Why is the Sannoh game the final game?

Slam Dunk ends with a second-round game. Having finally reached the Inter High, Shohoku draws Sannoh, the defending champions, a team of such depth that its bench would start anywhere else, led by Eiji Sawakita, the best high school player in Japan. The match runs across the manga's final volumes and ends the series days later, with Shohoku spent and the tournament unfinished on the page.

Inoue has said in interviews, as widely reported since, that he ended the series because he felt he could not draw a better match than Sannoh: the summit had been reached inside the story, and continuing past it would only descend. The final chapter steps back to show the players ten days on, in ordinary life, which is the point: the game was the destination, not the trophy.

That choice is why the 2022 film could build itself entirely from this one match, and why the game's documentation, the bracket, the matchups, Sawakita against Rukawa, the press defense, fills more shelf space than any championship final that never happened.