Bill Murray's delightfully odd supporting role in Space Jam is a nod to a series of NBA adverts featuring the actor during the 1990s. After making a name for himself on Saturday Night Live, Ghostbusters would transform Bill Murray into a movie star in 1984. It's odd looking back on this period in retrospect, since Murray essentially took a four-year break from leading roles following Ghostbusters, before returning in the likes of Scrooged and Ghostbusters II. The actor's career has been anything but conventional because while he's won acclaim for movies like Groundhog Day or Lost In Translation, he now rarely appears in mainstream movies outside of scene-stealing cameos.
Instead, most of his recent work is with auteur filmmakers like Wes Anderson or Jim Jarmusch. There are numerous famous stories about how Murray approaches his career too, such as agreeing to voice the main character in 2004's abysmal Garfield movie because he mistook writer Etan Cohen (Holmes & Watson) for Ethan Coen of the Coen Brothers. He's also set to return as Peter Venkman for Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Fans of the series will remember the long odyssey of Murray refusing to return for a third movie, due to his lingering disappointment with the second entry. How his character - or the rest of the original cast - figures into Jason Reitman's legacy sequel has yet to be revealed.
Bill Murray cameos tend to be a delightful perk in any movie, as his turn in Zombieland proved. This thread began in earnest with 1996's Space Jam, which cast legendary basketball player Michael Jordan as himself, where he's recruited by Bugs Bunny and the rest of the Looney Tunes to help them win in a match against a ruthless businessman who wants to enslave them. Murray also appears as himself and in a scene where he and Jordan play golf, he reveals his NBA ambitions, to which Jordan is skeptical. He later appears during the finale, joining Jordan and the Looney Tunes in a crucial final match. What some fans may not know is that Murray's cameo is actually a reference to a forgotten series of NBA ads.
For important context, Michael Jordan first announced his retirement from the NBA in 1993, and later signed a Minor League Baseball contract with the Chicago White Sox; this is also a plot point in Space Jam. This inspired a series of spoof ads for the NBA where Bill Murray announced his retirement from acting to pursue a basketball career, though when pressed by reporters it's quickly revealed how ill-equipped the then 44-year-old actor is for the sport. Later commercials showed him playing basketball and talking about it with an almost religious fervor.
Bill Murray reportedly wasn't paid for his involvement with these NBA ads, though he did retain creative control over them. So it makes sense - in a very odd way - that following his parody of Michael Jordan's early retirement, he would then co-star with him in Space Jam where he gets to live out his NBA fantasy. Space Jam 2 is currently in development with LeBron James the latest NBA legend to help the Looney Tunes. Whether Michael Jordan or Bill Murray make cameos is yet to be seen.