Flintown Kids
Treasure Entertainment
Review by Emily Hendren
Four hundred unsolved murders in eight years. Listed as The Worst Place to
Live in America by Money Magazine. In a town where the murder rate is the highest
in the nation per capita, Flintown Kids offers insight into the world that basketball
provides a town clouded by drugs and fleeting opportunities. It earned the award for best docu-drama when it screened at the New York Film Festival.
The documentary opens with interviews with Flint locals, young basketball
players who trace their own journeys of coming of age and those of their basketball
idols. The interviewees first talk about Mateen Cleaves, and they say his name with
reverence. They talk about his drive to rise above, his will to win, to make
something of himself. Their words and their eyes say he wanted to use basketball to
escape the streets of Flint, an escape they do not say outright that they want for
themselves, but the desire is there between their words. They go on to discuss
Morris Peterson, a Flintown kid who used to have “the knock of being soft” and not a
great high school player, but who played well in college. The young basketball
players talk of Peterson as a go-getter, someone who found himself in college and
realized he could take his opportunity and turn it into something more. Peterson’s
career with the Toronto Raptors, the New Orleans Hornets, and the Oklahoma City
Thunder proves that he did.
The greatest adversary to successful, healthful living in Flint is drugs. With
liquor stores across the street from public schools and gangs running the streets,
most children fall prey to the drug scene at an alarmingly young age. One boy
smokes a cigarette while he gives his interview. He is eleven years old and admits
that the first time he smoked marijuana he was eight years old. He is nonchalant, as
if his shrugging shoulders ask the question “what other way is there?” Chris Grier,
the Michigan Hurricanes Coach explains that “kids always wanna [sic] pretend…cops and
robbers…cowboys and Indians…what do they have here in Flint to pretend? Basketball. That’s it. Or—drug dealing on the corner.” Basketball is the out, the hope
for a life away from drugs, away from a poverty the kids of Flint did not choose, but
were born into.
One of the town’s greatest sources of its stomach-churning poverty has come
in the way of job lay-offs at a well-known American auto company: General Motors
(GM). Of a population of 100 thousand, 60 thousand Flint natives were
hired, and later fired from General Motors when the company relocated. Paula
McGee, former pro basketball player, describes General Motors like an old married
husband: he left for an alluring mistress, and forgot about the mess he left behind at
home.
In light of the unbearable job market and lack of inspiration, one interviewee
states: “Who else is there for me to look up to? The only people coming out of my
neighborhood is [sic] NBA players.”And so they turn their sights up and away to the professionals who have
paved the way before them. The stories of Kelvin Tolbert at Michigan State; Chucky
Atkins who has played for the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Detroit Pistons, and
others; and Jason Richardson of the Orlando Magic provide role models that breathe
life into the street courts of Flint. Basketball is a means to a life away from drugs
and gang violence that might otherwise be unavoidable. It’s a chance at higher
education and professional excellence. It’s a game, a lifestyle, a dream.
© Emily Hendren, 2011