While ray wasn't the best actor I appreciated how spike used a real basketball player for the movie instead of an actor that can't hoop.
Basketball movies with actors who you can clearly tell they're not a baller are the woat. Struggle dribbling, dunking on 8 ft rims, cut aways to an extra playing basketball, close ups of their feet, the actor doing a struggle jumpshot and a cut away of just the ball going through the rim
Having Jesus played by ray Allen made the scene where Jesus played Jake for the letter much more powerful