One of the crucial profitable streetball groups in New York Metropolis—yr after yr after yr—is the Sean Bell All-Stars, coached by Jamaica, Queens, native Raheem “Rah” Wiggins. A adorned new brief movie, Convey Your Title, reminds viewers of the story behind the group’s title.
Sean Bell was a former highschool baseball star from Queens celebrating his impending marriage in November, 2006, when he was shot by plain-clothes law enforcement officials. He died that evening at age 23. Wiggins was a childhood pal of Bell’s who had been impressed to turn out to be a basketball coach by New York-area legends Jimmy Salmon and Tiny Morton. Wiggins was already getting into streetball tournaments underneath the group title DDN (Dat’s Dem N—s), however he renamed the squad in honor of his fallen pal. And the group—not a highschool AAU squad however a group of adults, typically with professional expertise like Lance Stephenson or Tyshawn Taylor—has been a powerhouse ever since.
“We’re the very best group within the metropolis,” Wiggins says within the movie, which takes you up shut and private to a sport at Brooklyn’s Gersh Park. “Folks ask once I’m gonna stroll away? So long as once I lose, individuals make a giant deal out of it, I gotta come again.” He provides later, of the importance of the group’s title: “That’s my job, to maintain [Sean’s] title to the general public ear.”
Convey Your Title is directed by Raafi Rivero, the filmmaker and artist behind the continuing Unarmed project, which exists “in memoriam of Black victims of police violence.” Rivero additionally labored on an upcoming docuseries across the 2024 NBA postseason that may air on ESPN.
Bring Your Name will make its world premiere on the BlackStar Movie Competition in Philadelphia in August. From there, Rivero hopes to display screen it at playground basketball venues in New York Metropolis in addition to at different movie festivals. And what does Rivero need viewers to remove from the movie? “I hope they’re impressed,” he says, “by the on a regular basis heroism of individuals like Rah Wiggins.”
Portraits by Jon Lopez.
