00:00If you played with MLK today, would you dunk on him?
00:03Yes.
00:03That was brilliant.
00:04And all of them said yes.
00:06And I was surprised, going like, really?
00:07Yeah.
00:08Except for CJ.
00:08CJ said, I'm not dunking, but I'd cross him up
00:10and hit a three in his face.
00:12Right.
00:12No respect.
00:13Yeah, there's no decorum on the court.
00:14Right.
00:15Right.
00:15Right.
00:18This project came about because she and I, and Jesse,
00:21we've actually worked for years with the athlete Tommy Smith,
00:24who in 1968 did the salute of the Olympic Games.
00:27And one of the things we do is help
00:29him start his foundation.
00:30And every year, there's a foundation gala.
00:32And a couple years back, Ambassador Andrew Young
00:35was the honoree.
00:36And he got on stage, and he says to me,
00:37Tommy, did I ever tell you the time
00:39that Dr. King and I used to play basketball to connect
00:41with kids in the movement?
00:42And so I'm the Asian guy in the back of the house,
00:45and I dropped my fork, and I was like, what did I just hear?
00:48And so I literally navigated the tables
00:51and ambushed Ambassador Young before he got into his car,
00:54told him I had never heard that before,
00:55and I would love to have the opportunity
00:58to tell that story on film.
01:01And he said, I love basketball.
01:03I love Dr. King.
01:04I love Tommy.
01:05Of course.
01:05Let's do it.
01:05It's a weird line of work, because there's
01:07like a status attached to it, and also recognize
01:09it's probably one of the only lines of work where you meet
01:12people at a party, and they, what do you do?
01:14And you say you're an actor, and they're kind of like, no.
01:19Or like, what are you in?
01:20And you give them your resume suddenly.
01:22You're now auditioning for their validation.
01:24And you name a project, and they're like, nah.
01:27I haven't seen that.
01:28It's not a yes or no question.
01:29I'm telling you what I do for a living.
01:31So that can happen.
01:33We started with knowing that we had this really great story
01:35of Martin Luther King Jr. playing basketball
01:38that we thought that not many people heard.
01:40And everyone knew, and a lot of people
01:44know that President Obama enjoyed basketball
01:45and played basketball.
01:47Hearing from Mike Strautmanis and Reggie Love
01:49more of the details and some of the behind the scenes
01:51was really great.
01:52But through the process, we actually
01:54did interview a few other NBA players,
01:57aside from Jerry West, some current NBA players.
01:59And really, when it came down to honing
02:02into the medium of documentary short,
02:05it became the film that you can see now.
02:08But I think there were a lot of discoveries along the way
02:12and a myriad of stories about how basketball has been used
02:15historically as connective tissue in movement making
02:18and community building, would you say?
02:20Yeah, absolutely.
02:21I mean, to Glenn's point, we interviewed everyone
02:24from CJ McCollum, who's the MVPA executive director,
02:27all folks that I worked with.
02:28I worked at the NBA for six and a half years,
02:30leading player development.
02:31And I lived in the bubble.
02:32And during that time in the bubble, I helped to, oh, yeah.
02:35During COVID.
02:36During COVID.
02:37Yeah, no, it was during COVID.
02:38Literally, all they fed you was Mickey Mouse cookies.
02:40It was like the worst.
02:41But just take that off.
02:42What the hell is a Mickey Mouse cookie?
02:43It's horrible.
02:43You lived in Disney.
02:44Wait, you fed a cookie the shape of Mickey Mouse?
02:46Yeah, and hot dogs.
02:47That's what they were feeding us.
02:48When you're in that type of environment
02:50with a bunch of NBA players who do not
02:52want to live in a bubble and be sequestered
02:54after watching George Floyd get murdered, it felt wrong.
02:58So they were in there saying, we're basically in a cage.
03:00You're basically in jail.
03:02You're not allowed to leave.
03:02And if you leave, you don't get a paycheck.
03:04So having that experience and living amongst that experience,
03:08the only thing I could do is, well, let me figure out
03:10how to motivate them.
03:11And the only thing you can motivate them to do
03:12is, let's vote.
03:13Let's change the laws.
03:14Like, what can we do to make a difference
03:16as our own individual people?
03:17And I remember standing in the hallway,
03:20and guys would go to practice.
