Untold: The Rise and Fall of AND1 (2022) Movie Script
This is where it's at.
It's New York City.
Street basketball.
This is our culture.
This is what we do, B.
This is our job.
Yo, back in the day,
it was like a big block party.
The atmosphere, the energy.
It was just special.
It's jam-packed out here.
The players are putting on a show,
and the crowds are loving it.
But AND1,
they just took it to another level.
AND1 basketball
is sweeping the nation,
becoming one
of the biggest basketball brands.
Tokyo, Japan. Venezuela. Brazil.
You know, it was pandemonium.
The competition is heating up.
AND1's newest sneakers
are jumping off the shelves.
The line is not down the block.
It is the block.
AND1? They had
the best ballplayers in street basketball.
And the best players get the best names.
Like Skip 2 My Lou.
The Main Event.
The Main Event!
Shane. The Dribbling Machine.
Get your Superman on, Shane!
We talking about Hot to the Sauce.
We talking about The Professor.
AND1 is taking on
the titans of the industry
with no plans of backing down.
A lot of people today say,
"Whatever happened to AND1?"
I don't know what happened to it.
And I was a part of it.
Stranger's arms
Reach out to me
'Cause they know
I'm so lonely
Then my mind
Goes back to you
And your sweet love
Sees me through
I could never
have started a business
without my education at Wharton,
but after, like, the second day there,
a couple things
became pretty evident to me.
All my classmates were totally focused
on what they wanted to do,
and I had no idea.
I had probably spent
four to eight hours hooping
for every hour that I spent studying.
That summer,
I did a free internship
in investment banking.
I was like,
"This sucks. I'm not doing this."
"I wanna do something that I love."
"If every day I get to wake up
thinking about basketball,
that will be a great day."
That was the genesis
to go start my own business.
I know the limitations of my abilities.
I was like,
"There's no shot I can do this by myself."
"I gotta find a partner."
Seth and I met each other
in seventh grade.
He came to me in college with this idea.
So I said, "Yes,"
'cause it'll be a lot more fun
to do any business with your best friend.
Seth talked about this young guy
that he met while he was playing ball
and that I had to meet Tom.
When you play ball with somebody,
you learn a lot about them really quickly.
Tom has a 3.96 GPA at Wharton undergrad.
I'm like, "How's that possible?"
"Like, the dude's playing basketball
seven hours a day."
And he said, "Just so you're aware,
Tom's kind of a strange cat."
He's, like, you know, looking down,
not making eye contact, talking real low.
But Tom was brilliant.
And he was really the genius behind AND1.
I grew up
in small towns in New England.
We moved, like, three times.
I was a shy, quiet kid,
and basketball was the thing
that let me connect with people.
So, I talked to Tom, and I'm like,
"Yo, man. Um, you might be interested
in pursuing a basketball business?"
"What are you doing next year?"
I had no professional skills.
I had only held very low jobs.
You know, dishwasher, busboy.
So when I heard they were working
on a basketball startup,
that was a lifeline for me, right?
'Cause I just wanted
to stay connected to the game,
and I wanted to wear shorts
to work.
We had the meeting
at a pizza parlor,
and we were trying to figure out
what's the identity
of the brand that we would bring.
When you make a bucket,
and you get fouled,
'cause you know the basket
is going in, you say, "And one."
You don't say, "And one,"
you scream, "And one."
- That's the ultimate way to talk shit.
- It's like, "And one, motherfucker!"
And then I had this idea.
We can put trash talking on a T-shirt.
So I wrote up 30 slogans,
and I was like, "This is our first shirt."
"I'm sorry I thought you could play."
"I'm the bus driver.
I take everyone to school."
"Wear a collar. You just got dogged."
Probably the most famous one, which is,
"Your game is as ugly as your girl."
There were, like, six more,
and they were all like the very first time
I sat down to write trash talk.
But it was really the culmination
of 15 years of playing all the time.
So when we started with AND1,
we didn't know how merchandising worked,
how retail worked.
We didn't know anything.
So we were creating our own culture,
and sometimes that was a beautiful thing,
and sometimes it was Lord of the Flies.
Two Wharton degrees and a Stanford degree,
and we're selling T-shirts
out of the back of a hatchback.
The first year we lost money.
But I remember the feeling
of someone saying,
"I wanna pay you for your shirts."
I was like, "Wow."
And people loved the trash-talking shirts.
So we felt like, you know,
we might have something here.
And then we ended up getting an order
for three or four styles from Foot Locker.
Holy cow. We just got a $13,000 order.
The other stores see kids walking around
with our shirts, and they're calling us.
For the first time,
we're not calling people.
People are calling us.
Okay. We got something here.
Like, this is gonna go.
Turning into some big business
for a T-shirt company.
This kind of fashion,
not the kind of thing you see every day,
but they're on to something.
Come on. We wanna do it, don't we?
Well, I was looking forward
to playing basketball,
but I guess that's out the window.
You want some of me...
Within that first year,
we ended up doing
about 1.6 million in sales.
Then the challenge becomes,
"Okay. What's next though?"
We knew we wanted
to be a billion-dollar company.
So from day one,
we were competing with only one brand.
Do it!
Do it!
Just do it!
Nike was a company we emulated the most.
And they associate themselves
with great talent.
Here we have the, uh,
the new, improved Air Jordan.
We want to make the number one
basketball brand in the world.
We can't do that unless we do shoes.
That's where the money was at,
and Nike had
that whole market on lockdown.
High-tech shoes and slick ads
get more and more sophisticated.
Nike is just doing it.
Fourth-quarter profits
improves to 126 million dollars.
When you bring the right athlete
with the right advertising,
it creates a very strong situation
in the marketplace.
So now, we need to go
and get our own Michael Jordan.
We couldn't start with B-level guys.
If we're gonna do this,
we need to go get an A-level guy.
Marbury behind the back to...
There's no "ifs"
for Stephon Marbury from Georgia Tech.
He says he's ready to move on
and rub shoulders with Magic and Michael.
Everyone in basketball knew Steph.
He was an electric basketball player.
With the fourth pick
in the 1996 NBA Draft,
the Milwaukee Bucks selectStephon Marbury
from Georgia Tech University.
This man is a can't miss.
We effectively
bet the company on Steph.
We said, "We want you to be a ten-year
endorsement deal,"
which is unheard of for a kid
who had never played a minute
of professional basketball.
From Georgia Tech,
number 3, Stephon Marbury!
For opening night,
myself and Seth are literally courtside,
and we're so excited.
The shoes are hitting the water,
coming into Foot Locker.
The TV ads are running.
Who knew that all we'd been building
was gonna go up in smoke that night.
I can still see it.
Steph goes up, and I'm like, "uh-oh."
Oh my goodness.
I just broke out
in a cold sweat seeing that.
Our faces are white.
Oh my God. We just ran
a "breaking ankles" TV campaign
for Stephon Marbury.
And Stephon just broke his ankle
wearing our shoes.
A week before
the shoes are supposed to hit.
Stephon Marbury
being helped off the floor...
I usually recover real quickly,
but being that this is a bit more severe,
I'm really hurting, you know,
knowing that I can't play.
And so, we're in the tunnel,
and we seeSteph's agent looking at us
with just, like, daggers in his eyes.
Someone on his team says,
"I might haveStephon go on national TV
and dump your shoes in the garbage can."
And I literally just said, "Bro,
it's been real, but I think we're done."
"I can't figure out any way
we're not gonna go broke right here."
We wanted
to play the endorsement game,
wanted to out-Nike Nike, and we failed.
Two weeks later, we got this tape.
It had been around our office.
There were a couple of interns,
and they were always watching it.
The video blew our minds.
I was like, "Holy shit."
I've seen a lot of basketball.
I've never seen this before.
And in this game
was 15-year-old Rafer Alston,
who was called "Skip 2 My Lou."
Show some love for my homeboy,
Skip 2 My Lou!
New York streetball style,
it's a style
where you just let your imagination flow.
It was more poetry in motion.
It was more trickery and sorcery.
I always wanted to deceive you.
A third of what he's doing
is illegal right here.
But I don't really think it matters
because it's so unique.
Streetball is hip-hop,
graffiti, breakdancing,
all-in-one.
And the crowd is our music.
Winning has nothing to do with streetball.
Your team,
they could lose,
but if you've electrified the crowd,
they were satisfied.
The court is the canvas.
The style of play
that you have is your ink.
And the player that you is is the artist.
A lot of us come up through the inner city
in single-parent homes.
My mom had me when she was 15.
I grew up in one
of the biggest projects in the Bronx.
I never really had a steady home
to practice my skills.
It wasn't about sports,
it was about survival.
The first time I touched a basketball,
I probably was maybe 11, 12?
Just didn't really have
the basketball skills or basketball IQ.
But my dad
would take me out to different parks,
and that's where
I honed a lot of my skills.
Streetball, it's a way of life here.
It wasn't about money.
Because that was the NBA.
Swish picks up Dumars,
who lets it fly,
and he hits it again for three!
Where we came from,
a lot of people don't have
that type of money
to go see an NBA game
at the Madison Square Garden.
So for us, Rucker was
the main stage in New York City.
Streetball was born there.
When they first took me to watch a game,
I was little and skinny.
I made my way to the front,
and I just sat right there on the court.
I'm watching my idols play.
Pee Wee Kirkland,
Joe Hammond, Earl Manigault,
Dr. J.
People that were seven,
eight blocks away, you could hear them.
You knew where everyone was at.
Most people at some point realized,
"I might not make D1.
I might not make the NBA."
But you can still go play
at the playground.
So I realized what's on this tape.
It's just pure, like, self-expression.
And that's when I started to understand
this is the essence of who we are.
We're playground.
We're grassroots.
We're everyman basketball.
We're attitude,
we're raw expression, we're art.
And this is a strategic position
that Nike can't touch.
We interrupt this program
to bring you the following Special Report.
Good morning
and thank you for joining us.
It's the day Bulls fans around the world
have been dreading for years.
Michael Jordan is scheduled
to make a big announcement
at the United Center any minute now.
I am here to... to announce my retirement
from the game of basketball.
Now, all of a sudden,
with Jordan being out
and there being no games on
because of the NBA lockout,
there was a void in the basketball market.
There was this opportunity
for new content that didn't exist before.
As a business,
how can we take that experience
of a streetball game at theRucker
and make it something
that actually fills that void?
One of the young guys that we had hired
to do product placement in New York,
a guy named Set Free,
who was a DJ, producer, hip-hop artist.
He says, "We should make that a mixtape
and just give it away."
It ended up being this collection
of footage plus unreleased music.
This is Sway
from theWorld Famous Wake Up Show,
and y'all are about to view
the AND1 Mixtape on video.
Coming to you live. Keep it banging!
AND1 pressed 50,000 old-school VHS tapes.
We gave away through the street teams,
clubs, courts, neighborhood barbershops.
