The inner city youth of Detroit face many choices as the come of age and hope to find success in life. Anthony Mackie plays the lead character of Tech who wants to play basketball more than anything. A bookie named Vaughn (played by Wayne Brady) tells everyone the underground basketball street game is on for midnight. In this game of street basketball, the first team to 21 points wins. The team in yellow is led by Tech.The game is intense and it comes down to the last shot. The opposition team in red called “Platinum” wins. Vaughn knows who will win so this is why he makes the underground games which support his nightclub called the train station located in an abandoned train station in Detroit.
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When Tech comes home after the game, the power is shut off at his mother's house. When his teammate Cruise (played by Wesley Jonathan) gets home, his grandma gives him a letter which tells him he is accepted at UCLA. Cruise invites Tech to go with him to Los Angeles. They work together in a sports store at the mall and the guys from the Platinum team led by Jewelz (played by Philip Champion) come in to the store to harass them. Cruise and Tech go to a party. Tech falls for Eboni (played by Alecia Jai Fears). After the party they go back to Cruise's house. Cruise falls for Vanessa (played by Eva Marcille). Tech tells Cruise he invited Eboni to go with them to Los Angeles. Cruise asks him how will he get the money. Tech and his friend Up (played by Little JJ) set up a street game and beat some other guys out of money by pretending to be lousy players in babketbal, then beating them when the stakes are high enough.
Cruise offers to marry Vanessa. Vaughn shows up in the middle of his proposal. Cruise is not happy with anything Vaughn says. The two boys go to LA with their girls. Tech is invited to be in a television commercial. He finds out afterwards he is only a double for the star. This makes Tech furious. He grabs Eboni and storms off the movie lot. Eboni and Tech have a fight. Cruise and Vanessa get along very well. Vanessa supports him and seems to really like Cruise. It comes out,Tech took the fall for something Cruise did when they were younger and Tech went to jail for him. The entier group has a fight over this.
When they go back to Detroit, Tech and Eboni break up. Cruise and Tech stop being friends. Cruise loses his scholarship to UCLA when it is publicly revealed he was paid for a street game. Cruise and Tech become friends again and they decide if the have to go to community college, they will do this together. Since they have nothing else to lose, they decide to play another street game against the Platinum team and to beat Jewelz.
Cruise and Vanessa meet up and Cruise tells her he lost his scholarship. Vanessa is not having any of it. She tells Cruise the baby she has is not his, it is the baby of Jewelz. She dumps him because he has no future in her yes, especially if he only wants to go to community college and will not go pro. He drives off in a rage and has a motorcycle accident. He ends up in the hospital with one lung damaged.
Tech confronts Vanessa, in the store where she works, for what she did. Tech gets ten thousand from the television commercial. He gets Eboni to bet it on the next underground basketball game. Tech is attacked by Vaughn for placing the ten thousand dollar bet at twenty-to-one odds. Tech's team must hold the other team to less than twelve points to win. Tech is determined not to allow the opposite team to score. Tech's team dominates the other team. The score is 14 to 9. Tech plays like a monster. The score gets down to the final shot 19 to 11. Loose ball. Tech recovers it. Tech drives. He falls, but passes the ball back in time to Up. Up scores the final shot winning the game with the Platinum team soundly defeated and the bet made.
Vaughn meets Tech after the game and tells him the bookie will not honor his bet. Vaughn offers Tech $20,000 cash for himself and the chance to be in more underground games for Vaughn. Tech takes the money but tells Vaughn he will not work for him. Vaughn's dreams of creating an underground basketball game do not pan out. Neither Jewelz or Cruise was the father of Vanessa's kid. Vanessa still works in the nail salon in the mall. Cruise went on to become a doctor as he had planned. Eboni became a make-up artist in New York. Tech plays basketball for the European league. Up is still working on his game.
Best part of story, including ending:
The basketball moves in this movie are really great. The plot is really weak.
Best scene in story:
The best scene is when Tech's team soundly beats the opposing team. We know as the audience it is going to happen, but it is satisfying when it does.
Opinion about the main character:
Tech as a character is not very engaging. He accepts being cheated out of the winning on his 20-to-1 bet too easily, taking the payoff of only 2-to-1 instead. This seems very weak and makes no sense at all. Bookies, who take bets in Detroit and do not pay, are killed so this ending for this movie is very stupid.