03:21And I'd be like, please register to vote.
03:23That's the way we make a difference.
03:24And so taking that experience and the work
03:26that we did in the bubble and afterwards
03:29with some other work, it was really, really not lost on us
03:32that we needed to interview those guys to talk
03:34about that experience.
03:35So to Glenn's point, we have so much footage
03:37of Michelle Roberts and just many, many others
03:39talking about what that meant to be part of that movement,
03:41because we saw what happened with the country.
03:43The players decided to take a stand,
03:45and then the whole country followed suit.
03:47So to not include that is tough.
03:49And so to have someone, a director like Glenn,
03:51who's so amazing and can see the vision of what needs
03:53to be in a film like this to ensure that it's right on time
03:56for what we need right now, who could have imagined
03:59that we're airing during MLK's birthday week, you know?
04:02What I do appreciate is that many of the men
04:04have given credit to the women of the movement.
04:06So they went to the WNBA players and asked them
04:08how they were able to take a stand
04:09and be strategic during those times.
04:11And so they're getting the guidance from the women.
04:13We all know that they are the ones that led the way.
04:15We also know that women don't get the level of publicity
04:18that the male athletes do.
04:19Obviously, that's changing a bit.
04:21And I, for one, am very excited to see that
04:23in all these different ways.
04:24But we know that they have been at the forefront of this
04:27for many, many years.
04:29It was also, you know, Glenn made a choice in the film.
04:33Outside of the documentary subjects,
04:35we open the film with a young boy walking in,
04:37and it ends that baton being passed to a young girl.
04:41So outside of the subject of the documentary world,
04:44there's a bit of symbolism there.
04:45Yeah, absolutely.
04:46I play, I coach my daughter's team.
04:49So I play with her, and I play somewhat regularly
04:54with friends and never run.
04:56When I met President Obama in the Oval Office,
04:58I was sitting in the lobby, and his voice,
05:03I heard him, he was coming to get us,
05:05and his voice started to get louder.
05:07And when a voice of President Obama gets louder,
05:10it's usually because I'm walking away from the TV
05:11or closer to the TV, but to have the voice get louder,
05:14I'm like, he's coming.
05:15It's happening.
05:16It's happening.
05:17Oh, it was that moment.
05:18When I met Obama, too, I literally got weak in the knees,
05:21which was like a weird thing.
05:22I didn't know that was a real thing.
05:24Holy shit, I'm getting weak in the knees.
05:27So Obama, same thing.
05:28I remember, I worked for him,
05:29but I remember he walked down the hallway
05:31when I did an event with him and Jay-Z and Beyonce,
05:34and he came down the hallway, and he was like,
05:36hey, I know he's not talking to me.
05:37I know he's talking to Beyonce.
05:39And he was like, no, I'm talking to you.
05:41And I was like, and he just said, you know, thank you.
05:44Like, I really appreciate,
05:45I knew this was an event that you did.
05:46And he just wanted to like let me know
05:48that he knew it was something that I put together.
05:50And at that moment, having Jay and B look at me
05:53and be like, you go, girl.
05:55Oh my, I'm now like, the trifecta, there's a photo.
05:58I have a photo of it of her like leading in.
06:00And I'm like, yeah, exactly, awesome, wow.
06:04So yeah, but he does have that effect.
06:06We were on stage, we've hung out a few times.
06:10Yeah, no, he's, you know, he's one of those people
06:13where you're just like, oh, that's what charisma is.
06:15It's a word that's thrown around a lot.
06:17But yeah, I've had the pleasure of meeting him
06:20and Michelle, equally impressive, of course.
06:24Could anyone here beat him in basketball, you think?
06:27I could take him probably.
06:28I think just age.
06:32Yeah, so what was kind of surprising for me,
06:35the number of NBA players that we interviewed
06:38and one of the questions Glenn was asking them
06:40was would you, if you played with MLK today,
06:42would you dunk on him?
06:44Yes.
06:45And all of them said yes.
06:47And I was surprised, because I'm like, really?
06:49Yeah.
06:49Except for CJ, CJ said, I'm not dunking,
06:51but I'd cross him off and hit a three in his face.
06:53Right, no respect.
06:54Yeah, there's no decorum on the court.
06:56There's no prisoners.
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