DOCUMENTARY EXPLORES A SPORTS SCANDAL.
The National Basketball Association’s regular season should have concluded a month ago, but instead the NBA shut down on March 11 to protect players, personnel and fans from the coronavirus. The NBA’s site continues to list the 2019-2020 season as “temporarily suspended.” But right now, when the field of playoff teams should be slowly slimming, there’s no basketball.
Fans have been taking their hoops where they can get it. “The Last Dance” — a large-scale documentary about the 1998 Chicago Bulls — was slated to air in June. But ESPN and Netflix moved it up to give fans something to watch. Another basketball documentary, “Blackballed,” was scheduled for release in June. But it, too, has been released early, starting to stream this week on a new mobile video platform, Quibi.
Where “The Last Dance” tells the story of one dramatic season with context spanning more than 15 years, “Blackballed” takes a particularly focused look at a crisis placed upon a coach and players at the worst possible time. Michael Jacobs’ film covers a short period of weeks in April and May 2014 when the Los Angeles Clippers navigated a fraught playoff matchup with the Golden State Warriors after a recording with racist commentary made by team owner Donald Sterling went public.
“I’m just saying, in your lousy (expletive) Instagrams, you don’t have to have yourself with, walking with black people,” Sterling told his girlfriend, unaware she was recording him. His commentary got worse.
At the time, much of the coverage had to do with Sterling and comments he made that his girlfriend recorded. The idea behind “Blackballed” was to get beyond that to the thoughts and recollections of the team’s members.
“The sensational side of the story took over so quickly,” Jacobs says. “And what got lost was the team. They didn’t get to share their story. So we wanted them to share their thoughts in an open and honest way. We wanted to create a space where the microphone was theirs and theirs alone.”
Players with power
Though only six years ago, the period of time covered in “Blackballed” feels as if it’s from another era. All the core players who made that Clippers team competitive — Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan, J.J. Redick and Matt Barnes — are gone. With coach Doc Rivers, they recount the processes and challenges they faced.
“The NBA is interesting compared to football and baseball,” says Peter Cambor, a Houston native, an actor and one of the film’s producers. “Football, there’s a helmet. Baseball, there are hats and helmets and there are these separations between players and the audience. Basketball, there isn’t that same separation. Even watching at home, you see the reactions in real time, close-up: the drama, the passion and the heartbreak. It’s on the players’ faces.”
Sterling on tape commented on his relationship with the players. “I support them and give them food and clothes and cars and houses,” he said. “Who gives it to them? Does someone else give it to them? Who makes the game? Do I make the game or do they make the game?”
The players and Rivers describe their conversations about how to respond. They opted to initiate silent on-court protests with their jerseys turned inside out, a practice that that spread to other playoff games that didn’t involve the Clippers. Then the NBA’s then new commissioner, Adam Silver, handed Sterling a lifetime ban from the league.
Sterling, it turns out, did not make the game.
“It was a terrible, complicated situation. But it was also a great example about how interesting the NBA is compared to other sports leagues,” Cambor says. “The players are very influential. The players have power. And they exerted it in this case.”
Jacobs calls it “a watershed moment for players and their power in the league.
“We try to make the case in the film that it’s really an ushering in of this power, or a cementing of that power. And the players in the league haven’t looked back since then. Without saying a word, they stood up and they made their voices heard.”
A new format
“Blackballed” will find its way to viewers in a different manner than “The Last Dance.” The film is screening on Quibi, a 2-year-old company founded by film producer Jeffrey Katzenberg that provides entertainment for mobile devices. Quibi’s model is a subscription service that provides new, original content daily. It also serves up its video content in pieces less than 10 minutes long.
Jacobs had to shoot with that format in mind. He created a 12chapter documentary with most of the segments clocking in at about 8 minutes.
“It was a unique challenge,” he says. “I wanted it to work as a standalone 90-minute film. But the format also dictated that each chapter needed a strong beginning, middle and end. It needed those episodic ingredients and some binge-y ingredients that would make the viewer want to watch each episode.”
The Clippers story moved with such swiftness — from the revelation of the tape to Sterling’s banishment
from the league — that the film’s director and producers felt it lent itself naturally to the format.
“The scandal took place over just a few days, from ticking time bomb that dropped, to Sterling getting thrown out of the NBA,” Cambor says. “We thought the story lent itself perfectly to that structure.”
On Screen, off screen
Cambor — who attended Houston’s St. John’s School through eighth grade — is newer to the part of producer than he is to acting. He played one of the leads in the ABC show “Notes From the Underbelly” and had a recurring role on “NCIS: Los Angeles.” Most recently, he has appeared regularly on Netflix’s “Grace & Frankie.”
“Grace & Frankie” was in the middle of production for its final season — with actors and crew on set — when the show was shut down because of the coronavirus.
“The plug was pulled in the middle of the day,” he says. “It just happened. (Expletive) got real very fast.”
While film and TV projects have been shut down for the foreseeable future, Cambor has for the past three years been working in development as well. He cofounded District 33, a production company with his friend Sam Widdoes. “Blackballed” was one of the first projects they initiated.
Widdoes had a connection to Clippers coach Rivers, who was willing to reveal the discussions and thought processes that occurred
in the locker room — parts of the story that hadn’t been discussed publicly before. With Rivers on board, the players then filed in front of the camera. The plan was to make the film without including Sterling among its talking heads: The film would focus not on the arsonist but rather those players already under enormous pressure from competing in the playoffs, who also had to respond to the fire Sterling set.
Jacobs decided to use the Interrotron, documentary filmmaker Errol Morris’ camera setup that allows the documentary subject to speak directly to the filmmaker while also looking directly into the camera at the viewer. The players — and Rivers in particular — convey the complexity of their struggles from 2014 with an almost anguished sincerity.
“It felt like an intimate experience, having Doc (Rivers) look right at you and telling you this story,” Cambor says. “Or Chris Paul. There’s this intimacy there.”
For Cambor and Widdoes, the project took longer than originally anticipated. But they’re excited about the film’s prospects in a new film format.
And for Cambor, working in production keeps him busy right now when he can’t do anything in front of the camera.
“I absolutely miss acting right now,” he says. “I enjoy storytelling in any way possible, whether it’s being on camera or behind the camera. Any way I can get that, it’s a great feeling that feels creatively satisfying. So it’s great to have these other projects and other avenues to work right now. But I do miss acting.”