If you’re a fan of any number of levels of comedy – from massive silver screen works to two generations’ worth of Saturday Night Live head writers to Lorne Michaels’ most recent foray into primetime work to various fringe 22-minute situation comedy to your daily reminder that there is a show on after ‘The Daily Show’ – then you are working off of the ha-ha exhaust of the much loved Improv Olympic. Del Close and Charna Halpern’s Chicago institution continues to be a breeding ground for open-ended and daring improvisational comedy, production that makes the north side hub a perfect proving ground for … San Antonio Spurs forward Matt Bonner?
Eh, why the hell not? Via Ananth Pandian, here’s “coach” Matt Bonner’s visit to the famous iO:
(Matt Bonner, like the guy who is currently writing this blog post, is still wearing low-cut New Balance sneakers.)
What’s impressive is that this film was apparently captured on the “off” night of a back to back in the second week of February, with Bonner’s Spurs flying into Chicago after a Sunday night Spurs blowout win against the Brooklyn Nets, and before another Spurs blowout win over the Chicago Bulls on Monday evening.
Even though he was assigned a character onstage, this is typically funny and fantastic work from the hilarious and self-aware Spurs sharpshooter. That’s not even taking into consideration the fact that he had to leave the hub of a five-star hotel in order to “yes, and”-it up with a crew of performers that are as adept at improvisation as he is at nailing 25-footers with Serge Ibaka attempting to close out. This was fine work, from all involved.
(Also, it’s OK to confuse Larry Bird with Larry Miller. They’re both all-time legends worth equal amounts of reverence.)
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