Once, we were all witnesses.Don't you remember Jesus?
Shuttlesworth, that is. The lead character in Spike Lee's 1998 sports-drama "He Got Game," a flick that stars Ray Allen as the top-ranked high school basketball player in that nation.
It's probably the best hoops movie of my lifetime, even though I can't deny that "He Got Game" is not without its flaws: the plot is implausible, the dialogue is forced, the acting is ... something less than amateurish.
But if Lee got anything right, it was his clairvoyance in predicting the rise of a savior-like hoops figure: LeBron James.
I was reminded of this the other night, when Ray Allen was getting all chesty in his defense of James in their Eastern Conference semifinal game. It was weird. Almost as if Ray Allen went Eddie Kane Jr. on Flash: "How does it feel to be me?"
Of course, that's an exaggeration. Ray Allen is a beautiful hooper, possibly a Hall of Famer. But he's no James.
Allen, however, was Jesus - literally and figuratively - for little more than two hours on the silver screen a dozen years ago.
At the time, I thought this was the most ridiculous angle of all.
There's a scene in the first third of the movie, when Jesus and his father Jake (played by Denzel Washington), an inmate released from prison to sway his son's college choice, are watching a lengthy feature segment on ESPN about Jesus. In the segment, we get testimonies from Charles Barkley, Reggie Miller, Shaq and, uh, Michael Jordan who closes it all out with a simple "he got game."
It was hard for me to take the movie seriously from that point forward. Mostly, I just enjoyed the few basketball scenes, the gorgeous film work and the lovely Lala Bonilla (played by Rosario Dawson).
I couldn't fathom that degree of hype surrounding a high school athlete - and I graduated from high school in the same year as Kobe Bryant.
Looking back on it now, though, Spike was simply ahead of his time. A visionary. He saw, in a way, the rise of LeBron before anyone outside of Akron had even heard of the guy.
Four years later, then a high school junior, LeBron had already appeared on the covers of Sports Illustrated and ESPN The Magazine. Shaq went to a few of his games. ESPN2 televised one of those games, back in the days when that seemed utterly ridiculous.
As far as I can tell, in the end, the only real difference between LeBron and Jesus was that one of them went straight to the NBA and the other went to "Big State University."
So, a few years too late, I should probably apologize to Spike. Not for saying the movie was a mess ... because it was.
But for doubting his prescience.
He was a witness long before the rest of us. And that, among a handful of other minor things, is the saving grace of "He Got Game."
Don't talk to me about "Hoosiers." There's no real reason to watch "White Men Can't Jump" unless you want to laugh at the idea of Wesley Snipes as a basketball player. If "Above the Rim" comes up in conversation, I'll assume we're talking about the soundtrack.
Anyone can tell you about what happened. But "He Got Game" told us what was to come.