Punditty Top 10 TV Countdown Slam Dunk - Warren Coolidge scores big at No. 7

7. Warren Coolidge, “The White Shadow.” Unlike the rest of the players at Carver High School in South Central Los Angeles, “Cool” had a better-than-average shot at a college scholarship – and maybe even the pros.

Salami, Thorpe, Goldstein and the rest had their moments, but it was Big Warren, the king of Carver cool, who had what it took to take his game to the next level. Never in the history of American television has an actor performed so well so consistently in the role of a promising high school athlete living through those emotionally turbulent teenage years.

Byron Stewart’s Coolidge did on the small screen what Hollywood actors ranging from Sean PennSean Penn to Matthew BroderickMatthew Broderick to Johnny Whittaker have tried to do on the big screen but failed: Portray the American teenager, regardless of city or setting, and get every segment of the viewing public to connect.

Coolidge was Coach Reeves’ star player, but he was also the insecure teen, towering and mighty though he was at 6-foot-8. He was the sheepish kid who came to the coach for advice, the prankster who threw paper wads at Reese, the sluggish young man who slept through study hall. But the apparent still waters of the Cool façade did not run so deep. When he contracted venereal disease from Diana, Coolidge became a full-on example of how the last vestiges of teenage innocence slip away into the irrevocable morass of morally compromised adulthood.

Yet somehow, through it all, Big Warren remained the kid next door who might need a lift to practice, or the guy who’d rather go shoot a few hoops than study his algebra. Simple on the surface yet deeply complex underneath, Warren Coolidge is perhaps the most surprising entry to date on the Best Television Characters in a Secondary or Lesser Role list, but future TV historians will no doubt concur that he belongs.

In the clip embedded above, Coolidge is wearing No. 45 and scores a bucket for Carver at 0:31 . At 4:48 of the clip, some 20 seconds before the team breaks into an inspired version of "Duke of Earl" while taking a group shower, Cool delivers a great line in response to a teammate's question.

Next Up at No. 6: In the world of intelligence and espionage, even the best spies are doomed to fail without the full support of their superiors.

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