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How did he accomplish off the glass slams as a 5 foot 9 inch high school player 15 years before anyone did it…even in the NBA!?!
The movie opens with Jason Kidd and Gary Payton, two of the NBA’s biggest ballas stating that they ain’t shit compared to Oakland, California basketball legend Demetrius “Hook” Mitchell… According to Payton “He (Hook) had major, major game. I mean he was 5’9” and had major hops. He would jump over trucks to win dunk contests. He could do anything he wanted!”
But, who exactly is Hook Mitchell? And why the fuck isn’t he ballin’ in the NBA right now?
Demetrius Mitchell had and still has mad hops… Hook who is now 36 was born in Oakland, California…arguably one of the roughest cities for a young black male to grow up in. But, Oakland also has a secret…it hold the record as the proving ground for more NBA stars than any other city in the US. Whether it’s the location or the water…whatever “it” is…Hook Mitchell has it and nurtured it on the playground courts of West Oakland.
Hook grew up and is still praised by basketball legends Jason Kidd, Gary Payton, Antonio Davis, Brian Shaw, JR Rider and Greg Foster. While his playground friends went home to loving families and a home environment…Hook called the streets of West Oakland home once the lights of outdoor courts faded.
“When Hook was around us…the people who wouldn’t let him so some of that stuff (drugs), he was a great guy, real giving,” says Brian Shaw. “But when he wasn’t on the court and go back home, then a whole other person would come out.”
By 15 he was using cocaine…with a father in prison and a Heroin addicted mother Hook developed into true manhood and his friends went on to college and fame…Hook went on to drug addiction and later prison for the armed robbery of a Blockbuster video store.
“Basketball was my god…and so was drugs.” States Mitchell.
It’s ironic that now his biographical DVD is rented and sold at Blockbusters throughout the US.
The DVD intertwines testimonials from proven basketball legends, archive footage of Hook on the courts as a teenager and the eye-opening reality of the subject on the court in the A Quad of the Men’s Penal Colony in San Luis Obispo, California.
After the footage of Hook free on the court…the film goes to the stark cell that he occupied at the prison and Hook talks candidly about his past, his talent, his addiction to drugs and how someone with so much skill could wind up behind bars…
Since it’s release the film has received praise at the 2003 Tribeca Film Festival, San Francisco Black Film Festival, Urban World Film Festival and the 2004 Hip Hop Film Festival in NYC to name a few.
Demetrius “Hook” Mitchell is now back on the streets after being released from prison. He is now taking this new opportunity to deliver his message to up and coming ballas and those on the hard streets throughout the US. That message…to open the minds of the young and show them that the decisions and choices that they make now will have a monumental impact on their future.
This is not a film about just a basketball player…but, a film about humanity and how the harshness of life…especially for youth who have little or no paths of escape can come crashing down…no matter how high you can dunk.
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