Spike Lee takes us into the world of NBA nicknames, focusing on how Ray Allen's starring role in Lee's 'He Got Game' forever associated him with his character, Jesus Shuttlesworth.
Kobe Bryant and Tamika Catchings reminisce about their Italian days together, when both of their dads played in Italy, and talk about how the experience fueled their drive to succeed.
During Super Bowl XLII, the Giants met with the New England Patriots who were undefeated going into the NFL finale. With two minutes left in the game, just when it looks like the Giants quarterback Eli Manning will go down, he spots David Tyree, a veteran special teams player down the field and goes deep, setting up one of the most renowned plays in football history.
Crispus Attucks High School in Indianapolis, which was created to marginalize African-Americans, became a beacon of education and athletics. The player at the heart of its two-time state championship basketball team was none other than Oscar Robertson.
Inspirational story of the man who broke the color barrier in professional hockey and secretly played his career, blind in one eye. For more than a decade, O’Ree has been the director of youth development for the NHL’s diversity program, helping to introduce more inner city youth to a game that has seen short numbers that represent them.
This short is latest chapter in a compelling family saga - the tale of sixty-two year old David Robinson, the youngest child of civil rights hero Jackie Robinson, and the life he has built as a farmer in Africa. Robinson has spent the last 30 years assimilating entirely into African culture; raising a family thousands of miles from the Brooklyn streets where his father built a legend, the lily-white suburbs of Connecticut where he was raised and the upscale American businesses that serve his product and fuel his mission - using the world's second-most-valuable natural...
When University of Missouri football players threatened to boycott their game with Brigham Young University last November unless president Tim Wolfe resigned, they made news far beyond the sports pages and Columbia, Missouri. But that was only one chapter in a tale that began long before that - a tale that director Spike Lee unspools in this Lil' Joints documentary for ESPN Films. Yes, the athletes played a significant role in forcing Wolfe's resignation, but it was really the female organizers of the Concerned Student 1950 movement, as well as a man, Jonathan Butler,...
The first historically black college to win an NCAA title should've been the 1971 Howard University soccer team. Coached by a man named Lincoln Phillips, a collection of men of color from all over the world beat predominantly white powerhouse Saint Louis University 3-2 in the championship game, only to have NCAA take the title away because of two minor infractions. Directed by Kenan K. Holley for Spike Lee's ESPN series, Lil' Joints, this film chronicles the rise and fall and rise again of Howard soccer, all within a four-year period. As former Howard student Rock ...
“We wuz robbed” is an old boxing expression. But not until the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul, South Korea, did people fully understood its meaning. That’s when Roy Jones Jr. thoroughly destroyed Park Si-Hun in the light heavyweight gold medal match, landing 86 punches to Park’s 32, only to watch the judges steal the match from him. In this film directed by Randy Wilkins for Spike Lee’s Lil’ Joints series, Jones and others relive that travesty of justice. Eventually, Jones would become a world champion in several divisions, but as this mini-documentary — part animation and part painful memory — makes clear, Olympic boxing and Park Si-Hun have never recovered.
In 2006, former NBA star Stephon Marbury endorsed a revolutionary low-cost sneaker called the Starbury. $15 Kicks revisits the Starbury sneaker's altruistic mission and media frenzy. The film will highlight proponents and skeptics of the brand's humble gross margin and its tumultuous discontinuation in 2009. In a world ruled by multi million-dollar sneaker endorsements, could a rising NBA basketball star and growing discount retailer successfully sell the $15 kicks?
