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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Game 3 of the NBA finals fall will take place in Florida tomorrow night. On one size, Denver Nuggets, who knocked out LeBron James' LA Lakers to get to this final round of games. On the other side is James' former team, the Miami Heat. James himself, of course, won't be playing in any of the final games, so if you're looking for a LeBron fix for the rest of the season, you could go off Broadway to see the play King James.

LeBron is not the subject exactly. It's about two men whose friendship revolves around their strong feelings about James, feelings of pride, abandonment, sacrifice. LeBron James' career provides the framing for the four-scene play, beginning with his first season with the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2003-2004, through his move to the Heat and his return to win the 2016 finals for Cleveland. The show runs through June 18th, which also happens to be the scheduled date of the siding game seven of the NBA finals, if neither team is knocked out before that. Joining us now are playwright Rajiv Joseph. Hi, Rajiv-

Rajiv Joseph: Hi.

Alison Stewart: -and actors Chris Perfetti. Yes, of Abbott Elementary fame. Hi, Chris-

Chris Perfetti: Hey, Alison.

Alison Stewart: -and Glenn Davis, most recently on New York stage in Downstate, and artistic director of Steppenwolf Theater, where the play actually originated. Nice to see you.

Glenn Davis: Good to see you. Thank you.

Alison Stewart: Rajiv, when did you start to think about LeBron's career, how it could be a framing for a play?

Rajiv Joseph: Well, I'm from Cleveland and I'm a big sports fan, and I have always been interested in the way that sports intersects with our daily lives and the way that we create friendships through it. When LeBron had come back to Cleveland and won a championship and was having this wonderful run, it was probably the apex of his career in those years, I started to realize, "Oh, he's probably either going to leave Cleveland or he is going to retire someday."

At that point, he had been in my life for about 15, 16 years. Now, it's been 20 years that he's been playing. When you have that sort of passage of time, you look back on your own life and realize, "When's the last time he wasn't part of my sporting life?" Something about that passage of time and what he has meant to the city of Cleveland and to me personally, made me want to write this play.

Alison Stewart: I like that you said in your life, like that's part of the thing. It's in these two men's life. LeBron means something. What does LeBron mean to your character Chris?

Chris Perfetti: He means everything. It's amazing the way that Matt talks about this person that he's never met and has so little in common with but yes, I feel like it was actually right before we started rehearsing the play when I went to a game with Rajiv in Cleveland that the play sunk a little bit deeper for me and I was like, "Oh, this is actually what Matt is describing," because I was there at a game watching somebody who's a super fan experience just something on another level. Yes, he means everything to him.

Alison Stewart: What does it mean to your character? What does it mean to Shawn?

Glenn Davis: Yes. I think he represents a God-like figure in the play. He calls him a deity. He's someone who he looks at and it forces him to look at his own life and the choices that he's making and the aspirations that he has in terms of what he wants to do with his career. He's an idol of sorts, but yes, like a God-like figure.

Alison Stewart: Rajiv, as Matt and Shawn first meet when Shawn comes to buy Matt's tickets. Matt's got the season tickets trying to sell them for a lot of money. What was interesting about that way for the friendship to begin, because it first starts out as a transactional relationship? That's the first interaction and then it starts to grow.

Rajiv Joseph: Well, when I first wrote the first draft of the play, and I tend to write lots of drafts of plays and try to figure out the structure and the story as I go along. The first draft of the play, the play was only one scene, and it would've been expansion of what would be the last scene where these guys had known each other for years and we're getting the backstory through them.

That didn't really work for me. Then I had this idea that perhaps we could structure the play like a game. There would be four scenes, like four quarters of a game with a halftime intermission. Then I thought about, "Okay, so what are those four moments in time that I would want to illuminate during LeBron's career and how we would track their friendship through it?" You have this first scene where these two guys are going to be in a room together and they don't really know each other, so what keeps them there? That's the dramatic question of any scene is like, why doesn't one of the characters just get up and leave? They both have to want something.

In Chris', or in Matt's case, he needs money and he's trying to sell these season tickets and he doesn't want to because LeBron's here is a rookie. In Shawn's case, he has this dream of getting good tickets and going to a game and he hasn't had financial resources his entire life until this moment. He is really trying to get these tickets so he can go to start watching these games. This transaction brings them together.

Alison Stewart: What's going on in Matt's life when we meet him?

Chris Perfetti: I think we find him, it's really desperate for somebody to walk in that door and change his life. I feel like plays when they are great are about the worst and best days of people's lives. I think it's safe to say that Matt is not having a great time of it at the top of the play. He's a bit of a loner. He marches to the beat of his own drum. I think the introduction to Shawn really changes his life for many reasons, but yes.

