The most talented US men’s basketball team since the London Olympics is a Marvel-esque crossover event. Their run for a fifth straight gold in Paris will be can’t-miss theater
In the final scene of Spike Lee’s beloved, sports-movie-pantheon-occupying He Got Game, an incarcerated Denzel Washington rockets a basketball over the prison yard wall. The ball magically transcends space and time, landing on the court of Big State and in the hands of his son, played by Ray Allen. The mysticism of the ending remains polarizing, but it beautifully expressed a passing of the torch, a transfer of energy, in a way that few filmmakers have done before or since. Twenty-five years later, in an electric T-Mobile Center on Wednesday evening, I was reminded of this moment as Team USA’s LeBron James collected a defensive rebound, spotted Anthony Edwards running back in transition, and propelled a full-court, quarterback-style pass to him, which Edwards converted with a dunk at the other end: basketball’s present, and soon-to-be past, throwing the ball to its clear future. Two timelines overlapping. It was poetry.
“It was crazy,” Edwards told the Guardian when asked about the transcendent moment. “It’s crazy, man, playing on the court with LeBron and Steph. It’s a dream come true. I remember watching them going against each other in the finals. So being in the room with them, on the bus with them, all of it. I’m just soaking everything up.”
