LeBron James And Luca Dončić Accused of Stealing A Basketball Play From ‘Semi-Pro’

In his 22nd season in the NBA, 40-year-old Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James needs as much help as he can get, even if it comes from the ABA.

Lost in the history of professional basketball are the stories of so many players from the pre-merger era whose impact on the game was more profound and less profitable than a simple sneaker deal. Now one of the most popular professional sports leagues in the world, the NBA (and the very sport of basketball itself) wouldn’t be the same without the hard work, skill and creativity of players who never even competed in the National Basketball Association, athletes such as Roger Brown, Red Robbins and Jackie Moon.

Today’s professional basketball players will never understand the struggle that so many stars and teams of the American Basketball Association went through to get the attention and appreciation that they deserved, which makes James and new Lakers star Luka Dončić’s plagiarism of a play from the ABA historical drama Semi-Pro absolutely despicable and disrespectful toward the legends that came first. 

What a bunch of jive turkeys.

In Semi-Pro, Will Ferrell played a washed-up singer and one-hit wonder named Jackie Moon who uses the profits from his lone successful singer to purchase the fictional ABA team the Flint Tropics, becoming their owner, head coach, starting power forward and pre-game announcer simultaneously. When the league announces its intention to join forces with the more popular NBA, Moon must simultaneously boost the Tropics’ attendance and their standing in the win column to have a shot at surviving the merger.

Among the Tropics’ many ideas for boosting both their entertainment value and their competitive edge were Moon’s attempt to wrestle a live bear in a makeshift ring on the court, a play called “The Puke” and, of course, The Blender, a masterful display of ball movement and footwork in the post that’s an automatic bucket with Moon at the four.

While the NBA never accepted the Tropics into the post-merger league, the legend of Moon and his franchise live on in the lesser imitations of his basketball wizardry, such as the sloppy display that James and Dončić put on last night in L.A.. However, while us Tropics die-hards may rightfully protest that Moon never got his due from the big league, it’s heartwarming to know that, all these decades later, his fingerprints are still all over the sport.

But, really, what’s next for the copycats of the National Basketball Association? Are they going to steal the alley-oop as well?