And it was like the new crack.
It went rampant in the inner city.
Each person sharing it with another
dozen or two dozen or three dozen people.
We had this insane viral marketing
in thepre-internet age.
After Mixtape came out,
I was like a hero in New York City.
Before I know it,
I have 20 people walking behind me.
"Oh man, Skip. I wanna walk with you.
Can I walk inside the park with you?"
Look out for Volume 2, y'all!
AND1 Mixtape!
By Monday, we had calls coming in
from people who had lost their minds.
We all gathered around the phone,
just listening to all these messages.
Yo, that mixtape was sick.
Killed it, AND1!
Skip 2 My Lou!
Hold on.
Need another one, please!
Where is Volume 2?
Immediately the question was,
"How do we do another one?"
So we created the idea
for the AND1 Mixtape Tour.
We're gonna put together the best
playground pickup basketball team we can.
Get your best five,
and we have our best five
and let's put on a game.
But let's not just do it
one time in New York.
Let's start going city to city.
I was brought on at AND1
as a tour manager
and headed up Player Relations.
The idea was, "Hey.
We're just gonna do this five-city tour."
Really to get content for more mixtapes.
Shane!
I just got kicked out
of Rutgers University 'cause of my grades.
Now I'm back at home. My son was four
or five. You know, I needed a job.
I get a call from AND1.
"Yo, you think you'll
pull a game off in your hometown?"
First phone call I made was Shane.
Playing
streetball, butit's in my thirties,
and the NBA was far-fetched for me.
I'll never forget.
I'm standing on the corner,
and Main calls me.
And it was going through one end
out the other end.
The only thing
that really caught my attention was,
"AND1's gonna give us free sneakers,
free shorts to bust some dude's ass?
Let's do it."
Welcome,
ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls.
My name is Duke Tango.
And sit back and relax
because this is how we roll.
Duke Tango's
the godfather announcer of streetball.
If Duke Tango gave you your name,
he's solidifying who you are
as that streetballer.
Main said, "Yo, would you like
to be involved with this?"
And I looked at him like,
"Who would say no to that?"
When you see that crowd around the corner,
and then you walk into that park
and see thousands of people?
Ain't no way in the world
you can be prepared for that.
Well, I say, "Yo, Main and Shane,
let's go to Philadelphia and get AO."
"Let's get this Headache."
Then I got Black Widow,
and Half Man Half Amazing.
And so, AND1 did the first-ever contracts
with streetball players.
The first stop
is Linden, New Jersey.
We brought the camera crew
to film both crowd and game.
I don't even think I really knew
what filmmaking was back then.
I just knew I had a camera in my hand,
and I'm bringing the audience with me.
I just tried to capture everything
that I felt and everything that I saw
because it was unbelievable.
This is Chris Hightower's itinerary.
- This is a Hightower original?
- Official.
When I went on tour.
they gave me a corporate car,
six grand in cash,
and was like, "Make it work."
We stayed
in shit hotels. We shared rooms.
We're playing
in front of a crowd of 100 people.
And now I'm in a minivan
sitting in the chair from the house
that's sliding all over in the van.
We were our own street team.
Boxes of tapes,
we're passing them out,
passing out flyers,
trying to do every and anything we could
to get people to the event.
We didn't know where it was gonna go.
There was no blueprint.
And it was really just
all about having a platform
for players like ourselves,
who didn't make it to the NBA,
to get paid to play.
So every year we go
to one of those big trade shows.
We're running these videos
outside of our booth.
There's a massive crowd,
and they're coming to watch Volume 2.
We knew at that moment
that there was something here
that could be much bigger than we thought,
much faster than we thought.
Hot 97.5 ATL's
original hip-hop and R&B station,
I got the AND1 all-stars.
I mean, y'all seen the mixtape.
You seen them balling out of control.
They gonna be doing their thing today.
Go check them out.
It's going down from 4:30 to 6:00.
If you wanna become
the next streetball player,
come on down, this is your opportunity.
When we played in Atlanta,
that atmosphere was totally different.
Hot Sauce! Hot Sauce!
I canhear the crowd.
The crowd is saying, "Hot Sauce."
Yo, like, who is Hot Sauce?
I used to play
in the hoods in Georgia,
stealing balls
out of other people's yards.
Guess you had to put on
them new shoes? Boy, I'll tell you...
I had a job, but I never could keep a job.
My nine-to-five
was just working on my handles.
I was already a local legend.
Every day I played,
people just circled around the court.
After seeing Mixtape 1 and Mixtape 2,
I was hungry to be on the tapes.
But I didn't know what...
what it would take.
That's when I heard that they decided
to take the tour to Atlanta.
That's when my opportunity came.
I was in jail, you know, doing some
of this knucklehead teenage stuff.
But the day I got out of jail,
the next day was a tour game.
Oh!
It was like, "Yo. What is this?"
A lot of us are like,
"What is he doing?"
It was... It was amazing.
Oh!
When Hot Sauce did that...
Oh baby!
That was it.
One man took the idea of streetball,
and he just flipped it.
The flair and his image,
it forever changed the game.
Volume 3 became
"The Hot Sauce" tape.
We got the new star. It's done.
This is all about this kid Hot Sauce.
So we signed him.
From the first game on,
he was like an icon.
Once he came on the tour,
it was a whole nother animal.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, no more minivans.
It was three-million-dollar tour buses
decked out.
- Hot Sauce!
- Hot Sauce!
What's up, boy?
Look, it's the Sauce world now.
It's my show.
My favorite is Hot Sauce.
Hot Sauce is number one.
I like Hot Sauce. He my boy.
Hot Sauce was the guy
that everyone wanted to see.
Not just the inner-city youth,
but even the kids in the suburbs
watching his tape.
- He's crazy!
- I know.
Oh my God!
They were studying his moves.
- Y2K.
- Y2K.
The Flintstone.
The Boomerang.
Come on, Hot Sauce!
Then you see people
on the court trying to figure out,
"How did he do that?"
And then doing it themselves.
I was the kid that would watch
the Mixtapes over and over and over.
I could do a move, but it wouldn't
quite be like Hot Sauce, you know?
The way he handled the basketball
was so unique and innovative.
This guy, like, moves the crowd.
I wanted to captivate the crowd
like Hot Sauce.
At that time, I might've been the most
popular basketball player on Earth.
We got the AND1 streetballers.
They're gonna strut their stuff
out on the stage.
Let's start it out with Hot Sauce.
- You got a movie coming out in September.
- That was a great experience, right there.
As a business, we hadn't really tied
the Mixtape to sales.
But when we did Volume 3,
The Rise of Hot Sauce,
we partnered with Footaction.
The idea was
you have to buy any AND1 product,
and we're gonna give away a free Mixtape.
We have kids from the street.
They have a lot of fun.
And every... every, uh, consumer
that we talk to connects with them.
I'm at some store buying some things,
and I'm like, "Yo, that's me right there."
Everywhere I go,
I see our faces with our names.
AND1 is hot right now. Really hot.
These last two weeks,
sales have really been bumping.
And that was the first time
I remember Nike paying attention.
We got, like, three people,
and we're taking on Goliath.
And when we started to out-compete,
we knew we were gonna be
a legitimate threat.
I'll never forget.
Someone sent me a video
from Nike's sales meeting.
They had a picture
of AND1 in the crosshairs.
So it was like,
"Got it. Nike took dead aim at us."
We were just consistent
a top-two performing brand.
And we had the mixtape tour.
They didn't have anything like that.
That's like the heart of the game,
and we owned the heart of the game.
If you're Nike, you're risk-averse.
They don't wanna offend
a 50-year-old guy in middle America,
and they sell to a broad audience.
That's not who we are.
We're selling to core people
who are basketball players and know it.
We knew that Nike felt
they had to respond.
And we had no idea
what they were gonna do.
We got it. Let's roll sound.
Camera speeds.
We are at the ESPN building
in the "N-1" Mixtape Tour.
You know what that means?
They don't know us.
In 2003, ESPN came to us
and said they wanted to do
a TV show based around the tour.
Kind of like
when reality TV was growing up.
The basis of the ESPN show
was to find that next guy.
Who's that next level of talent?
It's basically like Survivor.
We'll go to Portland, Atlanta, Seattle.
And the winner,
the survivor, the ultimate pick,
is someone who gets an AND1 contract.
Well, another unique event
is returning to the capital city.
The AND1 Mixtape Tour team
is a collection of basketball characters
with nicknames and hip-hop playing hoops.
If you think you can run with these guys,
show up tomorrow from 4:00 to 6:30.
They're looking
for a few extra players to play.
We were always looking
for new talent, but no one stood out.
There wasn't much streetball
where I'm from in Keizer, Oregon.
It was looked down upon.
Coaches, they didn't really respect
that style of play.
Growing up,
I wasn't really as into the NBA.
I liked watching AND1.
And then I got to high school.
I was really small.
I kept getting cut from teams.
I had no college offers.
That was one of the biggest heartbreaks.
It wasn't a girlfriend
or anything like that.
And I just decided
to do something innovative
away from conventional basketball.
Away from the NBA.
Slam Magazine released
the routing of the tour.
I saw that Portland was on there.
So I put all that energy into training,
and I knew that this was my shot.
When I first got up there
to open run tryouts,
I had never seen
people all around the court.
Kids and people standing on the fences
to get a better view.
Might be nerve-wracking with the tryout.
We gotta pick three people.
We have to pick three people
to make it to play inside the arena!
When my shot came up,
I wasn't even thinking about passing.
Okay. Let me see them feet.
A lot of moves I pulled off,
people were like losing their minds.
Right here, my man in the blue.
I'm just excited to play with Hot Sauce.
All these dudes I've seen on tape.
I see them in real life, it's almost like...
it's just like a dream, you know?
Stepping inside the arena was so awesome.
And I'm like, "Man, we're here."
Like... "We made it!"
So that first game
playing against my idols was very surreal.
Crowd went crazy over a few moves.
They respected that I didn't back down.
I made the overall pick.
Gotta go with you.
So they asked me
to come on tour with them
as a contestant
in this nationwide contest.
It kind of blew me away.
I'm thinking my parents wouldn't let me,
but they were like, "Go ahead and do it."
Going into the tour,
I knew that with every city,
I definitely had a chance to go home.
Because at every open run,
a new player could knock somebody out.
So somebody was always coming,
and somebody was always going.
He's the first one,
and the first one's always the hardest
'cause we got 29 more cities.
- Yeah. I'm at a disadvantage, huh?
- Yeah.
For me, coming in there at 18,
I actually felt like a kid amongst adults.
Sometimes you have, like,
14, 15 people on the bench,
and you just try to make the best
with the time you got.
I said, "Yo, you know what?
A white boy on this team?"
"That's gonna be my godson.
I'mma adopt him."
I gave him his name as soon as I seen him.
