The extremely vital and culturally significant 1996 documentary Space Jam tells the story of inarguably one of the most significant games of basketball in the sport’s history. Little-known minor league baseball player Michael Jordan was plucked from obscurity to line-up for the rag-tag and sorely outmatched Tune Squad in a one-off game against the all-conquering Moon-based Monstars outfit, which had stolen the talents of a raft of NBA stars under dubious and unclear circumstances.
Though we all clearly know the outcome of that game – the Tune Squad rallied to overcome an enormous first half-deficit to snatch the game 78-77 – what’s been shrouded in secrecy since the game took place is when exactly it went down.
A while ago, ESPN‘s SportsCenter attempted to claim that November 15th, 1996 was the date the game went down, in a social media post referencing its anniversary.
Keen eyes would readily recognise this to be an utter falsehood, however, given that November 15th 1996 was actually the release date for the subsequent Space Jam documentary.
What was buried in the comments section at the time, and has since been uncovered again by Reddit overnight, is the truth: Someone has pieced together the actual date the legendary game went down.
The explanation is lengthy, but it’s water-tight, and provides little other alternative but to declare it the correct and official answer.
The TL;DR version is this: Using historic stats about when the 5-affected NBA players could possibly have been in the same room as each other at the same time during the 1994-1995 NBA season, coupled with Michael Jordan’s schedule as a member of the Birmingham Barons, the only possible date the game could’ve taken place is March 5th, 1995.
As for what happened afterwards, the history is indisputable: Impressed by his hidden basketball talents, Jordan was sensationally hired by the Chicago Bulls, leading them to three subsequent NBA titles in a row. The Moron Mountain threat to Looney Tunes Land dissipated with the expulsion of the dastardly Mr. Swackhammer, as per the pre-game stipulations. And Bill Murray returned to the human world a conquering hero, enjoying the kind of reverence and respect only a true dual-discipline icon warrants.
Now that that’s out of the way, we just need every global Government to declare March 5th a public holiday in observance of everybody getting up and getting a real jam going down.
It’s the right thing to do.
