The White Shadow

This 1978 sports drama starred Ken Howard as a white retired NBA pro who lands a job coaching a predominantly black basketball team at an inner city high school. Luckily for him,Chris Rock wasn’t cast as one of his players. This show was actually pretty good in its day and focused not only on the love of the game but issues such as racism, tolerance, drug use, and teen pregnancy. In a bid to make it feel gritty and realistic, the writers killed off one of the teen players in a drive-by, had two others get herpes from the same girl, and had yet another engage in an affair with a teacher. Despite being critically lauded, the Emmy-winning series only lasted three seasons before The White Shadow became destined for ESPN Classic. Thankfully, Joan Pringle, who played Sybil Buchannan, gave us some mammary in the 1976 blaxploitation classic J.D.’s Revenge. The film boasted the tagline, “He came back from the dead to possess a man's soul, make love to his woman, and get the Vengeance he craved.” Guess who played the woman who got made love to? “That’s right, baby, who’s your back-from-the-dead Daddy?”