Love & Basketball: The Drew

Lifted Up by Love, Not Just Basketball

A scene from Baron Davis’s Showtime documentary, “The Drew,” about a summer basketball league in the heart of South Central Los Angeles.Credit5 Balloons Entertainment, via Showtime


No one talks that much about black love.

We often talk about how young black kids love basketball, but rarely about the sustaining love that allowed some to “escape” the pathology of the ghetto, to flee to predominantly white schools, to the N.B.A., where they earn enough to leave the ’hood behind — physically, mentally and emotionally. For good.

No one talks about the love that sustained the journey.

Baron Davis has.

In his documentary about the Drew, a summer basketball league in the heart of South Central Los Angeles, Davis uses a basketball league to convey the compassion and the loyalty that allowed him to go from East Los Angeles to an exclusive Los Angeles high school to U.C.L.A. and the N.B.A. without leaving home.

“It is a ’hood story and it’s a positive ’hood story,” Davis said in a recent interview. “There’s good stuff in our neighborhood: good people, good leaders, good mentors. That was the beauty of the film. We tried to bring out that community element.”

Davis, a two time N.B.A. All-Star, has quietly pursued a second career as a filmmaker. His film about the Drew, which he completed last year, is his fourth as executive producer. He signed a distribution deal with Showtime, which premiered the documentary on Friday.

Davis’s powerful story tells a tale familiar to so many players who have survived and overcome to reach the N.B.A. or some other level of professional basketball. Davis said the spark for the documentary came to him during the 2011 N.B.A. lockout. The lockout began in July that year. All of a sudden, the Drew became a magnet for college players who had just graduated, but also for suddenly out-of-work N.B.A. players and pros who had been competing in overseas leagues.

“You look up, 40 to 50 guys in college, playing overseas, in the N.B.A., and now they’re all at The Drew,” Davis recalled. “And it’s cool to be in the hood.

“I said, ‘We got to capture this moment.’ ”

Founded in 1973, the Drew — named because the games were played at Charles Drew High in Compton — began as a six-team league designed as a safe haven for young people in South Central Los Angeles, a place to learn through basketball.


Davis, the filmmaker and pro basketball player, in a scene from “The Drew.”Credit5 Balloons Entertainment/Showtime

In 1985, Dino Smiley became the league’s second commissioner. Davis’s documentary is as much about Smiley, who still runs the league, as it is about the thousands of players who have come through over the years. Smiley emerges not just as the commissioner, but also as a father and an authority figure, an arbiter of justice, a counselor and a community pillar.

There’s a Dino in everybody’s ’hood,” Davis said. “There’s a Dino in every urban area in America who is opening up these gyms, opening his house, and helping kids change their lives. For us, as African-Americans in this country, that’s all we really have.”

Davis, who turned 37 last month, lived seven blocks from Charles Drew High, but he said he only became aware of the tournament at 13, when he felt — or, more likely, some adult felt — that Davis was ready to take the plunge into basketball adulthood.

His first exposure was traumatic. “Pretty much being cursed out by grown men,” he recalled. When a player tried to stand up for Davis, reminding the teammate that Davis was “just a kid,” the teammate was having none of it. “What the hell is he doing here?” he screamed. “Stop turning the ball over, kid.”

Stay and take it, or go home and cry. Davis stayed, and grew. He would meet all the players he had heard about — high school stars, playground legends, college stars, N.B.A. players. Byron Scott. Michael Cooper. Lester Conner.

“For me, these were my legends,” he said.

Davis has been connected to the Drew ever since, seeing its ups and downs not only as part of its N.B.A. fraternity, but now through the prism of a filmmaker.

And now the Drew is being discovered by the mainstream.

“Now it’s starting to get the cachet, it’s starting to get the love from the outside community, from the Westside, from people from Orange County,” Davis said. “You’re seeing white people in Watts, enjoying the games. This is going to be the tipping point for the Drew.”

Davis’s chief rival in high school was Kenny Brunner, who starred at Dominguez High School while Davis was at Crossroads. While Davis selected U.C.L.A. and flourished, Brunner chose Georgetown, traveled east and floundered. He transferred to Fresno State but was kicked off the team and made misstep after misstep. Eventually, he served time in jail.

During an emotional scene in the film, Smiley welcomes Brunner back to the Drew. Brunner cries as they hug.

“He was crying for so many reasons,” Davis said. “Not making the McDonald’s All-American game, not being able to stay at Georgetown, not going pro.”

This is the black love that often goes unseen, on film and in life.

“A lot of times, guys give up,” Davis said. “We don’t get a lot of opportunities, so when we give up, it doesn’t just take you two steps back, it knocks you all the way back down the ladder.”

I’d like to see more young African-American athletes tell — and own — the multifaceted stories of their journeys from the Comptons of the world to the pros. While many people can tell that story, black men and women are the only ones who truly know what it’s like to exist, survive and prosper as black men and women in the United States.

For Davis, the challenge of making a documentary about an event so close to his heart was how to bring the joys, the frustrations, the highs and lows to film. But more important: how to let the emotions speak for themselves?

So there were scenes of trash-talking, of heated yet playful interactions between fans and players. Davis tells the story of the Kevin L. Dandridge Most Inspirational Player Award, named after a player who exemplified the spirit of the league but was killed in a shooting decades ago.

But in producing a film about a world he knew, a community in which he lived, Davis also wanted to get away from the typical black basketball story of desperation: of players desperately trying to reach the pros. Rather, Davis wanted to present the portrait of his community. Of taking life as it comes. Of accepting the bitter with the sweet.

“How can we make a basketball documentary that’s not really a basketball documentary?” he asked.

The result is a unique approach to a summer basketball documentary. Fresh, because no one talks that much about black love.