That's my boy, my godson,
the Rocky Balboa of basketball,
The Professor!
Anything a talented white boy
could do in the hood
is amplified a million times.
But Professor is the real deal.
One of these three guys right here
will be sent home tonight.
Every elimination game,
magic would happen.
Godson! The Professor!
Putting it up! Oh yeah!
- Professor, I'll see you in Dallas.
- Okay.
- All right? Be good.
- All right.
It's a little bit of pressure,
but that's what it's about.
'Cause this contract
will change somebody's life.
What's up, man?
- Professor, you going home?
- No. I ain't going nowhere.
I'm just... Go out there. Do my thing.
I'm just gonna keep doing what I've done
every game that's got me to this point.
Yeah. Look at the hold on Headache.
Oh yeah! Oh yeah!
Yeah! Yeah!
Yeah, baby!
The last stop
was Linden, New Jersey.
This court right here
is basically the genesis.
This is where it started.
Go ahead and play to 21.
Then after that,
the team's gonna get together.
We're gonna make a decision.
It was AND1 players and
the contestants going against each other.
You can do it on the commercial circuit,
but can you do it in the hood?
Can you do it playing against us?
Even to start that game,
like, Sik Wit It got me crazy
on some fake pass.
I mean, I was like, "Dang."
Like, I know I'm definitely behind now.
And then a couple plays later,
I'd block a shot.
Hit some shots.
Played really well,
but so did the other guys.
Oh!
Professor. Hot Sauce.
Hot Sauce. Professor.
- That's the game!
- That's it!
When they go to the final vote,
I didn't think I would get the votes.
I wanna tell y'all congratulations
that the man
to get this contract is gonna be...
El Professor.
- Okay?
- Thanks, man.
Gonna be that man.
I couldn't believe it.
It was a dream come true.
I had put in all this hard work,
and now I'm an AND1 streetballer.
Checking out the first episode.
Looks pretty good.
When the TV show on ESPN came out,
I wasn't, quite frankly,
even sure if people would watch.
Yo, the line is not down
the block. It is the block.
Like, open up the door, bam!
Shane, Shane, Shane! Man, man, man!
Wow. This is something.
People were going crazy.
We out here, mad love. Mad love out here.
- Give me your headband! Give me something!
- Give me your do-rag!
The AND1 Mixtape Tour
is coming to town this weekend.
- Who's that guy, The Professor?
- Isn't he something?
The fanfare was surreal
because it happened for me overnight.
Thank you, sweetie!
America loves this kid.
The ratings is going out of this world.
After being with the AND1 tour,
he had cornrows like a black dude.
He had the diamond studs in.
Before the game, he was talking like Opie.
After the game, he was Eminem.
It turned into the Jackson Five.
That's Michael Jackson.
I love you, Professor!
He's only 11.
I remember his first groupie.
I knew that would change his life.
Hold on.
I was a really shy kid in high school,
but I definitely embraced it, you know?
The ESPN show, it just put us out there
on a whole nother level.
NBA players
and celebrities, they was loving it.
In case you didn't see that move,
rewind it back.
AND1 Mixtape Tour! I love this game!
At that point, we started to charge money
for people to come to a game,
and we were selling out NBA venues.
A couple
of arenas we went to,
we had more fans in that arena
than they had for their own home team.
I'll never forget.
We're in the club,
and I see the Detroit Pistons
just won their second NBA championship,
and I'm telling the DJ,
"Yo, Chauncey Billups is here."
Chauncey Billups,
a likely candidate for the MVP Award.
And then the DJ looked at me and says,
"Man, fuck them. Y'all here."
You know about it.
You heard about it.
Now we're taking it to the next level.
Now it's time to take it across the water.
This is a global invasion.
Our first international tour,
I mean, it was shocking.
It was actually bigger
than the United States.
Like, actually way bigger.
Make some noise, Tokyo!
This is
the AND1 Mixtape Tour.
Right now, Australian zoo.
Me and my homie the koala right now.
Now, everything was first class.
We're staying in the Ritz-Carlton.
These guys was rock star shit.
So, dudes used to go
to the autographs
'cause chicks was gonna fucking swarm.
Go to Hot Sauce.
I love him.
AND1, baby.
We had guys come up with their wives.
There's nothing to sign,
and she pulls her titty out,
and it's like,
"You want me to sign your wife's titty?"
AND1 tour?
We're partying, drinking, smoking.
They had a camera.
They be like, "Yo. We got the night cam."
And I'm like, "What y'all looking at?"
It was all of them having
a massive orgy with some bad chick!
I was like, "Yo! I seen her at the game!"
"Damn!"
He lying.
No, just...
He just joking again.
The AND1 groove,
it was so fast that nobody could stop us.
The AND1 Mixtape Tour,
presented by Mountain Dew.
Now we've got sponsors coming in.
Took it from the streets,
to the arenas, to video games.
My team showed me a stat one day
that Streetball was the number one
male-rated TV show on ESPN.
I'm like, "Fuck you, man. Like, stop."
And they said,
"Streetball is the number one TV show
for male teens on ESPN."
I was like, "Holy F."
What's up?
With the Mixtape Tour
becoming a huge breakout success...
We went from 15 to 70 people
within a two or three-year period.
We made a decision for a long-term space.
So, the office
had to have a basketball court.
Now we're a big national brand,
how do we expand our footprint?
So we decided
we're gonna take one more shot on shoes.
The first Marbury shoe was ugly,
heavy, overpriced.
And that problem lied with me,
as the person
who was overseeing that product.
I was always giving Jay notes, like,
"Hey, Jay, you should do this.
Jay, you should do that."
And Jay's like, "Tom, I am sick of you
telling me the stuff you could do."
"Do you wanna give it a shot?"
I was maybe 25, and I was like,
"Yeah." Like, I didn't have a doubt.
I had a really clear idea
of what a basketball shoe should be.
Shoes should be light.
They should be fast.
They should be airy, like running shoes.
And we should use meshes and composites.
My first idea was slip-on shoes,
called the Post-Game.
I mean,
it's a whole other level now.
They're bringing it,
and then we're loving it.
I mean, keep doing what you're doing.
When I was a kid, people would wear
two different shoes just for fashion.
That was the inspiration for the Tai Chi.
Visual-wise, you see the different colors.
Like you're wearing different shoes.
- Hey! What's up?
- What's up?
I remember the feeling of shock
when those Tai Chis flew off the shelves.
This is a really dope look.
Whoo! Fire on these.
One of the best basketball shoes, period.
It became
AND1's all-time best-selling shoe.
That product went from 0 to 65 million
in 18 months.
It started
with the trash-talking shirts.
Now it's on a whole other level.
Every shoe company, we're coming.
You see the neighborhood hustlers
and drug dealers.
They're wearing the AND1.
We had styles that would either
outsell Nike or be number two to them.
You know,
if you're going up against Nike,
they have 50 times
more people in every department.
And when they go and make
a marquee shoe for Michael Jordan,
they may take several years.
And we have,
like, five dudes on design.
Sometimes Tom would be
in his office for, like, three days.
I logged long hours,
but I really loved it.
That energy was infectious
to the rest of us.
Jordan's have sprung
from the creative partnership
of shoe designer Tinker Hatfield.
In a time where designers
become their own celebrities,
Tom was super low-key,
never wanted to have his name out there.
But he was one
of the most incredibly creative designers.
I'm running my little kingdom.
Just gonna generate high-quality shoes,
and if I keep doing my job,
we're gonna beat Nike.
Playing at Madison Square Garden,
the mecca.
You know that I was hyped.
The anticipation was crazy.
I'm looking around like,
"Damn, this is what
it would have been like in the NBA?"
We're in their same locker room.
It's the same atmosphere.
Welcome to New York City!
Took me 25 years to get here.
I'm ready to cry.
I'm feeling this. I'm really feeling this.
Out of all the games
we wanted to win,
we wanted to win at Madison Square Garden
because at the end of the day,
you definitely want to win where you from.
I'm actually
on the NBA floor, scared as hell.
But you would never know it,
walking around shaking your head,
like, "Yeah, Sauce, you about to kill,"
and deep down inside,
I'm scared as a motherfucker, boy.
I'm scared as hell.
You had dreams
of going to the NBA,
you already felt like you made it
because here's your name
on the big scoreboard.
Here's your name in bright lights.
I'm playing in front
of thousands of people.
Boy, when we played on to that
old-school Madison Square Garden court?
That bring a tear to your eye.
That emotional.
That was our bragging rights
to our family, to our friends on,
"No. We didn't make the NBA,
but we made it."
Are you ready?
Professor! Alley-oop!
Oh yeah! Yeah!
It was ridiculous.
I couldn't believe it.
It took so much time
and energy to get here.
Oh baby!
It's Sizzle and The Pharmacist.
The New York game was a competitive game.
It was unlike
all of most of our other games.
Jump shot, 15-footer, nothing
but the bottom of the net on.
Helicopter. Looking at it.
Bounce pass. Watch this!
Oh man!
In Madison Square Garden,
if there's enough excitement,
the building shakes.
Half the block shakes.
Looking to change. Professor.AO!
No matter who's on the floor,
we gotta keep this intensity.
That jump shot is good!
Oh gravy!
This is The Main Event! Man.
You done hit a jump shot
in front of 19,000 people at the mecca.
You can't get no better than that.
I met AND1
when I was 26 years old.
That bulk of my NBA days was over,
but my story, in a nutshell,
is that I never gave up.
New York City!
If you like what you see,
then make some noise!
Let's give it up
for both these ball clubs!
You got it. You can get it.
- Tell me about playing it, though.
- Hey, man...
That shit was fun, man.
Let's get in, man.
- One, two, three, AND1.
- AND1!
So we're ready for the first
slam dunk competition in three years.
The last time...
Never forget watching
the dunk contest with Vince Carter,
who later signed with Nike.
...and here is the man
that this crowd wants to see.
Vince Carter with his first dunk!
Let's go home!
And Vince has maybe
the best performance ever
in a dunk contest in AND1 Tai Chis.
Watching it blew our minds.
We pretty much lose our cool, right?
It's like, "This is awesome."
And he did things
that nobody thought were even possible.
While wearing our product.
We were like, "Thank you so much
for wearing our shoes for free."
That was the peak of AND1, you know?
And I think it was literally like
two or three months later.
I turned on the TV.
I heard a ball bouncing. Boom.
Ba-boom. Ba-boom, boom, boom.
And I see the logo.
The first word
that entered my brain was "fuck."
It's Nike.
Freestyle is all about hip-hop,
streetball, and self-expression.
They've co-opted
our streetball positioning
with this incredibly
beautifully shot TV campaign.
I mean, that was a good spot.
It's got an attitude. Hip-hop beat to it.
But it's Nike,
and they're better than that.
They're copying us.
That TV commercial
achieved more in 30 seconds
than we did
over five years of the Mixtape.