Alison Stewart: It's really important to Shawn that Matt know he's not a bandwagon fan. That he is a diehard, that he know that he has been there from the beginning. Why is that so important to your character? That he's authentic. That he's real.

Glenn Davis: Yes, like in sports lore, in the cosmology of classic American sports, the absolute worst thing you can be is a bandwagon fan. Me and Rajiv have talked about this over time, your sports team is a matter of circumstance. It's like your religion. You're born into it. I think when we were doing research on the play, one thing that we came across was people more often change their religions than they do their sports affiliations. Right?

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: I believe it.

Glenn Davis: I think that for him when he's called a bandwagon fan, it's like, "No, those people are scum. I'm someone who was born into this and I'm going to die a Cleveland Cavaliers fan. That's just what it is." I think when you meet him, he's a lonely figure as well. I think that's one of the things that brings these two guys together, is that they don't really have any outside world outside of their sports affiliation with the Cleveland teams, and specifically because Cleveland had not won a championship in so many years. I'm from Chicago. It's like the Chicago Cubs. It's like we were called the lovable losers for so long. That was a thing that brought--

Alison Stewart: Brought Yankees people in.

[laughter]

Glenn Davis: There was like, if I'm in Minnesota and I see someone with a Chicago Cubs hat, I just look at them like, "You know what it is. We are diehards. Our team never wins, but we keep this hat on because that's where we're from. That's what we do."

Alison Stewart: Then you immediately feel bonded to that person.

Glenn Davis: Exactly.

Alison Stewart: There's this interesting sub-story, Rajiv, that Shawn becomes close to Matt's mother. What does that reveal about these two characters, of Matt and Shawn, that Shawn gets closer to Matt's mother than Matt seems to be?

Rajiv Joseph: Well, I think that it's a peculiarity of Shawn and I think that we've all had maybe friends of ours who can charm our parents in a way that it can be annoying. It's like the kid who just saddles up in the kitchen and starts talking to Mrs. Whoever and she just thinks he's adorable and thinks that he is the bee's knees.

Meanwhile, Matt's sitting there being like, "Dude, first of all, you're not that great and my mom's not that nice either, and he doesn't have that relationship with his parents." It's a comedic effect, but also it shows the way that that Glenn's character, Shawn, is able to find friendships in places where Matt actually isn't. I think that one of the character traits of Matt is that he's not someone who makes friends easily, even with his own family. It's a source of irritation for him as the play goes on, that Shawn continues to have an independent relationship with his mother.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about the play King James at New York City Center through June 18th. My guests are playwright, Rajiv Joseph, and actors Chris Perfetti and Glenn Davis. There's also this subtext of abandonment in the play, because Shawn is maybe going to leave because he's got this idea that he wants to be a writer, and will he be abandoning Matt? Obviously, this is mirroring LeBron leaving and going to the Miami Heat. When you think about it, now, Chris, why can't Matt just say like, "Dude, you left me. Like, I'm hurt by this. I'm really hurt by this."

Chris Perfetti: Yes. I don't know how. I want that for him. I think that your point underscores the deeper investigation of the play. There's really only one moment in the play, and it's very late in the play, when somebody overtly talks about their feelings or is able to articulate in a way that is vulnerable and generous.

I think what's so juicy as an actor to play in this piece is how much people are not saying what they mean and maybe saying something that they definitely don't mean or something completely unrelated. It's that disconnect, and the ways in which we connect through things that maybe are sports or have nothing to do with our immediate lives. I think it's dramatically just way more fun to watch people trying to connect and fail than being incredibly articulate and good at it.

Alison Stewart: Why do you think your character just can't say, "Matt, you're hurting my feelings?"

Glenn Davis: I think he's right. At least for an actor, it's more interesting to have subtext in many projects you're working on because it allows you to feel so much and express things and show rather than tell. If you watch a movie and you see the bad guy, and then the bad guy has all these plans that you don't know about. Then towards the end, the bad guy starts telling the good guy what their plans are. You're like, "Dude, why did you? You had us. I was on the edge of my seat."

I think that's in terms of narrative, and Rajiv can speak to that. You keep the audience on their heels, as they're leaning in to see, what are these guys feeling? What are they trying to say but they can't? Also, you're rooting for them. Can you just give them a little more? Lastly, I'll just say I call it a meditation on male friendship, classic North American male friendship. I've had this relationship with my dad, with some of my friends growing up in which I'd be feeling all these things and I don't know how to express these ideas, these notions, these emotions.

Then, as Rajiv so eloquently put it, I would then talk about who's the greatest of all time. I can tell you exactly with specificity and give you dates and times and where I was and why this player is better than that player. I think that's a function of the play, is that you're watching these two men who can't express themselves with their everyday emotional life. Then when it comes to something that they feel passionate about, like LeBron or Jordan or sports, they can take a deep dive.

