So it’s almost inevitable that Matt (Sam Mitchell) and Shawn (Enyi Okoronkwo) (photo below) are like the guys I grew up with – ok, they’re like me, I admit. They bind about their NBA team, the Cavaliers, bicker over the details of ranking their sport’s best players and, most importantly, face the near necessity of moving away to seek their fortune. But they always come back to the absurdity wrapped in fandom, identity, and history.

Matt is white, whiny and more insecure, middle-class, and when we first meet him in his early twenties, he’s stuck with the dawning feeling that his life should be bigger than it is . He can’t even find the means to properly rebel against his parents’ well-meaning support and channels his efforts into questionable business ventures and has been obsessed with the Cavs and their pursuit of the championship for decades. Just when superstar player LeBron James reveals his nearly limitless potential on the court, he must sell his pair of season tickets to pay off a debt.

Shawn is black, working-class and confident, a go-anywhere kid. He shows up at the bar Matt works at and makes an offer for the prize, but Matt wants more – no problem, Shawn pins him for a mark (street smarts, you see) and soon gets the prize that he wants. But, like Derek and Lamont in American Historythe two get along well, develop mutual respect and thus see their lives change.

Rajiv Joseph’s play fits perfectly on the ground floor of the Hampstead Theatre, its director, Alice Hamilton, using the physical intimacy of the space to explore the psychological intimacy of the relationship that develops alongside the long career of LeBron “King” James himself. Delivered in a brisk 100 minutes, including interval, it’s almost as notable for what it doesn’t include as much as what it does.

Not only are drugs absent from the lives of these two young men, but so are women (for the most part), childhood trauma and financial worries. It reminds me a little of Bob and Terry in Likely Guysyou wonder what interests you in these somewhat ordinary lives.

Much of the alchemical magic of theater can be found in the writing and acting, and both prove to be slam dunks in this fascinating character study. Joseph’s dialogue is beautifully crafted, changing subtly over time, continually illustrating through its rhythms, vocabulary, and warmth the tensions and compensations that hold Matt and Shawn together. And it’s the choice of a particular word that leads to the breakup we all knew was coming, a word I was surprised to hear Matt use, but scrambled minds do scrambled things.

The two actors are great, finding great chemistry without ever venturing into sentiment. As power shifts back and forth between them, neither can resist touching an open wound, but both know when they have done wrong and both have the humility to (eventually) bridge the gaps that were opened. IRL can’t keep a feud going the way social media can. There’s also an upside in that Shawn never understands how much pain it must cause Matt every time he talks about Matt’s parents, who clearly would have preferred him to be their son. Maybe that’s his place – at least in Matt’s damaged psyche, and explains this awkward language that has driven a wedge between them.

King James is too mild a play to be great, but it’s very good in its understated ambition, unusual in its refusal to import hot-button issues into a story that stands on its own two feet. Debuting in Europe after its US premiere in 2002, perhaps LeBron’s extraordinary coda to his storied career can inspire a sequel. I would definitely be interested to know what happened to these likely guys.