Basketball is a game of stunning beauty, spectacular acrobatics and improvisational genius. At its core, the sport is cinematic, especially when you can slow it down and admire the no-look passes and spinning floaters, the posterizing dunks and step-back three-pointers.
My lifelong love of hoops only deepened when I saw an early preview of Spike Lee’s 1998 film “He Got Game,” a picturesque ode to the enchantment of basketball. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend you find it on a streaming service. The film opens with an alluring, slow-motion montage of dribble-dish-swish imagery, enhanced by the symphonic music of Aaron Copland. It is the best basketball movie ever made that authentically captures the artistry of the game itself, which is to say, as Lee put it to me way back then, it was not filmed with trampolines off to the side and guys “flying through the air like it’s a karate movie or something.
Lee’s perfection in depicting how the game is played, the basketball particulars that players, coaches and aficionados notice, conjured up for me the playoff possibilities of the newly minted Luka Doncic-LeBron James partnership. This Los Angeles Lakers tandem is “He Got Game” cast for the pressure of the postseason. With apologies to Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown of the Boston Celtics, Stephen Curry and Jimmy Butler of the Golden State Warriors, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard of the Milwaukee Bucks, Kawhi Leonard and James Harden of the Los Angeles Clippers — who else? — the Lakers’ 26-year-old Slovenian superstar and the 40-year-old legend who might be the greatest player of all time make the best duo in basketball.
This is not so much a stats-based argument — mine is not an essay in analytics — as it is a magic of basketball argument, a “He Got Game” argument.
What both of these guys have is the aura,” said my friend Justin Zormelo, a player development guru who has worked with many pro athletes and happens to specialize in analytics. “It’s like a halo around them. The refs know it, the crowd knows it. It gives them six points a game before they even step on the court.
Both Luka and LeBron are elite passers. Both have court-vision mastery, both are experts at reading defenses, both can score when they need to and know how to get to the free throw line, both can control a game with their intellect and size. LeBron can still fly, block shots — and he’s like a locomotive running the floor in transition. Stepping in front of him can be hazardous to your health. Luka’s game looks like it’s unfurling in slow motion — his shot is unhurried, he dribbles at his own pace and his footwork is balletic on the hardwood. Together, they look like they belong with each other Luka hitting a streaking LeBron with pinpoint passes that he flushes for dunks or finding him cutting backdoor for an effortless layup. They are the only two stars from a single team to make the top 10 of ESPN’s most impactful NBA players list heading into the playoffs.
Even before he joined the Lakers in a midseason trade, Luka had noted LeBron was his favorite player growing up. At his opening Lakers news conference, Luka said he “always looked up to him.” When Luka arrived in California, LeBron gave him the nickname “The Don,” and texted him to see where he wanted to be introduced at his debut home game. Luka took the last slot, which is traditionally occupied by a team’s star player. In this case, LeBron. It was a gesture of respect, the incumbent welcoming the new face of the Lakers. At another moment, LeBron encouraged Luka not to try to fit in, but to “fit out.” In other words, be his own, unique self. That message of confidence gave him “chills,” Doncic said.
That Luka and LeBron are teammates at all is the product of a surprising, blockbuster deal that sent Lakers all-star Anthony Davis to Dallas in exchange for Doncic, mere months after he led the Mavericks to the NBA Finals. Deeply disappointed Dallas fans are still protesting the loss of a young player widely considered to be among the top five talents in the league; they booed and taunted the team’s general manager until the Mavericks season sputtered to an end with no postseason.
Meanwhile, on the Los Angeles end of the deal, the Lakers with Luka aboard finished the regular season as the third seed in the Western Conference. After a loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves in Game 1 of the playoffs, the team bounced back in Game 2, winning 94-85. Luka scored 31 points with nine assists and 12 rebounds. LeBron had 21 points, seven assists and 11 rebounds. The Lakers hope to gel around their powerful pair and go deep into the trophy hunt — maybe even win it all.
Longtime NBA veteran turned analyst Marcus Morris broke it down this way on Kevin O’Connor’s podcast: When Luka entered the Lakers’ facility, every other playoff-contending team in the conference dreaded seeing him. And now No. 77 was teaming up with No. 23. “And what does that equal to?” Morris asked. O’Connor correctly answered, 100. The perfect grade. “Okay,” Morris continued, “listen to this … anytime it equal to a hundred … hey, man, you got a problem.
Neither Luka nor LeBron seemed worried that the Lakers scored only 95 points in their sleepy Game 1 loss to Minnesota — among the team’s lowest totals since Luka and LeBron teamed up. Confidence never seems to abandon them. As Lakers coach JJ Redick said earlier of Luka: “He doesn’t think a single person in the world can guard himAs for James: the NBA’s all-time leading scorer has seen too much to let one game rattle him. Going forward, he said, the Lakers just have to “control the controllables.”
Doncic has certainly taken some pressure off LeBron, who said his new teammate has given him energy. Lakers fans are filled with hope that the energy will extend LeBron’s career — though he’s not saying. LeBron has played basketball magnificently for so long that we will be processing his greatness long after he leaves. Whether his new partnership with Doncic delays — or makes easier — his eventual goodbye is purely his decision. His choice.
Back in 1998, when I spent a couple of hours with Spike Lee talking hoops and movies, I marveled at his excitement about a project that so smoothly merged his filmmaking craft with his love of basketball. “He Got Game” stars then-sharpshooting NBA guard Ray Allen, 22, as Jesus Shuttlesworth, the best high school player in the nation. Lee knew the film had to pass muster with the toughest audience: the NBA players he had befriended during his years as a courtside fixture in Madison Square Garden.
Where I sit at the Knick games, you know, I would get hell from the brothers in the league if I came with some wack [expletive],” he told me then. “So for me, it had to be approved by the guys in the league. That’s the level we were on.”
What a level it is. For LeBron, “He Got Game” isn’t just a movie. It’s his life.