Gotta be the shoes. Nike surging.
Investors came running back to Nike.
It's living up to its motto. "Just Do It."
Just taking over
this whole streetball game.
They took our movement,
put a nice shiny satin bow on it
with some glitter, and called it theirs.
They basically crushed us
in the snap of a finger.
In a fight for glory,
heart is mandatory.
Nike Underground's King of the Court.
Sundays at 8:00 pm, 7:00 central on MTV2.
I don't know if they spent 10 million,
20 million, 50 million behind it.
I know when I saw
that TV commercial that I realized,
"Shit. We don't have time
to wait. Let's go."
"We gotta make some decisions.
We gotta move."
Stop calling me.
I'm sick of this damn phone, man.
That was worse.
I'm on TV!
How would you respond
to someone who felt that the company
built its wealth
off the back of the players?
How would I respond
to somebody feeling like the players
was exploited by the company?
I would say, "I know the company
was making a lot of money."
After the games,
you see the merchandise booth.
Mad units with they faces on it, right?
We sold out again.
Players be like,
"Yo. I ain't get paid for that."
It was the downfall of everything.
We're at the warehouse.
We receive, ship, and pack,
uh, the AND1 product for everyone.
Up at 8:00
just to meet the people in the warehouse.
Courtesy.
How many courtesy things are we gonna do?
This company was making
millions and millions of dollars.
But we the ones
who make the money for y'all.
It started becoming a thing
that we're gettin' pizza,
but we go on a staff bus,
they got everything.
They got filetmignon,
calamari, seltzer water,
all the good shit.
What are you eating, Shane?
Before the game, uh,
Buca shrimpparmesan.
A lot of guys would say,
"You got to take care of us."
"Why are we not eating?"
"Wouldn't be no tour
if there were no players."
Because you're not wrong.
Like, y'all should be eating,
but you don't gotta be
so aggressive with it.
I'm throwing it...
I'm throwing it on their bus.
Uh-oh.
It's over now.
He throws a hot pizza
on the tour manager's face!
Tell her what I said.
Tell her she got one more time.
I'll smack the shit out of her.
I'm dead serious.
How did you guys decide
which players would be making
a certain amount of money over others?
Not me. The only... The only conversation
I ever got involved with
was with Sauce and his agent.
It's my hometown. Still go down.
He says, "Hey, Seth.
You're a really nice guy."
I think to myself,
"Yes, I am, motherfucker."
He says, "Hey. Sauce wants this,
or he's gonna go to Reebok."
I was like, "Let him go to Reebok, bro."
Reebok's gonna kill that dude's career.
Nobody wants to be with Reebok.
It was interesting 'cause
there really wasn't a pay structure.
Main Event was like 90 to 100.
And AO was around that, 80 to 90.
Half Man was between like 60 and 75.
We had lower-tier guys
that were getting like 15.
But that's for three months of work.
Because by the time September
rolled around, there is no more tours.
But we would judge guys on
who got the most "oohs" and "ahs,"
and obviously, Hot Sauce was the man.
It was plenty of moments
of dudes feeling frustrated,
of not making enough money
as somebody else was making.
But on the AND1 tours, best to not
tell nobody how much you getting,
but they gonna say it
because they like stunting on each other.
Let's go, baby.
Dollars, dollars, dollars. Yeah.
I had to get
something new for 2005, you know.
A little bling. A little something.
This is Sizzle's crib.
You know what I'm saying?
This... this is my second crib.
I got two cribs, whatever.
I remember Hot Sauce
had a car that could talk.
Greetings, Hot Sauce.
People hated that shit.
I tried to never get into any money talks.
I knew that I was sort of the new guy,
and I had a lot of marketability,
and I felt like my salary was great.
And action.
There was definitely
a little jealousy rolling around
from players
being promoted more than others.
You see cats.
They had one or two big games.
They are "streetball legends."
We was grinding like... nine, ten years
before we even knew whatAND1 was.
Oh man, don't get me wrong.
Professor's a heck of a basketball player,
but, um, I question sometimes his motive.
It doesn't really
bother me. I mean,
as long as we're out on tour having fun,
I really don't care what they think.
Honestly.
The rock star started
getting into everybody's head.
And everybody started
thinking about the money.
You... You stop acting like that, man.
Damn, man, fuck!
How you figure that?
Where you getting the check from?
If I wasn't here,
I'd be out playing and making money.
This tour? It's breaking me.
I'm not making money.
My contract ain't shit, man.
I'm telling y'all niggas.
It ain't shit, yo! It ain't shit!
I'm eating off this.
I'm making plenty of money.
I don't know about you, man.
My living expenses ain't like yours.
You live in luxury, nigga.
You live in luxury.
I'm still living in the projects, nigga!
We got too many all-stars.
When you create a monster,
you gotta know how to tame a monster.
The animosity against each other
boiled up to a point
where it was becoming bigger
and bigger and bigger.
- Why you don't ask me?
- 'Cause I'm not...
Why not? I ask the coach a question!
- That's why.
- I don't disrespect you.
- I'm not talking to you!
- Eat a dick! Eat a dick, nigga!
I ain't trying to hear that shit, man!
- Who's a bitch, Zig? Who?
- You!
Bro, don't get this shit.
We look like clowns.
That shit's getting crazy.
Yo, why y'all grabbing me?
Why you grabbing me, though, man?
When I took over footwear,
we had a phenomenal business success.
We were doing 90% of the sales.
At that point, I felt like
the whole company was
on my shoulders to a degree.
So Tom decided
to move over to Taiwan
because he could influence
the quality of the product much better
sitting there at the factory.
I was worried
because Tom's an incredibly hard worker.
I probably worked
364 days a year on average.
I just lived in,
like, airports and hotels,
switching 12 time zones every six weeks.
Without me realizing it,
it became too much.
So if you look
at the drawing that's right here...
Ended up getting diagnosed
with a digestive disorder.
I lost like 20 or 30 pounds.
I remember Seth and Jay called me
at 2:00, 3:00 in the morning Asian time.
"How's it going? What's next?"
And I just lost it.
"That's it.
I am sick of you chirping at me."
"I'm doing what I'm doing.
You know, you guys can't do this."
And I hung up.
I know Tom did feel
some pressures from outside,
and particularly from me as the person
to whom he directly reported.
I kind of ended up pulling back
into my own little shell.
I lost friendships during that time.
I just ended up a mess,
physically and emotionally.
For the first time in my life,
it wasn't fun.
It wasn't always easy,
but it had always been fun.
So Tom comes into my office.
He says, "Seth, I'm resigning."
I'm like, "Wait. What?"
Like, that's impossible.
After Tom left us, we cratered.
We went from over 200 million in sales
to, you know, 130.
I had to lay off 20% of the staff.
We knew we only had
a small window to sell the company
in order to maximize the financial value.
Paoli, Pennsylvania.
The 2005 minicamp.Mixtape Tour!
AO!
I just got word
from the people at AND1
that we're to be
on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
Growing up, to be on Sports Illustrated,
it's like the king of sports magazines.
It's going down. It's official.
Right. We gotta frame this right here.
Before the beginning
of the 2005 tour,
we didn't get a call right away
to renew our contracts.
So it was confusing.
We was just frustrated
with the way everything was going on.
So many stories has been going around.
All of a sudden,
the staff rounded us up in a room.
So I'm like, "Heck is going on here?"
He's like, "Yo, just chill."
And they told us, "Hey.
There's going to be a major buy-out,
and things aren't gonna be the same."
It was unexpected.
It was gone. That was it.
No notice.
No notice.
The players are so prideful
that I don't think they will ever tell you
that they felt down.
At the end of the day, we mint.
But I think about the audacity for them
not sitting with none of the legends
when that shit ended.
It should be a success story.
AND1 was huge.
We created something from nothing.
We sold the business,
and we all made a lot of money,
but the sale, in the end,
was so hard for me physically,
and then it was also just,
like, really sad.
There was infighting
and some fracturing of relationships,
and emotionally
it's still, like, bittersweet.
Definitely.
You may recognize his face
from ESPN Streetball!
Shane "The Dribble Machine" Woney!
Court Jesters is a semi-pro league version
of the... of the Harlem Globetrotters.
This... This ain't like the Garden.
Nothing like the Garden, baby.
I may see a guy that recognizes me,
and they ask me a question like,
"What you doing working here, man?
You was on TV."
That right there is a heartbreaker.
Every day I wake up saying,
"Man. I hope something happens
where they say, 'You know what?
Shane, we need you just for today.'"
This is what I think.
We didn't get paid what we was worth.
How about that? How about that? Our worth.
They came to the hood and took everything.
The hood gives them their opinions
or whatever, "Y'all should do this."
They run right upstairs and do it,
and then they sell it
and don't give nothing back.
Like I always said.
It's called "Poverty Pimping."
People say, "Well, corporate America
is trying to take advantage of you
and make money."
That's what the outside world perceives,
and being on the inside,
that wasn't the case.
We were trying
to catch lightning in a bottle
and do something cool.
If we're guilty of anything, it was that.
The contracts that we signed
with them weren't insignificant.
We paid some of the Mixtape players
more than we paid other NBA players.
They signed us to a contract,
now it's up to us to agree to that number.
We don't have to agree to that number.
The money they offered me?
Heck yeah, I'm gonna take it.
I don't care
what y'all got to say about it.
"Oh, you're not loyal. Shit is..."
Loyal to what?
That loyalty ain't gonna give me no check.
I know that.
Did they love us for what we did? Yeah.
But did they respect us?
Answer me that.
One of my biggest regrets.
Had we thought of the Mixtape players
like employees
as opposed to endorsed athletes,
then we could have given them
some stock options.
And that would have resulted
in some incremental wealth
going to all those players.
Our lives didn't matter to them.
- I think it's a... I think it's a...
- Our lives didn't matter, man.
- Main. Our lives... My man...
- Maybe.
I... Listen, listen, listen.
My last final year with AND1,
I asked that man for $16,000
to put my son in school for a contract,
and then they told me,
"I cannot help you."
After all that shit we did.
I... I don't remember it.
I'm sad that I don't remember it.
It is possible Shane spoke directly to me,
um, and if... and if that's the case
and we were not able to take care of him
and his kid, I feel terrible.
Honestly, we can say they robbed us,
but the money
will never, ever supersede the experience.
Having a passport
and traveling from country to country,
it's educational.
I've always felt
so indebted to AND1
for what it's provided me.
There's things I probably wouldn't do
because my mom and dad didn't have
the resources for me to travel.
That's big-time, man.
This church is crazy.
AND1 created opportunities
that you was never getting.
I would have never
thought of
leaving the city, of leaving Brooklyn.
Bro.
I didn't know it was gonna be like this.
I did not know Tokyo
and all these other cities
were gonna be like this.
AND1 basketball allowed a guy,
Waliyy Dixon, from Linden, New Jersey,
make some of our dreams come true.
