Rumors

Or, as the voice-of-god narrator would say at the beginning of the film: A fusion of music and sports like never before. “Nobody had composited one video of the best players in the league, set to really high-end, copyrighted popular music,” Sperling says. If you have seen “NBA Superstars,” you know that part of its charm lies in its soundtrack, which is catchy, well curated and sometimes kind of weird. The film begins with Janet Jackson’s “Control” scoring a montage of Magic Johnson highlights, transitions to Mellencamp and Bird, and then pivots to Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away” for Michael Jordan, an explicit nod to the song’s association with the movie Top Gun and Jordan’s ability to fly (especially in slow motion). But then, there’s Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit”; an instrumental track from Greek composer Yanni (“Looking Glass”) that scores a Dominique Wilkins reel; and a Billy Joel ballad from 1986 (“This is the Time”) during a tribute to older NBA players from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.

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