Director and producer of 'Hoops, Hopes & Dreams' Glenn Kaino, along with producers Alexys Feaster, Afshin Shahidi and Jesse Williams visit the THR Studio at Park City to tell us about the unknown story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President Obama using their basketball skills as a means of cultural movement.
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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.