The Pharmacist!
AND1 has allowed everyone
to think outside the box about this game.
Their stuff was for all people, you know,
not just people that make it
in the professional world.
Butler's gonna trigger
the inbound. It's Alston.
This is for the win! It's good!
Are you kidding me?
AND1 changed the game.
The NBA is now
more entertaining and free-going.
- Oh no, he didn't!
- What a play by Paul!
You seesome of the guys right now, today,
we're talking about superstars,
do some of the moves...
Curry.
Oh, pretty fake! Pulls up.
They don't have to give props.
We know who it came from.
Footwork! Left foot. Right foot.
Bang, bang, bang, bang. Finish.
Main, the legacy, when you say that...
Was it... Was it big, and did we make it?
Main, of course we made it
because when you walking down
the street with your son
and a stranger tell your son,
"Do you know who your father is?"
That... That doesn't happen
to ordinary people.
At the end of the day,
we will always be,
"Yo, that's them dudes from AND1."
- One, two, three, AND1!
- AND1
Allegations against one basketball ref
of betting the outcome of games
is rocking the NBA.
Man, did I fuck my life up.
Just like
the feel-good hit of the summer,
the Manti Te'o story isn't real.
Cruel, twisted folks.
It was the longest winning streak
in history of sport.
This is the finest day
in the history of Australian sports!
AND1 was making millions of dollars.
But did they respect us?
AND1 basketball, baby!
Shut your fucking mouth.
Keep it between us.
Stick to the fucking story.
It could not get
any stranger than this one...
Donaghy is under investigation...
Front page news all over town.
She physically did not existoutside of
being Manti Te'o's dead girlfriend.
I was like, "Boy, that would be
fucking crazy if it weren't true!"
It's New York City.
Street basketball.
This is our culture.
This is what we do, B.
This is our job.
Yo, back in the day,
it was like a big block party.
The atmosphere, the energy.
It was just special.
It's jam-packed out here.
The players are putting on a show,
and the crowds are loving it.
But AND1,
they just took it to another level.
AND1 basketball
is sweeping the nation,
becoming one
of the biggest basketball brands.
Tokyo, Japan. Venezuela. Brazil.
You know, it was pandemonium.
The competition is heating up.
AND1's newest sneakers
are jumping off the shelves.
The line is not down the block.
It is the block.
AND1? They had
the best ballplayers in street basketball.
And the best players get the best names.
Like Skip 2 My Lou.
The Main Event.
The Main Event!
Shane. The Dribbling Machine.
Get your Superman on, Shane!
We talking about Hot to the Sauce.
We talking about The Professor.
AND1 is taking on
the titans of the industry
with no plans of backing down.
A lot of people today say,
"Whatever happened to AND1?"
I don't know what happened to it.
And I was a part of it.
Stranger's arms
Reach out to me
'Cause they know
I'm so lonely
Then my mind
Goes back to you
And your sweet love
Sees me through
I could never
have started a business
without my education at Wharton,
but after, like, the second day there,
a couple things
became pretty evident to me.
All my classmates were totally focused
on what they wanted to do,
and I had no idea.
I had probably spent
four to eight hours hooping
for every hour that I spent studying.
That summer,
I did a free internship
in investment banking.
I was like,
"This sucks. I'm not doing this."
"I wanna do something that I love."
"If every day I get to wake up
thinking about basketball,
that will be a great day."
That was the genesis
to go start my own business.
I know the limitations of my abilities.
I was like,
"There's no shot I can do this by myself."
"I gotta find a partner."
Seth and I met each other
in seventh grade.
He came to me in college with this idea.
So I said, "Yes,"
'cause it'll be a lot more fun
to do any business with your best friend.
Seth talked about this young guy
that he met while he was playing ball
and that I had to meet Tom.
When you play ball with somebody,
you learn a lot about them really quickly.
Tom has a 3.96 GPA at Wharton undergrad.
I'm like, "How's that possible?"
"Like, the dude's playing basketball
seven hours a day."
And he said, "Just so you're aware,
Tom's kind of a strange cat."
He's, like, you know, looking down,
not making eye contact, talking real low.
But Tom was brilliant.
And he was really the genius behind AND1.
I grew up
in small towns in New England.
We moved, like, three times.
I was a shy, quiet kid,
and basketball was the thing
that let me connect with people.
So, I talked to Tom, and I'm like,
"Yo, man. Um, you might be interested
in pursuing a basketball business?"
"What are you doing next year?"
I had no professional skills.
I had only held very low jobs.
You know, dishwasher, busboy.
So when I heard they were working
on a basketball startup,
that was a lifeline for me, right?
'Cause I just wanted
to stay connected to the game,
and I wanted to wear shorts
to work.
We had the meeting
at a pizza parlor,
and we were trying to figure out
what's the identity
of the brand that we would bring.
When you make a bucket,
and you get fouled,
'cause you know the basket
is going in, you say, "And one."
You don't say, "And one,"
you scream, "And one."
- That's the ultimate way to talk shit.
- It's like, "And one, motherfucker!"
And then I had this idea.
We can put trash talking on a T-shirt.
So I wrote up 30 slogans,
and I was like, "This is our first shirt."
"I'm sorry I thought you could play."
"I'm the bus driver.
I take everyone to school."
"Wear a collar. You just got dogged."
Probably the most famous one, which is,
"Your game is as ugly as your girl."
There were, like, six more,
and they were all like the very first time
I sat down to write trash talk.
But it was really the culmination
of 15 years of playing all the time.
So when we started with AND1,
we didn't know how merchandising worked,
how retail worked.
We didn't know anything.
So we were creating our own culture,
and sometimes that was a beautiful thing,
and sometimes it was Lord of the Flies.
Two Wharton degrees and a Stanford degree,
and we're selling T-shirts
out of the back of a hatchback.
The first year we lost money.
But I remember the feeling
of someone saying,
"I wanna pay you for your shirts."
I was like, "Wow."
And people loved the trash-talking shirts.
So we felt like, you know,
we might have something here.
And then we ended up getting an order
for three or four styles from Foot Locker.
Holy cow. We just got a $13,000 order.
The other stores see kids walking around
with our shirts, and they're calling us.
For the first time,
we're not calling people.
People are calling us.
Okay. We got something here.
Like, this is gonna go.
Turning into some big business
for a T-shirt company.
This kind of fashion,
not the kind of thing you see every day,
but they're on to something.
Come on. We wanna do it, don't we?
Well, I was looking forward
to playing basketball,
but I guess that's out the window.
You want some of me...
Within that first year,
we ended up doing
about 1.6 million in sales.
Then the challenge becomes,
"Okay. What's next though?"
We knew we wanted
to be a billion-dollar company.
So from day one,
we were competing with only one brand.
Do it!
Do it!
Just do it!
Nike was a company we emulated the most.
And they associate themselves
with great talent.
Here we have the, uh,
the new, improved Air Jordan.
We want to make the number one
basketball brand in the world.
We can't do that unless we do shoes.
That's where the money was at,
and Nike had
that whole market on lockdown.
High-tech shoes and slick ads
get more and more sophisticated.
Nike is just doing it.
Fourth-quarter profits
improves to 126 million dollars.
When you bring the right athlete
with the right advertising,
it creates a very strong situation
in the marketplace.
So now, we need to go
and get our own Michael Jordan.
We couldn't start with B-level guys.
If we're gonna do this,
we need to go get an A-level guy.
Marbury behind the back to...
There's no "ifs"
for Stephon Marbury from Georgia Tech.
He says he's ready to move on
and rub shoulders with Magic and Michael.
Everyone in basketball knew Steph.
He was an electric basketball player.
With the fourth pick
in the 1996 NBA Draft,
the Milwaukee Bucks selectStephon Marbury
from Georgia Tech University.
This man is a can't miss.
We effectively
bet the company on Steph.
We said, "We want you to be a ten-year
endorsement deal,"
which is unheard of for a kid
who had never played a minute
of professional basketball.
From Georgia Tech,
number 3, Stephon Marbury!
For opening night,
myself and Seth are literally courtside,
and we're so excited.
The shoes are hitting the water,
coming into Foot Locker.
The TV ads are running.
Who knew that all we'd been building
was gonna go up in smoke that night.
I can still see it.
Steph goes up, and I'm like, "uh-oh."
Oh my goodness.
I just broke out
in a cold sweat seeing that.
Our faces are white.
Oh my God. We just ran
a "breaking ankles" TV campaign
for Stephon Marbury.
And Stephon just broke his ankle
wearing our shoes.
A week before
the shoes are supposed to hit.
Stephon Marbury
being helped off the floor...
I usually recover real quickly,
but being that this is a bit more severe,
I'm really hurting, you know,
knowing that I can't play.
And so, we're in the tunnel,
and we seeSteph's agent looking at us
with just, like, daggers in his eyes.
Someone on his team says,
"I might haveStephon go on national TV
and dump your shoes in the garbage can."
And I literally just said, "Bro,
it's been real, but I think we're done."
"I can't figure out any way
we're not gonna go broke right here."
We wanted
to play the endorsement game,
wanted to out-Nike Nike, and we failed.
Two weeks later, we got this tape.
It had been around our office.
There were a couple of interns,
and they were always watching it.
The video blew our minds.
I was like, "Holy shit."
I've seen a lot of basketball.
I've never seen this before.
And in this game
was 15-year-old Rafer Alston,
who was called "Skip 2 My Lou."
Show some love for my homeboy,
Skip 2 My Lou!
New York streetball style,
it's a style
where you just let your imagination flow.
It was more poetry in motion.
It was more trickery and sorcery.
I always wanted to deceive you.
A third of what he's doing
is illegal right here.
But I don't really think it matters
because it's so unique.
Streetball is hip-hop,
graffiti, breakdancing,
all-in-one.
And the crowd is our music.
Winning has nothing to do with streetball.
Your team,
they could lose,
but if you've electrified the crowd,
they were satisfied.
The court is the canvas.
The style of play
that you have is your ink.
And the player that you is is the artist.
A lot of us come up through the inner city
in single-parent homes.
My mom had me when she was 15.
I grew up in one
of the biggest projects in the Bronx.
I never really had a steady home
to practice my skills.
It wasn't about sports,
it was about survival.
The first time I touched a basketball,
I probably was maybe 11, 12?
Just didn't really have
the basketball skills or basketball IQ.
But my dad
would take me out to different parks,
and that's where
I honed a lot of my skills.
Streetball, it's a way of life here.
It wasn't about money.
Because that was the NBA.
Swish picks up Dumars,
who lets it fly,
and he hits it again for three!
Where we came from,
a lot of people don't have
that type of money
to go see an NBA game
at the Madison Square Garden.
So for us, Rucker was
the main stage in New York City.
Streetball was born there.
When they first took me to watch a game,
I was little and skinny.
I made my way to the front,
and I just sat right there on the court.
