From the Vaults: Hoops Players Onscreen

We loved watching Kevin Durant play basketball during his freshman year at UT. And we understood when he abandoned college hoops for the NBA. We adored watching Durant play in the professional arena, too, with the payoff being the championships he won this year with the OKC Thunder and the U.S. Olympics teams. But will we still love Durant as a movie star?

Thunderstuck, a new movie starring Kevin Durant, opens today in theatres across America. Durant plays himself in the film, a skilled basketball star whose talents are switched with an uncoordinated 16-year-old through some unexplained bit of magic. We haven't seen Thunderstruck yet and the film sounds harmless enough. But we can't help flashing back to Shaquille O'Neal's inauspicious film debut in Kazaam, in which he plays a genie who helps a kid who is being bullied. “He's tall. That doesn't mean he's interesting,” says one of the characters in Kazaam in a statement that might also serve as a succinct summary of the 1996 film. In addition to acting and dressing in genie garb, Shaq raps much of his dialogue to the beat of a boombox.

We doubt that we'll see Durant clowning around in a similarly gregarious style. But in our crossover world, why is everyone now a hyphenate with multiple career endeavors? Jim Brown, Fred Williamson, O.J. Simpson, and a few others have parlayed their ball careers into Hollywood stardom or semi-stardom. Hell, even former heavyweight champion/convicted rapist Mike Tyson just had a one-man show on Broadway. We know full well what Durant is capable of on the basketball court; it remains to be seen whether the man's got game on the silver screen.