SPIKE LEE ON HIS `GAME'; FATHERS, SONS AND BASKETBALL PROVIDE ACTION IN NEWEST FILM.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Writer

You go into ``He Got Game'' thinking: Yeah! A hoops movie by the New York Knicks' No. 1 fan, Spike Lee! Slammin' good court action - it's gotta have it!

And it does. But the surprise here is that ``He Got Game'' is so much more than a sports movie. At heart, it's a searing father-son story starring the unlikely one-on-one of Academy Award-winning actor Denzel Washington and Milwaukee Bucks guard Ray Allen.

Yet it's no surprise to Lee that his new film tightly entwines his favorite pastime with family issues. That, after all, was how he always related to the game.

``It shows a father transferring a love of sports, of basketball, to his son,'' Lee, a 41-year-old Brooklynite, says. ``That's the reason why I'm a big sports fan, because my dad did that for me.

``But there's more to it than just basketball. I didn't want to make your typical sports movie that's just about winning the big game; those things never really work. I wanted to enlarge it, look at parent-child relationships through it. I wanted it to be about how parents cross that line. And where is that line you shouldn't push your child past? I mean, all children need to be pushed, but how far is one of those mysteries of being a parent.''

A father himself - Lee and his wife, attorney Tonya Lee, have a 3-year-old daughter and a son going on 1 - the filmmaker has had a few open conflicts with his own father and sometimes collaborator, composer and jazz musician Bill Lee. When discussing his own childhood, for example, Lee lavishly praises his mother but limits mention of dad to the sports arena; he reportedly resents the fact that Bill Lee married a white woman after Spike's mother died.

But stuff like that is small potatoes compared to what ``He Got Game's'' blessed and benighted Shuttlesworth family has to cope with. Father Jake (Washington), a frustrated athlete, relentlessly drove his young son, Jesus (Allen), on the hoops courts of their Coney Island housing project. The kid got good; but one night, a drunken Jake went further than usual. He unintentionally killed his loving wife (Lonette McKee) and, when he was subsequently sent to prison, left Jesus and his little sister Mary (Zelda Harris, the young star of Lee's ``Crooklyn'') effectively orphaned.

Years later, Jesus has grown into the top high school player in the country. Every college wants him, including Big State, which happens to be the alma mater of New York's hoops-loving governor. Jake is offered a weeklong furlough to return home and try to talk Jesus into attending Big State. There's a vague promise of a commuted sentence if Jake succeeds, but everybody with even the slightest connection to Jesus also seems to be recruiting for one school or another.

And if any of them are Jesus' least favorite person, it's the man he blames for destroying their family.

``I felt that a basketball film had to be done from the inside out,'' Lee explains. ``That's why the dynamics of the father-son relationship are focal points. But I also wanted to examine the corruption in the recruiting process these days and the social forces working on these kids.''

Rookie chosen

Allen, who was 1996's No. 5 overall NBA draft pick after making the All-America cut while playing for the University of Connecticut, confirms Lee's vision of the extraordinary pressure placed on talented young athletes.

``Spike captured the thing Jesus goes through to the point where everyone who's been through that will say, `Yeah, that's true,' '' Allen, 22, says. ``Athletes who see it will just start venting about their whole life.''

Asked about the pressure of acting for the first time, he responds with a winner's bravado.

``It wasn't scary at all,'' Allen insists. ``Spike made me comfortable, he made me believe I could do it. And Denzel was wonderful. He was so professional, he just showed me the way. From the first time I worked with him, he set the standard, and I followed him the whole time.

``I just made sure that I always knew my lines, and if I did, when I went on set, I could have fun and always be in the zone of free play. Of course, I was a little confident to go out there because it was a story I knew well.''

Lee has a slightly different recollection.

``I made Ray work with the best acting coach I know, Susan Batson, for eight weeks, five days a week, eight hours a day,'' Lee says. ``He told me it was tougher than any training camp he's ever attended.''

Allen wasn't the only pro ballplayer tested for the part, and he only won the role after half a dozen callbacks. He's not the only NBA guy in the movie, either; Travis Best, John Wallace, Walter McCarty and Rick Fox all play characters, while Shaquille O'Neal, Lee's Nike commercial co-star Michael Jordan, the director's friendly nemesis Reggie Miller and many others make cameo appearances as themselves.

``We wanted the playing in the film to be as authentic as possible,'' the director says. ``That's why we made the choice to go with guys from the League, instead of basketball-playing actors who we'd always have to cut around.''

With one outstanding exception, of course. Though Washington has starred for Lee twice before, in ``Mo' Better Blues'' and as ``Malcolm X,'' the rabid Lakers fan had to look convincing, especially in a climactic one-on-one against his ``son.''

``Denzel has a nice game,'' Allen says diplomatically. ``He can play; I'm just used to playing guys that are all-world. But it was a real challenge with him. It was!''

Racial issues

``He Got Game'' bears another kind of challenge for some of Washington's most devoted fans. African-American audiences have reportedly been responding quite negatively to a scene in which Jake makes love to a prostitute played by Milla Jovovich. True, Lee once built a whole movie, ``Jungle Fever,'' around the subject of interracial romance. But this is the first time Washington has had a sex scene with a white leading lady.

That, however, is as deep as racial issues intrude into ``He Got Game.'' Indeed, the film has an almost we-are-all-one feeling, what with its opening credits montage that celebrates the cross-ethnic appeal of the game and a soundtrack that mixes Public Enemy rap songs with the middle-American triumphalism of composer Aaron Copland (also a Brooklynite, as Lee proudly points out).

Our nation's racial agony has been a recurring theme for Lee since he single-handedly founded the current African-American film movement a dozen years ago with ``She's Gotta Have It.'' But even though ``Do the Right Thing,'' ``Jungle Fever,'' ``Malcolm X,'' ``Get on the Bus'' and last year's Oscar-nominated documentary ``Four Little Girls'' were immersed in the subject, Lee seems uncharacteristically low key about the issue these days.

Asked about the underrepresentation of minority nominees at this year's Oscars - to which he escorted civil rights heroine Rosa Parks - Lee shrugged resignedly.

``This isn't the first year,'' Lee says. ``I don't really get upset about it. I just feel that the academy should really do something about their membership, make it younger and get more minorities.''

At least basketball jumps over all barriers. If Spike Lee is the Knicks' biggest fan, it's only because Woody Allen is less demonstrative whenever the cameras aim at his courtside seats. But the man who's often been accused of filming New York like no minorities lived there meets Lee on the playing field of shared passions.

``I showed Woody the first cut of `He Got Game,' and he gave me some suggestions,'' Lee reveals. ``I'd like to talk more than we do, but you know he sits across from me. We usually only get a chance to speak if we're on the same elevator after the game.''

CAPTION(S):

4 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) `GAME' FACE

Spike Lee serious about hoops film

(2) Spike Lee: ``I didn't want to make your typical sports movie that's just about winning the big game; those things never really work. I wanted to enlarge it, look at parent-child relationships through it.''

Associated Press

(3) Lee cast Hill Harper, left, as Coleman ``Booger'' Sykes, and used pro basketball players Travis Best, Ray Allen, John Wallace and Walter McCarty.

(4) Denzel Washington and Spike Lee talk on the set of ``He Got Game,'' which Lee wrote and directed.