I'm watching my idols play.
Pee Wee Kirkland,
Joe Hammond, Earl Manigault,
Dr. J.
People that were seven,
eight blocks away, you could hear them.
You knew where everyone was at.
Most people at some point realized,
"I might not make D1.
I might not make the NBA."
But you can still go play
at the playground.
So I realized what's on this tape.
It's just pure, like, self-expression.
And that's when I started to understand
this is the essence of who we are.
We're playground.
We're grassroots.
We're everyman basketball.
We're attitude,
we're raw expression, we're art.
And this is a strategic position
that Nike can't touch.
We interrupt this program
to bring you the following Special Report.
Good morning
and thank you for joining us.
It's the day Bulls fans around the world
have been dreading for years.
Michael Jordan is scheduled
to make a big announcement
at the United Center any minute now.
I am here to... to announce my retirement
from the game of basketball.
Now, all of a sudden,
with Jordan being out
and there being no games on
because of the NBA lockout,
there was a void in the basketball market.
There was this opportunity
for new content that didn't exist before.
As a business,
how can we take that experience
of a streetball game at theRucker
and make it something
that actually fills that void?
One of the young guys that we had hired
to do product placement in New York,
a guy named Set Free,
who was a DJ, producer, hip-hop artist.
He says, "We should make that a mixtape
and just give it away."
It ended up being this collection
of footage plus unreleased music.
This is Sway
from theWorld Famous Wake Up Show,
and y'all are about to view
the AND1 Mixtape on video.
Coming to you live. Keep it banging!
AND1 pressed 50,000 old-school VHS tapes.
We gave away through the street teams,
clubs, courts, neighborhood barbershops.
And it was like the new crack.
It went rampant in the inner city.
Each person sharing it with another
dozen or two dozen or three dozen people.
We had this insane viral marketing
in thepre-internet age.
After Mixtape came out,
I was like a hero in New York City.
Before I know it,
I have 20 people walking behind me.
"Oh man, Skip. I wanna walk with you.
Can I walk inside the park with you?"
Look out for Volume 2, y'all!
AND1 Mixtape!
By Monday, we had calls coming in
from people who had lost their minds.
We all gathered around the phone,
just listening to all these messages.
Yo, that mixtape was sick.
Killed it, AND1!
Skip 2 My Lou!
Hold on.
Need another one, please!
Where is Volume 2?
Immediately the question was,
"How do we do another one?"
So we created the idea
for the AND1 Mixtape Tour.
We're gonna put together the best
playground pickup basketball team we can.
Get your best five,
and we have our best five
and let's put on a game.
But let's not just do it
one time in New York.
Let's start going city to city.
I was brought on at AND1
as a tour manager
and headed up Player Relations.
The idea was, "Hey.
We're just gonna do this five-city tour."
Really to get content for more mixtapes.
Shane!
I just got kicked out
of Rutgers University 'cause of my grades.
Now I'm back at home. My son was four
or five. You know, I needed a job.
I get a call from AND1.
"Yo, you think you'll
pull a game off in your hometown?"
First phone call I made was Shane.
Playing
streetball, butit's in my thirties,
and the NBA was far-fetched for me.
I'll never forget.
I'm standing on the corner,
and Main calls me.
And it was going through one end
out the other end.
The only thing
that really caught my attention was,
"AND1's gonna give us free sneakers,
free shorts to bust some dude's ass?
Let's do it."
Welcome,
ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls.
My name is Duke Tango.
And sit back and relax
because this is how we roll.
Duke Tango's
the godfather announcer of streetball.
If Duke Tango gave you your name,
he's solidifying who you are
as that streetballer.
Main said, "Yo, would you like
to be involved with this?"
And I looked at him like,
"Who would say no to that?"
When you see that crowd around the corner,
and then you walk into that park
and see thousands of people?
Ain't no way in the world
you can be prepared for that.
Well, I say, "Yo, Main and Shane,
let's go to Philadelphia and get AO."
"Let's get this Headache."
Then I got Black Widow,
and Half Man Half Amazing.
And so, AND1 did the first-ever contracts
with streetball players.
The first stop
is Linden, New Jersey.
We brought the camera crew
to film both crowd and game.
I don't even think I really knew
what filmmaking was back then.
I just knew I had a camera in my hand,
and I'm bringing the audience with me.
I just tried to capture everything
that I felt and everything that I saw
because it was unbelievable.
This is Chris Hightower's itinerary.
- This is a Hightower original?
- Official.
When I went on tour.
they gave me a corporate car,
six grand in cash,
and was like, "Make it work."
We stayed
in shit hotels. We shared rooms.
We're playing
in front of a crowd of 100 people.
And now I'm in a minivan
sitting in the chair from the house
that's sliding all over in the van.
We were our own street team.
Boxes of tapes,
we're passing them out,
passing out flyers,
trying to do every and anything we could
to get people to the event.
We didn't know where it was gonna go.
There was no blueprint.
And it was really just
all about having a platform
for players like ourselves,
who didn't make it to the NBA,
to get paid to play.
So every year we go
to one of those big trade shows.
We're running these videos
outside of our booth.
There's a massive crowd,
and they're coming to watch Volume 2.
We knew at that moment
that there was something here
that could be much bigger than we thought,
much faster than we thought.
Hot 97.5 ATL's
original hip-hop and R&B station,
I got the AND1 all-stars.
I mean, y'all seen the mixtape.
You seen them balling out of control.
They gonna be doing their thing today.
Go check them out.
It's going down from 4:30 to 6:00.
If you wanna become
the next streetball player,
come on down, this is your opportunity.
When we played in Atlanta,
that atmosphere was totally different.
Hot Sauce! Hot Sauce!
I canhear the crowd.
The crowd is saying, "Hot Sauce."
Yo, like, who is Hot Sauce?
I used to play
in the hoods in Georgia,
stealing balls
out of other people's yards.
Guess you had to put on
them new shoes? Boy, I'll tell you...
I had a job, but I never could keep a job.
My nine-to-five
was just working on my handles.
I was already a local legend.
Every day I played,
people just circled around the court.
After seeing Mixtape 1 and Mixtape 2,
I was hungry to be on the tapes.
But I didn't know what...
what it would take.
That's when I heard that they decided
to take the tour to Atlanta.
That's when my opportunity came.
I was in jail, you know, doing some
of this knucklehead teenage stuff.
But the day I got out of jail,
the next day was a tour game.
Oh!
It was like, "Yo. What is this?"
A lot of us are like,
"What is he doing?"
It was... It was amazing.
Oh!
When Hot Sauce did that...
Oh baby!
That was it.
One man took the idea of streetball,
and he just flipped it.
The flair and his image,
it forever changed the game.
Volume 3 became
"The Hot Sauce" tape.
We got the new star. It's done.
This is all about this kid Hot Sauce.
So we signed him.
From the first game on,
he was like an icon.
Once he came on the tour,
it was a whole nother animal.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, no more minivans.
It was three-million-dollar tour buses
decked out.
- Hot Sauce!
- Hot Sauce!
What's up, boy?
Look, it's the Sauce world now.
It's my show.
My favorite is Hot Sauce.
Hot Sauce is number one.
I like Hot Sauce. He my boy.
Hot Sauce was the guy
that everyone wanted to see.
Not just the inner-city youth,
but even the kids in the suburbs
watching his tape.
- He's crazy!
- I know.
Oh my God!
They were studying his moves.
- Y2K.
- Y2K.
The Flintstone.
The Boomerang.
Come on, Hot Sauce!
Then you see people
on the court trying to figure out,
"How did he do that?"
And then doing it themselves.
I was the kid that would watch
the Mixtapes over and over and over.
I could do a move, but it wouldn't
quite be like Hot Sauce, you know?
The way he handled the basketball
was so unique and innovative.
This guy, like, moves the crowd.
I wanted to captivate the crowd
like Hot Sauce.
At that time, I might've been the most
popular basketball player on Earth.
We got the AND1 streetballers.
They're gonna strut their stuff
out on the stage.
Let's start it out with Hot Sauce.
- You got a movie coming out in September.
- That was a great experience, right there.
As a business, we hadn't really tied
the Mixtape to sales.
But when we did Volume 3,
The Rise of Hot Sauce,
we partnered with Footaction.
The idea was
you have to buy any AND1 product,
and we're gonna give away a free Mixtape.
We have kids from the street.
They have a lot of fun.
And every... every, uh, consumer
that we talk to connects with them.
I'm at some store buying some things,
and I'm like, "Yo, that's me right there."
Everywhere I go,
I see our faces with our names.
AND1 is hot right now. Really hot.
These last two weeks,
sales have really been bumping.
And that was the first time
I remember Nike paying attention.
We got, like, three people,
and we're taking on Goliath.
And when we started to out-compete,
we knew we were gonna be
a legitimate threat.
I'll never forget.
Someone sent me a video
from Nike's sales meeting.
They had a picture
of AND1 in the crosshairs.
So it was like,
"Got it. Nike took dead aim at us."
We were just consistent
a top-two performing brand.
And we had the mixtape tour.
They didn't have anything like that.
That's like the heart of the game,
and we owned the heart of the game.
If you're Nike, you're risk-averse.
They don't wanna offend
a 50-year-old guy in middle America,
and they sell to a broad audience.
That's not who we are.
We're selling to core people
who are basketball players and know it.
We knew that Nike felt
they had to respond.
And we had no idea
what they were gonna do.
We got it. Let's roll sound.
Camera speeds.
We are at the ESPN building
in the "N-1" Mixtape Tour.
You know what that means?
They don't know us.
In 2003, ESPN came to us
and said they wanted to do
a TV show based around the tour.
Kind of like
when reality TV was growing up.
The basis of the ESPN show
was to find that next guy.
Who's that next level of talent?
It's basically like Survivor.
We'll go to Portland, Atlanta, Seattle.
And the winner,
the survivor, the ultimate pick,
is someone who gets an AND1 contract.
Well, another unique event
is returning to the capital city.
The AND1 Mixtape Tour team
is a collection of basketball characters
with nicknames and hip-hop playing hoops.
If you think you can run with these guys,
show up tomorrow from 4:00 to 6:30.
They're looking
for a few extra players to play.
We were always looking
for new talent, but no one stood out.
There wasn't much streetball
where I'm from in Keizer, Oregon.
It was looked down upon.
Coaches, they didn't really respect
that style of play.
Growing up,
I wasn't really as into the NBA.
I liked watching AND1.
And then I got to high school.
I was really small.
I kept getting cut from teams.
I had no college offers.
That was one of the biggest heartbreaks.
It wasn't a girlfriend
or anything like that.
And I just decided
to do something innovative
away from conventional basketball.
Away from the NBA.
Slam Magazine released
the routing of the tour.
I saw that Portland was on there.
So I put all that energy into training,
and I knew that this was my shot.
