A Ticket Out of Hell
"See this right here?" says the young black man, dribbling a basketball in New York's rugged Coney Island. "This here can get you a long way." Some people are unsettled by the idea that a game can be such a potent symbol of escape for so many inner-city teens, but it's an ivory-tower argument at odds with street-level reality. Two new documentaries, one a conventional history lesson, the other a triumph of new-media storytelling, examine the past and present of hoop dreams as a ticket out of hell.
On March 16 and 17, ESPN will air director Dan Klores's four-hour "Black Magic," which examines the rise of basketball at black colleges during the civil-rights era, a time when hardwood floors were the only level playing field around. Klores's film has great stories to tell, such as the secret 1944 scrimmage between white Duke University students and a team from the North Carolina College for Negroes, a game that could've been deadly if word got out. (NCCN won, 88-44.) "Born Ready," meanwhile, is "Hoop Dreams" told in real time— and on the Web. Each week at bornready.tv, Fader Films will post a new four-minute episode tracing the ups and downs of Coney Island star Lance Stephenson's junior year: the windmill dunks, the pregame trips through metal detectors, the stupid fight that earns him a brief suspension. It's the story of a talented, temperamental kid whose future is bright, but not assured. Basketball, these two films argue, really can "get you a long way." The question, then and now, is how far?
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Devin Gordon is the editor of Newsweek Digital, the umbrella company encompassing Newsweek's various web properties, including Newsweek.com and Newsweek Mobile. Previously, from June 2007 to June 2009, he was senior editor of the magazine's Periscope section, which was nominated for a National Magazine Award for "best section" in 2008. Previously, he was a senior writer, writing about film, television, sports and popular culture for the Arts and Entertainment and Society sections. He was part of the Newsweek reporting team for the past three Olympic games, including the Salt Lake City winter games in 2002, the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, where he covered swimmer Michael Phelps, and the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, for which he wrote Newsweek's cover story about skier Bode Miller.
During his tenure at the magazine, Gordon has written about everything from HBO's "The Wire" to rock band Coldplay to Oscar-winner film directors Ang Lee and Peter Jackson. He profiled "Curb Your Enthusiasm" creator Larry David on the eve of the series' fourth season debut, and "The Dark Knight" director Christopher Nolan just prior to the film's record breaking release. For Newsweek's year-end double-issue of 2002, he wrote "The Matrix Makers," (Jan. 6, 2003), a cover story about the two upcoming "Matrix" sequels—the first behind-the-scenes look at the new films by any publication.
Gordon joined Newsweek in 1998, after graduating from Duke University. His first cover story was "The Dominator" (June 18, 2001), an examination of what makes Tiger Woods tick. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
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