Leon Powe and Demetrius 'Hook' Mitchell both had similar upbringings in the rough neighborhoods of Oakland, CA, but were also proof of the fact that their are many roads to travel on the trip called life, and every decision you make has a consequence down the line.
On Monday, April 9 CSN Bay Area will take a closer look at this dichotomy in The Town Game: Two Lives, Two Paths, telling the story of Mitchell, a streetball legend in Oakland who dealt with struggles and Powe, who fought his way to make it in NBA.
Make the jump for more.
The Town Game tells the tale of young men who did not make it out of impoverished Oakland, but also of the heroes who did. The ones who never made it out succumbed to the temptations of the streets rather than rising above the harsh realities of an unstable home life.
The program presents the stories of Demetrius "Hook" Mitchell, who has been called "one of the best basketball players never to make it to the NBA," and Leon Powe, who was raised in poverty and instability, and went on to win an NBA Championship with the Boston Celtics.
This documentary will highlight the lives of Oakland basketball players and how they dealt with the struggles they faced. It intertwines the stories of Mitchell and Powe as they relate to Oakland streetball, told from their perspective and that of the people who surrounded them, including other athletes like Jason Kidd, Brian Shaw, Antonio Davis, Drew Gooden, Greg Foster, Paul Silas, Chris Mullin, Marshawn Lynch, Josh Johnson, and others.
From the long nights they spent honing jump shots under the Oakland moonlight to the iconic Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) tournaments and heated high school battles, from their lives off the courts and in the community to memories from the golden era of playground basketball in Oakland. The program shows exactly what it's like to grow up in the basketball breeding ground that is Oakland.