ABC/Randy Holmes(LOS ANGELES) — Jimmy Kimmel returned to prime time for the 12th straight year, in conjunction with the NBA Finals between the Golden State Warriors and the Toronto Raptors, for Jimmy Kimmel Live: Game Night.

Wednesday night before the big NBA Finals game three between the defending champion Warriors and the upstart Raptors, Jimmy welcomed Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman, whose new movie 21 Bridges comes out July 12.

Boseman stars as an embattled NYPD detective who gets a shot at redemption after being called to help in a citywide manhunt for a cop killer. As the search intensifies, authorities go to extreme measures to prevent the killers from escaping Manhattan by closing all 21 bridges to the island. The 41-year-old actor describes it as “a thriller from beginning to end.”

Neither Boseman nor Brooklyn-born Kimmel knew there were 21 bridges in and out of New York City, and apparently, neither did the filmmakers, whom Boseman says originally wanted to call the film “17 Bridges.”

Another thing Boseman learned about NYC: “Street crime in New York City is done, because they can see everything you do…there are cameras everywhere.  If you want to do a crime, please go inside,” he joked.

Boseman also talked about getting up-close and personal-with a Siberian tiger, and scoring on future NBA star Kevin Garnett when they played together in an amateur basketball league.

Earlier, for the fifth straight year, Kimmel sent his sidekick Guillermo to NBA Media Day, where the diminutive TV personality asked some of the two-time champion Warriors how they felt about a possible three-peat — or “threesome,” as Guillermo called it — and tried to recruit Golden State and Toronto players for his new franchise, the “Tijuana Piranhas.”

Jimmy Kimmel Live! airs weeknights on ABC.

Copyright © 2019, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.