Not even this mythic Sopranos reunion could court LeBron James to the Knicks
Set sometime after The Sopranos cut to black, this long-missing piece of Sopranos lore finally surfaces
TV Features LeBron James
Everyone has an opinion about the end of The Sopranos. Did Tony live, did he die, or did the cable go out? These questions have lingered over the last two decades since the show’s end, with none other than series creator David Chase offering a definitive answer to the question. But—and this is a big but—in 2010, while the New York Knicks were courting then-free agent LeBron James, James Gandolfini and Edie Falco reprised their roles for a one-time-only reunion shot in James Gandolfini’s actual New York apartment.
For years, fans of Sopranos have wondered where this extremely short coda to the series is. In 2021, Falco fanned the flames of internet sleuthing by mentioning the video on a podcast, saying she was “shocked” that Gandolifi agreed to make the video. She thought “it was a prank when someone said he was going to do it.” Nevertheless, the video shows a bearded Gandolfini playing the role of Tony, living out his days in a New York apartment while embedded in the witness protection program. Why witness protection would place a New Jersey mob boss in New York City is beyond us, but he and Carmella seem more than happy while looking for a place for Tony’s friend LeBron James to live. They land on Madison Square Garden, which is the perfect place for a grown man to reside.
The clip is an introduction to a longer video that features such New York luminaries as Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Alec Baldwin, and Harvey Weinstein attempting to lure James to New York City. Giuliani pulls out the big guns, promising King James a parade and the undying love of all New Yorkers should he join the Knicks. We can’t believe he didn’t take the job.
Watch the startling, actual conclusion to one of the greatest television shows ever here:
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The Toronto Raptors tried the same thing in 1996 with Michael Jordan, except they had to settle for the old couple from the “It’s Patrick! He took out life insurance” commercial.
Didn’t work out.
The should have ponied up for Clara Peller.
For the record, Chase didn’t say that Tony died in that THR interview—he subsequently referred to this on the rewatch podcast that Michael Imperioli and Steven R. Schirripa did a few years back, saying that it wasn’t intended how people took it, as definitive confirmation that he dies at the end of the show.
I saw those comments, and it sure feels like Chase was only backtracking because he had accidentally blurted out a secret he meant to take to the grave.I was convinced Tony was dead like the day after the episode aired, and thenI was super convinced when Chase spoke at length about the various Tony death scenes the writers batted about before settling on the one we got, then said “fuck you guys!” after realizing what he had just said.
Yep. That is exactly what happened. The two reporters even gloated over his gaffe. To beat a long-dead Pie-Oh-My! one more time, no other ending made sense. The entire show led to that outcome. They used Vito, Johnny Sack, Eugene, Gigi, the other Tony, and even the dude in the College episode to let the viewer see all other “what if” fates play out, played with dead-in-casket angles of Tony throughout the final season, flashbacked a line of dialogue (you probably don’t even see it), and even mimicked David Bowman’s time-shift witness thing from the end of 2001. He died, folks. He was shot by the guy in the Members Only jacket (which itself is a direct repeat of Eugene’s wardrobe during his restaurant hit). If I had a million dollars, I’d pay Imperioli to A.D. the line “years later that fat kid would be shot in the back of the head in the very restaurant he’s currently standing in” and edit it into the penultimate scene at the end of Many Saints.
They were never going to get LeBron out Cleveland:
New York luminaries as Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Alec Baldwin, and Harvey WeinsteinNew Yawk, baby!!
Yeah that really came together, didn’t it? Damn.