When I first got up there
to open run tryouts,
I had never seen
people all around the court.
Kids and people standing on the fences
to get a better view.
Might be nerve-wracking with the tryout.
We gotta pick three people.
We have to pick three people
to make it to play inside the arena!
When my shot came up,
I wasn't even thinking about passing.
Okay. Let me see them feet.
A lot of moves I pulled off,
people were like losing their minds.
Right here, my man in the blue.
I'm just excited to play with Hot Sauce.
All these dudes I've seen on tape.
I see them in real life, it's almost like...
it's just like a dream, you know?
Stepping inside the arena was so awesome.
And I'm like, "Man, we're here."
Like... "We made it!"
So that first game
playing against my idols was very surreal.
Crowd went crazy over a few moves.
They respected that I didn't back down.
I made the overall pick.
Gotta go with you.
So they asked me
to come on tour with them
as a contestant
in this nationwide contest.
It kind of blew me away.
I'm thinking my parents wouldn't let me,
but they were like, "Go ahead and do it."
Going into the tour,
I knew that with every city,
I definitely had a chance to go home.
Because at every open run,
a new player could knock somebody out.
So somebody was always coming,
and somebody was always going.
He's the first one,
and the first one's always the hardest
'cause we got 29 more cities.
- Yeah. I'm at a disadvantage, huh?
- Yeah.
For me, coming in there at 18,
I actually felt like a kid amongst adults.
Sometimes you have, like,
14, 15 people on the bench,
and you just try to make the best
with the time you got.
I said, "Yo, you know what?
A white boy on this team?"
"That's gonna be my godson.
I'mma adopt him."
I gave him his name as soon as I seen him.
That's my boy, my godson,
the Rocky Balboa of basketball,
The Professor!
Anything a talented white boy
could do in the hood
is amplified a million times.
But Professor is the real deal.
One of these three guys right here
will be sent home tonight.
Every elimination game,
magic would happen.
Godson! The Professor!
Putting it up! Oh yeah!
- Professor, I'll see you in Dallas.
- Okay.
- All right? Be good.
- All right.
It's a little bit of pressure,
but that's what it's about.
'Cause this contract
will change somebody's life.
What's up, man?
- Professor, you going home?
- No. I ain't going nowhere.
I'm just... Go out there. Do my thing.
I'm just gonna keep doing what I've done
every game that's got me to this point.
Yeah. Look at the hold on Headache.
Oh yeah! Oh yeah!
Yeah! Yeah!
Yeah, baby!
The last stop
was Linden, New Jersey.
This court right here
is basically the genesis.
This is where it started.
Go ahead and play to 21.
Then after that,
the team's gonna get together.
We're gonna make a decision.
It was AND1 players and
the contestants going against each other.
You can do it on the commercial circuit,
but can you do it in the hood?
Can you do it playing against us?
Even to start that game,
like, Sik Wit It got me crazy
on some fake pass.
I mean, I was like, "Dang."
Like, I know I'm definitely behind now.
And then a couple plays later,
I'd block a shot.
Hit some shots.
Played really well,
but so did the other guys.
Oh!
Professor. Hot Sauce.
Hot Sauce. Professor.
- That's the game!
- That's it!
When they go to the final vote,
I didn't think I would get the votes.
I wanna tell y'all congratulations
that the man
to get this contract is gonna be...
El Professor.
- Okay?
- Thanks, man.
Gonna be that man.
I couldn't believe it.
It was a dream come true.
I had put in all this hard work,
and now I'm an AND1 streetballer.
Checking out the first episode.
Looks pretty good.
When the TV show on ESPN came out,
I wasn't, quite frankly,
even sure if people would watch.
Yo, the line is not down
the block. It is the block.
Like, open up the door, bam!
Shane, Shane, Shane! Man, man, man!
Wow. This is something.
People were going crazy.
We out here, mad love. Mad love out here.
- Give me your headband! Give me something!
- Give me your do-rag!
The AND1 Mixtape Tour
is coming to town this weekend.
- Who's that guy, The Professor?
- Isn't he something?
The fanfare was surreal
because it happened for me overnight.
Thank you, sweetie!
America loves this kid.
The ratings is going out of this world.
After being with the AND1 tour,
he had cornrows like a black dude.
He had the diamond studs in.
Before the game, he was talking like Opie.
After the game, he was Eminem.
It turned into the Jackson Five.
That's Michael Jackson.
I love you, Professor!
He's only 11.
I remember his first groupie.
I knew that would change his life.
Hold on.
I was a really shy kid in high school,
but I definitely embraced it, you know?
The ESPN show, it just put us out there
on a whole nother level.
NBA players
and celebrities, they was loving it.
In case you didn't see that move,
rewind it back.
AND1 Mixtape Tour! I love this game!
At that point, we started to charge money
for people to come to a game,
and we were selling out NBA venues.
A couple
of arenas we went to,
we had more fans in that arena
than they had for their own home team.
I'll never forget.
We're in the club,
and I see the Detroit Pistons
just won their second NBA championship,
and I'm telling the DJ,
"Yo, Chauncey Billups is here."
Chauncey Billups,
a likely candidate for the MVP Award.
And then the DJ looked at me and says,
"Man, fuck them. Y'all here."
You know about it.
You heard about it.
Now we're taking it to the next level.
Now it's time to take it across the water.
This is a global invasion.
Our first international tour,
I mean, it was shocking.
It was actually bigger
than the United States.
Like, actually way bigger.
Make some noise, Tokyo!
This is
the AND1 Mixtape Tour.
Right now, Australian zoo.
Me and my homie the koala right now.
Now, everything was first class.
We're staying in the Ritz-Carlton.
These guys was rock star shit.
So, dudes used to go
to the autographs
'cause chicks was gonna fucking swarm.
Go to Hot Sauce.
I love him.
AND1, baby.
We had guys come up with their wives.
There's nothing to sign,
and she pulls her titty out,
and it's like,
"You want me to sign your wife's titty?"
AND1 tour?
We're partying, drinking, smoking.
They had a camera.
They be like, "Yo. We got the night cam."
And I'm like, "What y'all looking at?"
It was all of them having
a massive orgy with some bad chick!
I was like, "Yo! I seen her at the game!"
"Damn!"
He lying.
No, just...
He just joking again.
The AND1 groove,
it was so fast that nobody could stop us.
The AND1 Mixtape Tour,
presented by Mountain Dew.
Now we've got sponsors coming in.
Took it from the streets,
to the arenas, to video games.
My team showed me a stat one day
that Streetball was the number one
male-rated TV show on ESPN.
I'm like, "Fuck you, man. Like, stop."
And they said,
"Streetball is the number one TV show
for male teens on ESPN."
I was like, "Holy F."
What's up?
With the Mixtape Tour
becoming a huge breakout success...
We went from 15 to 70 people
within a two or three-year period.
We made a decision for a long-term space.
So, the office
had to have a basketball court.
Now we're a big national brand,
how do we expand our footprint?
So we decided
we're gonna take one more shot on shoes.
The first Marbury shoe was ugly,
heavy, overpriced.
And that problem lied with me,
as the person
who was overseeing that product.
I was always giving Jay notes, like,
"Hey, Jay, you should do this.
Jay, you should do that."
And Jay's like, "Tom, I am sick of you
telling me the stuff you could do."
"Do you wanna give it a shot?"
I was maybe 25, and I was like,
"Yeah." Like, I didn't have a doubt.
I had a really clear idea
of what a basketball shoe should be.
Shoes should be light.
They should be fast.
They should be airy, like running shoes.
And we should use meshes and composites.
My first idea was slip-on shoes,
called the Post-Game.
I mean,
it's a whole other level now.
They're bringing it,
and then we're loving it.
I mean, keep doing what you're doing.
When I was a kid, people would wear
two different shoes just for fashion.
That was the inspiration for the Tai Chi.
Visual-wise, you see the different colors.
Like you're wearing different shoes.
- Hey! What's up?
- What's up?
I remember the feeling of shock
when those Tai Chis flew off the shelves.
This is a really dope look.
Whoo! Fire on these.
One of the best basketball shoes, period.
It became
AND1's all-time best-selling shoe.
That product went from 0 to 65 million
in 18 months.
It started
with the trash-talking shirts.
Now it's on a whole other level.
Every shoe company, we're coming.
You see the neighborhood hustlers
and drug dealers.
They're wearing the AND1.
We had styles that would either
outsell Nike or be number two to them.
You know,
if you're going up against Nike,
they have 50 times
more people in every department.
And when they go and make
a marquee shoe for Michael Jordan,
they may take several years.
And we have,
like, five dudes on design.
Sometimes Tom would be
in his office for, like, three days.
I logged long hours,
but I really loved it.
That energy was infectious
to the rest of us.
Jordan's have sprung
from the creative partnership
of shoe designer Tinker Hatfield.
In a time where designers
become their own celebrities,
Tom was super low-key,
never wanted to have his name out there.
But he was one
of the most incredibly creative designers.
I'm running my little kingdom.
Just gonna generate high-quality shoes,
and if I keep doing my job,
we're gonna beat Nike.
Playing at Madison Square Garden,
the mecca.
You know that I was hyped.
The anticipation was crazy.
I'm looking around like,
"Damn, this is what
it would have been like in the NBA?"
We're in their same locker room.
It's the same atmosphere.
Welcome to New York City!
Took me 25 years to get here.
I'm ready to cry.
I'm feeling this. I'm really feeling this.
Out of all the games
we wanted to win,
we wanted to win at Madison Square Garden
because at the end of the day,
you definitely want to win where you from.
I'm actually
on the NBA floor, scared as hell.
But you would never know it,
walking around shaking your head,
like, "Yeah, Sauce, you about to kill,"
and deep down inside,
I'm scared as a motherfucker, boy.
I'm scared as hell.
You had dreams
of going to the NBA,
you already felt like you made it
because here's your name
on the big scoreboard.
Here's your name in bright lights.
I'm playing in front
of thousands of people.
Boy, when we played on to that
old-school Madison Square Garden court?
That bring a tear to your eye.
That emotional.
That was our bragging rights
to our family, to our friends on,
"No. We didn't make the NBA,
but we made it."
Are you ready?
Professor! Alley-oop!
Oh yeah! Yeah!
It was ridiculous.
I couldn't believe it.
It took so much time
and energy to get here.
Oh baby!
It's Sizzle and The Pharmacist.
The New York game was a competitive game.
It was unlike
all of most of our other games.
Jump shot, 15-footer, nothing
but the bottom of the net on.
Helicopter. Looking at it.
Bounce pass. Watch this!
Oh man!
In Madison Square Garden,
if there's enough excitement,
the building shakes.
Half the block shakes.
Looking to change. Professor.AO!
No matter who's on the floor,
we gotta keep this intensity.
That jump shot is good!
Oh gravy!
This is The Main Event! Man.
You done hit a jump shot
in front of 19,000 people at the mecca.
