Brad Pitt and his lesser-known story: when he was discarded as a basketball player, he put together his own team and called it Rejected

William Bradley Pitt He was born on the 18th of 1963 in Shawnee, a small city in the state of Oklahoma that at that time did not exceed 20,000 inhabitants. The son of a school secretary and a mechanic who founded a local trucking company, he was the oldest of three brothers in a very religious family that, during his childhood, moved twice: first to Tulsa and then to Springfield, Missouri. . There, before traveling to Hollywood in 1986 to start an acting career that would place him among the elite of the most famous and important actors in the world (six Oscar nominations and two awards, among other awards), he attended Kickpoo High School and the University of Missouri -he graduated in Advertising-. It was a time when he still hadn’t unleashed his love for acting. His passion was for sports. So it was no surprise that in high school he was part of the golf, tennis, swimming and wrestling teams. Nevertheless, the lesser-known story has to do with basketball, with the painful rejection he had and how he reacted, forming his own team, with friends and with the father as a coach. An anecdote that marks his personality, the tenacity to continue despite everything and even his creativity that even came to the name he decided to give the group…

It was 1977 and Brad was 13 years old. He was in eighth grade and what mattered most to him was playing basketball, actually making the high school varsity team. But the coach left him out. He wasn’t the only one. Six other friends followed the same path. Far from getting down, Brad put together a move. He talked to everyone and decided to put together a team of his own. He completed the scenario by convincing his father, Bill, to be the coach. That’s how it was, he first thought about the name that he would give the team and defined that they would be the Cherokee Rejects. Rejects, in Spanish, means Rejected. Clearly in allusion to that refusal that everyone had had to form the first team of high school. That’s how he ordered the shirts to be made and on the front he put Rejects. So that no one forgets…

Aaron Stull, a teammate and school-age friend, admitted that it was all the actor’s responsibility. “It was all Brad’s idea. He even got his dad Bill to be our coach and he decided to call us the Cherokee Rejects,” He told and then summarized how the experience was. “His father would coach us at one of the churches his family used to go to and we would play at the local Boy’s Club. We even got a trophy, but unfortunately I can’t remember which tournament we won.” Pitt can be seen in a group photo of the team, holding that individual trophy Stull is talking about.

Pitt stopped playing when he was in college. He only maintained a certain hobby with some chopped among friends, but that did not mean that his affinity with basketball did not continue. He never stopped watching games on TV and, in addition, attending NBA games. Since he lived in Los Angeles, because of his career, he could always be seen in the front row of the Staples Centerboth in the regular phase and in the playoffs, along with their different partners, especially Jennifer Aniston.

In those matches, in addition to being a declared fan of Kobe Bryant, He was captivated by the way Spurs played and, especially, by Manu Ginobili. For this reason, as part of a benefit dinner for the Haitian Aid Organization in the United States, he bid for one of the prizes in an auction that was part of the show: an exclusive experience with the Spurs and Manu. Brad ended up paying $40,000 to experience that moment with San Antonio players, especially Ginobili.

Pitt was involved in several sports movies, most recently in 2011, Moneyball, as an actor and producer, a success in every way -he had six Oscar nominations- that was focused on the world of baseball, although it goes much further… Brad plays Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics who turns to a young stats expert (Jonah Hill) with a radical new system for evaluating players, based on detailed analysis of player statistics, relying more on science and technology than intuition and experience. . He thus rebuilds his team after having lost the main members, despite the fact that most of the members of the franchise disbelieve in that formula. This form of signing changes the rules of the game, proving that it was possible to put together a competitive team, challenging the powerful in the Major Leagues, with just a quarter of the usual budget. “Sports movies traditionally work well because they talk about winning and overcoming adversity. It’s in our DNA, that’s why we love our sports heroes and sports teams.”analyzed who wanted to be one of these sports references but ended up being from the cinema.

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