The Real Gold-Medal Winner of Team USA Men’s Basketball Was ‘Mr. Throwback’
If you are unaware that there is a quarterback named Jordan Love on the Green Bay Packers and another named Jalen Hurts on the Philadelphia Eagles, and that together their surnames comprise the title of (and the choral lyrics from) the 1976 power ballad version of “Love Hurts” by Nazareth, and that the two QBs will face each other on Friday, September 6 in a S?o Paulo, Brazil-based Week 1 NFL game exclusively on Peacock, you must not have streamed much of the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics.
If you did, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. And you would be equally well-aware that NBA all-time great (and now gold-medalist!) Stephen Curry stars in new Peacock sitcom “Mr. Throwback” opposite Adam Pally.
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The two Peacock promotions ran incessantly through the Olympics, which included an (expected, yet cool nonetheless) undefeated run to gold by the U.S. men’s basketball team. LeBron James was named the tournament’s MVP, and deservedly so, but it was Curry who scored 60 combined points in the semifinal (36 points, the most for anyone on any team at the Paris Olympics) and final (24 points) games.
You know what’s even better than scoring 36 points to send your team of NBA all-stars to the gold-medal game? When your debut sitcom premieres on the same platform on which people watched the near-record performance, and on the same day. That’s exactly what happened — talk about corporate synergy.
David Caspe, the creator of “Mr. Throwback” and a self-described “enormous” Curry fan, enjoyed every minute of it. And then he, like many of us, really enjoyed the final 2 minutes and 11 seconds of the finale. Curry’s legend was taken to another level, and his comedy series went meta.
Late in a tight game against the home country’s team, Curry hit four-straight 3-pointers to seal Team USA’s latest basketball gold. The one he hit to officially put the France team to bed? Très bien. (Get it? Tres?)
“I was just going crazy,” Caspe told IndieWire of those final minutes. “It was one of the most incredible performances I’ve ever seen in any sporting event.”
“It’s just, like, truly storybook,” he continued. “It’s what you would do in a movie. It was wild.”
Perhaps a “Mr. Throwback” movie? The ending writes itself, David.
“Mr. Throwback” follows Danny Grossman (Pally), an in-debt owner of a not-so-successful vintage sports-apparel store. In what is initially a save-his-own-hide scheme, Danny reconnects with childhood friend and old basketball teammate Curry (he plays himself, very well I might add) under false pretenses and for his own financial gain.
On-set (often on-court) experiences from the “Mr. Throwback” production gave Caspe complete confidence that his star’s final, double-teamed, totally ill-advised (my opinion, not David’s) shot was “going in.” He was right, I was wrong.
Watch basketball heroism unfold below. (Someone might want to tell the NBC Sports social-media intern about that emoji though.)
Curry’s 3s weren’t the only thing that made a big splash last week. He had a hand in all of it though.
The U.S. victory over France averaged 19.5 million viewers across NBC and Peacock, the most for a gold-medal basketball game since the 1996 Atlanta Olympics — when 25.8 million viewers tuned in for Team USA’s dismantling of Yugoslavia — according to Nielsen and Adobe Analytics. Saturday’s 98-87 win was the most-streamed event of the Paris Olympics across NBCUniversal platforms.
In the same NBC Sports press release from Sunday night, in bold print, was this line: “In Addition to Winning Gold, Steph Curry’s “Mr. Throwback” Scores as Yesterday’s #1 Series on Peacock.“
Take that, “Love Island.”
Caspe certainly will take it, as will the NBCUniversal marketing team. They know when to strike while the gold is hot.
On Monday, Peacock sent another press release: “What to Watch on Peacock After the Olympics — ‘Bel-Air,’ ‘The Fall Guy,’ ‘Mr. Throwback’ and more!” The exclusive Brazil game (“Ooh, Ooh, Love Hurts!”) was plugged in the email as well, but NFL football doesn’t need much advertising. Then again, by this point, neither does “Mr. Throwback.”
Caspe says he didn’t see the “Mr. Throwback” commercial during the Olympics (he too streamed on Peacock) quite as often as I did, but one particular time he caught the spot certainly stands out.
“One of the most surreal moments was Stephen doing the ‘Night-night’ celebration after that last heave 3 that he hit, and then the very next thing was a commercial for our show and young Danny was doing the ‘Night-night’ thing,” Caspe said. (In the “Mr. Throwback”-verse, young Danny Grossman, the 12-year-old 14-year-old version of Pally’s character, was the real creator of the “Night-night” celebration.)
“It was about as cool as anything I’ve ever gotten to be a part of in my life, for sure,” Caspe continued.
Wait, hold on. This even cooler thing happened like 15 minutes later:
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