Fathers of the Sport

Writer-director Xavier Mitchell's documentary looks at some of the legends as well as the unacknowledged heroes of street basketball, exploring the passion and deliberate “hip-hop” aesthetic that prevailed before the era of big-money NBA superstars. Most of the narrative centers on the golden age of “streetball” during the 1970s in Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.—places where some of the finest athletes ever to slam-dunk played the game for the sheer joy of it all day long, even in 100-degree heat. Some of them, including Julius Erving, Earl Monroe, and Bill Russell, reunite here to reminisce. The flipside of the story, however, is that many of these luminaries—including Richard “Pee Wee” Kirkland and Joe “The Destroyer” Hammond—never rose above the criminal pathologies of the slums and, despite being neighborhood superstars who would square off against a visiting Julius Erving, did jail time rather than making the NBA drafts. But they still retain the egos of champions, railing against young stars like LeBron James for not knowing the game “from the neck up.” Despite uneven technical quality (especially in the sound recording), Fathers of the Sport offers a solid hardscrabble perspective on the early streetball phenomenon. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (C. Cassady)