In one tryout scene, a young boy dribbles multiple basketballs. It's Sean Miller, a Pittsburgh native who later became the University of Arizona's head coach.
In "The Book of Basketball", Bill Simmons mentions that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar vanished from the climactic game's fourth quarter without explanation. Simmons wrote that he researched and found two possible explanations: the shooting schedule was far behind, so Kareem had to leave the set and wasn't able to return, or Kareem found out that Julius Erving was being paid more than him and angrily walked off the production. In 2013, Erving revealed that Kareem was fired from the film when he sat in Director of Photography Frank Stanley's chair, Stanley kindly asked Kareem for his seat back, and Kareem responded by heaving the chair across the basketball court.
Though they had no scenes together in this movie, Debbie Allen and Norman Nixon married five years later.
In this movie, the entire Pittsburgh Pisces team was born under the astrological sign of Pisces including its superstar, Moses Guthrie, who was portrayed by real-life Pisces Julius Erving.