April 19, 2005.  Scranton, Pennsylvania.  One of the most legendary basketball games in history took place fifteen years ago today.  No, it wasn’t an NBA game, or college, or high school, or even a real-life game.  I am, of course, referring to the Season 1 episode of The Office titled Basketball.

To commemorate the 15-year anniversary of the date this episode aired, I wanted to take a look back on this game between Dunder Mifflin Sales and Dunder Mifflin Warehouse in one of the classic episodes of one of the best TV sitcoms of all time.  If you’re like me and you enjoy both basketball and The Office, this is definitely for you.  Even if you enjoy only one or the other, you should hopefully get some entertainment out of this as well.  Since this weekend would have normally been the start of the NBA playoffs, we all need a little basketball to help tide us over until it comes back.

For a bit of background on this one, the Basketball episode of The Office aired during its first season, as the show was still trying to find its legs. It was actually only the fifth episode to air during the entire series.  In this episode, Michael challenges the employees of the warehouse to a friendly game at lunch.  However, the stakes for what was originally supposed to be a friendly game are raised when Michael and Darryl make a deal that the losing team would have to work on Saturday.  Of course, we also have the added plot of Jim’s one-on-one battle with Roy, with Jim hoping to impress Pam, even though Pam has been engaged to Roy for three years.

Just last month, The Ringer produced this extremely detailed ten-minute YouTube video below about this game, providing highlights, in-depth analysis, a box score, and player rankings.  This video does a way better job than I could ever do at breaking down the game from an X’s and O’s standpoint, so if you have an extra ten minutes, feel free to watch this video and then keep reading.  Or just keep reading and then watch the video later.  It’s up to you.

I’ll provide my own recap of the game here but fast forward to the end.  After a dreadfully slow start brought on by Michael’s incompetence, Jim takes over and leads the sales team on a terrific comeback.  Sometime after the sales team has taken the lead over the warehouse team, Michael throws a hissy fit after an inadvertent foul by Jerry and declares the game to be over.  Based on the game footage provided in the episode (and confirmed in the video above), it appears that the score of the game is 19-12 for the sales team at the time; however, I don’t believe we know the actual score for sure.  Perhaps there was some other scoring that happened in the game that was not shown in the episode.  Personally, I have a feeling that it was more like a one-point lead at the time of the game-ending incident, such as 19-18 (or possibly higher), as it seemed obvious that Michael just wanted to end the game once his team got the lead.  However, even though the sales team was ahead at the time, this led to some uncertainty about who really won, as the warehouse team refused to accept this result and come in on Saturday, which led Michael to back down and agree that the office staff would work on Saturday.  But at the end of the episode, Michael lets everyone off the hook and announces that nobody would be coming in on Saturday, stating, “Like coming in an extra day is going to prevent us from being downsized.”  So, since nobody really “lost” by having to come in on Saturday, I’m going to say that the sales team actually did win the game, since, as Michael pointed out, they were ahead.

Other than pride, what was the overall outcome of this game?  Nothing really.  Nobody had to work on Saturday, the branch did not get downsized, nothing changed in this episode between Pam and Roy, and everyone continued to roll their eyes at Michael’s buffoonery.  But as a basketball fan and a fan of the show, it was an entertaining game to watch.  And in the spirit of over-analyzing the game even further, I also managed to come up with a few more thoughts as well.

First of all, I think I have the same jacket that Stanley is wearing in this game.  This seems appropriate, since I dribble like Stanley too.

At the start of the episode, Michael leads us to believe he had previously been in the warehouse sinking a few shots in front of the warehouse workers, causing their jaws to drop to the floor.  Of course, the audience is left to be very skeptical that Michael ever had any basketball success at any other time.  It does make me wish, though, that the camera crew could have been in the warehouse during Michael’s previous shooting session to capture just how bad Michael may have been when he supposedly impressed the warehouse staff with his shooting ability.

When Michael shoots his first shot of the game, a wide-open layup that he misses badly, he shouts, “Three!”, as if the shot would have counted as a three-pointer. This moment takes me back to high school gym class, when our class would play basketball on the side courts without three-point lines, yet we were allowed to call three-pointers if it was obvious. One of the guys would constantly call “three” on shots that were blatantly two-pointers. Let’s just say that this led to some scoring disagreements.

Immediately after the game, we see Kevin sink four long shots in a row.  According to John Krasinski (Jim), the episode only captures an abbreviated version of what happened, as Brian Baumgartner (Kevin) reportedly sank fourteen of these shots in a row. I think we all would like to see how Kevin would have played in the actual game if Michael had selected him to be on the team. But since NBA HORSE on TV is apparently a thing now, I would also like to see how Kevin would have done in a game of HORSE. Or a three-point shooting contest.

At the end of the episode, when everyone is back upstairs, Roy comes up to get Pam and congratulates Jim by remarking, “Look at Larry Bird.  Larry Legend.”  It’s obviously a great compliment to be compared to one of the greatest basketball players of all time, but it made me wonder why Larry Bird was chosen as the player of comparison.  Was it due to similarity between the two in physical appearance as tall white men?  Or was it because Larry Bird played for the Boston Celtics, and John Krasinski hails from Boston?

The deleted scenes in this episode feature Michael actually scoring two baskets – an unnecessarily awkward fast break layup and a full-court shot that somehow goes in.  However, I assume that the deleted scenes are not canonical to the episode, as the writers needed to make Michael be as incompetent of a player as possible by not scoring any points.

This episode also makes me wonder how the Dunder Mifflin sales team would fare in a hypothetical basketball tournament for teams made up of characters from other TV sitcoms.  But perhaps that’s a topic for another time.

If you’ve read this far, you may be wondering why I’ve spent so much time on a TV episode that aired 15 years ago.  But if you’ve followed the show, you may remember that the 15^th anniversary of an event at Dunder Mifflin can be considered a milestone.  After all, the Season 5 episode New Boss showed the Party Planning Committee trying to figure out how to properly celebrate Michael’s 15^th anniversary with the company.  While Dwight suggested a 15-minute round of applause, followed by a 15-minute moment of silence, a tuxedo-wearing Jim decided it wasn’t classy enough.

So if you’re a basketball fan and also a fan of The Office, and if you wish to celebrate the 15^th anniversary of a classic TV episode in style, feel free to do the round of applause/moment of silence thing.  Or, better yet, maybe you want to pop in that DVD and re-watch that episode featuring one of the most legendary basketball games in TV sitcom history.  Seriously, it’s probably better than any other sports programming on TV right now.  Because although we don’t have live sports right now, we’ll always have that moment when, fifteen years ago today, America became witness to a friendly game at lunch.

“The great thing about sports is that it is all about character. And you can learn lessons about life even if you don’t win. But we did because we were ahead.” –Michael Scott