Alison Stewart: Rajiv, how much of your own emotion did you tap into when LeBron decided to take his talents to South Beach, as he put it?

Rajiv Joseph: A lot. When that happened, when the decision happened. I was really upset. I was angry along with a lot of people in Cleveland. It was a really interesting time because not only was LeBron the biggest superstar that any Cleveland team had had in my lifetime, but he was also a hometown kid. He had grown up in Akron, Northeast Ohio. We felt doubly betrayed by that.

I spent the next couple of years really rooting furiously against him as he was in Miami. In fact, Glenn and I went to a very famous regular season game in Chicago where Miami was on the-- Miami and LeBron had this long winning streak going, and they came into Chicago and the Bulls snapped that winning streak. Glenn and I went to that game together rooting furiously for the Bulls.

Glenn Davis: It was like a 20-some-odd game streak. I'm sitting there, a big Chicago Bulls fan, and Rajiv, a big Cleveland Cavaliers fan, both of us for different reasons rooting against LeBron.

[laughter]

Rajiv Joseph: That's right. Then it was glorious when he came back.

Alison Stewart: We see these characters 2004, 2016, so over 12 years. How does your character mature? How does Matt mature? He has an interesting road because he becomes a jerk at one point. Shawn's a little bit down on his luck and Matt's not sensitive to it. By the end, they-- I don't want to give [unintelligible 00:14:44] -- They find each other again in a certain way. They find an equilibrium. Talk to me a little bit about Matt's journey towards maturity.

Chris Perfetti: It's a rollercoaster for sure. I think what's so fun about the play is you really get to see every aspect of a friendship, and you really get to see both of them at their highs and their lows. I think there's certain things about Matt's personality that he's shed a little bit by the time we reach that fourth quarter.

What I think is equally interesting about the play, I think is the ways in which he hasn't changed. He's gotten older, but he's hardened in a way. He's given some things up. He's certainly less of an expert, I feel like, by the end of the play. I think one of the beautiful things that the play explores is that, is how blessed are the people that can find friends who will put up with their flaws.

Alison Stewart: The time jumps are also hilarious. You used the cell phone quite a bit as a signifier. People laughed out loud when you came back from LA wearing a pork pie hat that in my particular audience, just there was this laugh. How did you think about the time jump so that you could keep the story being continuous but clearly moving it along?

Rajiv Joseph: Well, that's part of the appeal of or the I guess the amazement I have and how long LeBron's been in the league. He comes in the league, when he comes in the league, there's no social media. There's no smartphones. There's no things like Uber. It was such a different time that almost seems antiquated and yet it actually wasn't that long ago. I think in the last 20 years technology has really been what has changed so enormously.

We can use those details to help us tell the story of time passing. Cell phones, they figure into every scene in some way, shape, or form. Whether it's a text message that one person gets or whether it's the barrage of text messages they both receive in scene three when their friends start to tell them, "Guess what? LeBron's coming home." That's how definitely it was for me.

I remember I was on the F train going above ground because back then there was no service on the subway at all unless you went above ground. I was going back into Park Slope and suddenly my phone just blew up and I'm looking on the phone and I start jumping around the subway. People thought I was crazy. I was like, LeBron's coming home. LeBron's coming home.

Glenn Davis: I think that's an interesting point. When Michael Jordan retired-

Rajiv Joseph: Who?

Glenn Davis: -he held a press conference to announce his retirement. Then when he came back, he released a fax saying I'm back, which was on the cover of [unintelligible 00:17:52] . If this was today, he would've had a LeBron, like a-

Rajiv Joseph: Instagram.

Glenn Davis: Yes. Instagram, a letter. You're right, just in terms of-- I didn't even thought about it. The passage of time, how we deal with major events like that with athletes.

Alison Stewart: What would you just say to somebody who's not a sports fan who wants to come to see this show?

Rajiv Joseph: Well, one of my prime objectives was to write a play that could be appealing to non-sports fans. Because the play isn't really about sports. Sports are just, it's just the lens through which we watch a story of two friends and the passage of time. I've talked to a lot of people and it's not my first time writing about sports. I co-wrote a movie called Draft Day, which is about the NFL draft, which is one of the more boring sporting events of the entire year.

We were able to create an interesting story through that. I think sports is a pervasive part of our culture, but in this play at least. It's a detail of the culture that these guys are engaged in and it's not really about basketball at all.

Alison Stewart: The name of the play is King James at New York City Center through June 18th. I've been speaking with playwright, Rajiv Joseph, excuse me, and actors Chris Perfetti and Glenn Davis. Thanks for making time.

Guests: [crosstalk] Thank you, Allison.

Alison Stewart: That's All Of It for today. I'm Allison Stewart, I appreciate you listening. I appreciate you and I'll meet you back here next time.

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