You can't get no better than that.
I met AND1
when I was 26 years old.
That bulk of my NBA days was over,
but my story, in a nutshell,
is that I never gave up.
New York City!
If you like what you see,
then make some noise!
Let's give it up
for both these ball clubs!
You got it. You can get it.
- Tell me about playing it, though.
- Hey, man...
That shit was fun, man.
Let's get in, man.
- One, two, three, AND1.
- AND1!
So we're ready for the first
slam dunk competition in three years.
The last time...
Never forget watching
the dunk contest with Vince Carter,
who later signed with Nike.
...and here is the man
that this crowd wants to see.
Vince Carter with his first dunk!
Let's go home!
And Vince has maybe
the best performance ever
in a dunk contest in AND1 Tai Chis.
Watching it blew our minds.
We pretty much lose our cool, right?
It's like, "This is awesome."
And he did things
that nobody thought were even possible.
While wearing our product.
We were like, "Thank you so much
for wearing our shoes for free."
That was the peak of AND1, you know?
And I think it was literally like
two or three months later.
I turned on the TV.
I heard a ball bouncing. Boom.
Ba-boom. Ba-boom, boom, boom.
And I see the logo.
The first word
that entered my brain was "fuck."
It's Nike.
Freestyle is all about hip-hop,
streetball, and self-expression.
They've co-opted
our streetball positioning
with this incredibly
beautifully shot TV campaign.
I mean, that was a good spot.
It's got an attitude. Hip-hop beat to it.
But it's Nike,
and they're better than that.
They're copying us.
That TV commercial
achieved more in 30 seconds
than we did
over five years of the Mixtape.
Gotta be the shoes. Nike surging.
Investors came running back to Nike.
It's living up to its motto. "Just Do It."
Just taking over
this whole streetball game.
They took our movement,
put a nice shiny satin bow on it
with some glitter, and called it theirs.
They basically crushed us
in the snap of a finger.
In a fight for glory,
heart is mandatory.
Nike Underground's King of the Court.
Sundays at 8:00 pm, 7:00 central on MTV2.
I don't know if they spent 10 million,
20 million, 50 million behind it.
I know when I saw
that TV commercial that I realized,
"Shit. We don't have time
to wait. Let's go."
"We gotta make some decisions.
We gotta move."
Stop calling me.
I'm sick of this damn phone, man.
That was worse.
I'm on TV!
How would you respond
to someone who felt that the company
built its wealth
off the back of the players?
How would I respond
to somebody feeling like the players
was exploited by the company?
I would say, "I know the company
was making a lot of money."
After the games,
you see the merchandise booth.
Mad units with they faces on it, right?
We sold out again.
Players be like,
"Yo. I ain't get paid for that."
It was the downfall of everything.
We're at the warehouse.
We receive, ship, and pack,
uh, the AND1 product for everyone.
Up at 8:00
just to meet the people in the warehouse.
Courtesy.
How many courtesy things are we gonna do?
This company was making
millions and millions of dollars.
But we the ones
who make the money for y'all.
It started becoming a thing
that we're gettin' pizza,
but we go on a staff bus,
they got everything.
They got filetmignon,
calamari, seltzer water,
all the good shit.
What are you eating, Shane?
Before the game, uh,
Buca shrimpparmesan.
A lot of guys would say,
"You got to take care of us."
"Why are we not eating?"
"Wouldn't be no tour
if there were no players."
Because you're not wrong.
Like, y'all should be eating,
but you don't gotta be
so aggressive with it.
I'm throwing it...
I'm throwing it on their bus.
Uh-oh.
It's over now.
He throws a hot pizza
on the tour manager's face!
Tell her what I said.
Tell her she got one more time.
I'll smack the shit out of her.
I'm dead serious.
How did you guys decide
which players would be making
a certain amount of money over others?
Not me. The only... The only conversation
I ever got involved with
was with Sauce and his agent.
It's my hometown. Still go down.
He says, "Hey, Seth.
You're a really nice guy."
I think to myself,
"Yes, I am, motherfucker."
He says, "Hey. Sauce wants this,
or he's gonna go to Reebok."
I was like, "Let him go to Reebok, bro."
Reebok's gonna kill that dude's career.
Nobody wants to be with Reebok.
It was interesting 'cause
there really wasn't a pay structure.
Main Event was like 90 to 100.
And AO was around that, 80 to 90.
Half Man was between like 60 and 75.
We had lower-tier guys
that were getting like 15.
But that's for three months of work.
Because by the time September
rolled around, there is no more tours.
But we would judge guys on
who got the most "oohs" and "ahs,"
and obviously, Hot Sauce was the man.
It was plenty of moments
of dudes feeling frustrated,
of not making enough money
as somebody else was making.
But on the AND1 tours, best to not
tell nobody how much you getting,
but they gonna say it
because they like stunting on each other.
Let's go, baby.
Dollars, dollars, dollars. Yeah.
I had to get
something new for 2005, you know.
A little bling. A little something.
This is Sizzle's crib.
You know what I'm saying?
This... this is my second crib.
I got two cribs, whatever.
I remember Hot Sauce
had a car that could talk.
Greetings, Hot Sauce.
People hated that shit.
I tried to never get into any money talks.
I knew that I was sort of the new guy,
and I had a lot of marketability,
and I felt like my salary was great.
And action.
There was definitely
a little jealousy rolling around
from players
being promoted more than others.
You see cats.
They had one or two big games.
They are "streetball legends."
We was grinding like... nine, ten years
before we even knew whatAND1 was.
Oh man, don't get me wrong.
Professor's a heck of a basketball player,
but, um, I question sometimes his motive.
It doesn't really
bother me. I mean,
as long as we're out on tour having fun,
I really don't care what they think.
Honestly.
The rock star started
getting into everybody's head.
And everybody started
thinking about the money.
You... You stop acting like that, man.
Damn, man, fuck!
How you figure that?
Where you getting the check from?
If I wasn't here,
I'd be out playing and making money.
This tour? It's breaking me.
I'm not making money.
My contract ain't shit, man.
I'm telling y'all niggas.
It ain't shit, yo! It ain't shit!
I'm eating off this.
I'm making plenty of money.
I don't know about you, man.
My living expenses ain't like yours.
You live in luxury, nigga.
You live in luxury.
I'm still living in the projects, nigga!
We got too many all-stars.
When you create a monster,
you gotta know how to tame a monster.
The animosity against each other
boiled up to a point
where it was becoming bigger
and bigger and bigger.
- Why you don't ask me?
- 'Cause I'm not...
Why not? I ask the coach a question!
- That's why.
- I don't disrespect you.
- I'm not talking to you!
- Eat a dick! Eat a dick, nigga!
I ain't trying to hear that shit, man!
- Who's a bitch, Zig? Who?
- You!
Bro, don't get this shit.
We look like clowns.
That shit's getting crazy.
Yo, why y'all grabbing me?
Why you grabbing me, though, man?
When I took over footwear,
we had a phenomenal business success.
We were doing 90% of the sales.
At that point, I felt like
the whole company was
on my shoulders to a degree.
So Tom decided
to move over to Taiwan
because he could influence
the quality of the product much better
sitting there at the factory.
I was worried
because Tom's an incredibly hard worker.
I probably worked
364 days a year on average.
I just lived in,
like, airports and hotels,
switching 12 time zones every six weeks.
Without me realizing it,
it became too much.
So if you look
at the drawing that's right here...
Ended up getting diagnosed
with a digestive disorder.
I lost like 20 or 30 pounds.
I remember Seth and Jay called me
at 2:00, 3:00 in the morning Asian time.
"How's it going? What's next?"
And I just lost it.
"That's it.
I am sick of you chirping at me."
"I'm doing what I'm doing.
You know, you guys can't do this."
And I hung up.
I know Tom did feel
some pressures from outside,
and particularly from me as the person
to whom he directly reported.
I kind of ended up pulling back
into my own little shell.
I lost friendships during that time.
I just ended up a mess,
physically and emotionally.
For the first time in my life,
it wasn't fun.
It wasn't always easy,
but it had always been fun.
So Tom comes into my office.
He says, "Seth, I'm resigning."
I'm like, "Wait. What?"
Like, that's impossible.
After Tom left us, we cratered.
We went from over 200 million in sales
to, you know, 130.
I had to lay off 20% of the staff.
We knew we only had
a small window to sell the company
in order to maximize the financial value.
Paoli, Pennsylvania.
The 2005 minicamp.Mixtape Tour!
AO!
I just got word
from the people at AND1
that we're to be
on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
Growing up, to be on Sports Illustrated,
it's like the king of sports magazines.
It's going down. It's official.
Right. We gotta frame this right here.
Before the beginning
of the 2005 tour,
we didn't get a call right away
to renew our contracts.
So it was confusing.
We was just frustrated
with the way everything was going on.
So many stories has been going around.
All of a sudden,
the staff rounded us up in a room.
So I'm like, "Heck is going on here?"
He's like, "Yo, just chill."
And they told us, "Hey.
There's going to be a major buy-out,
and things aren't gonna be the same."
It was unexpected.
It was gone. That was it.
No notice.
No notice.
The players are so prideful
that I don't think they will ever tell you
that they felt down.
At the end of the day, we mint.
But I think about the audacity for them
not sitting with none of the legends
when that shit ended.
It should be a success story.
AND1 was huge.
We created something from nothing.
We sold the business,
and we all made a lot of money,
but the sale, in the end,
was so hard for me physically,
and then it was also just,
like, really sad.
There was infighting
and some fracturing of relationships,
and emotionally
it's still, like, bittersweet.
Definitely.
You may recognize his face
from ESPN Streetball!
Shane "The Dribble Machine" Woney!
Court Jesters is a semi-pro league version
of the... of the Harlem Globetrotters.
This... This ain't like the Garden.
Nothing like the Garden, baby.
I may see a guy that recognizes me,
and they ask me a question like,
"What you doing working here, man?
You was on TV."
That right there is a heartbreaker.
Every day I wake up saying,
"Man. I hope something happens
where they say, 'You know what?
Shane, we need you just for today.'"
This is what I think.
We didn't get paid what we was worth.
How about that? How about that? Our worth.
They came to the hood and took everything.
The hood gives them their opinions
or whatever, "Y'all should do this."
They run right upstairs and do it,
and then they sell it
and don't give nothing back.
Like I always said.
It's called "Poverty Pimping."
People say, "Well, corporate America
is trying to take advantage of you
and make money."
That's what the outside world perceives,
and being on the inside,
that wasn't the case.
We were trying
to catch lightning in a bottle
and do something cool.
If we're guilty of anything, it was that.
The contracts that we signed
with them weren't insignificant.
We paid some of the Mixtape players
more than we paid other NBA players.
They signed us to a contract,
now it's up to us to agree to that number.
We don't have to agree to that number.
The money they offered me?
Heck yeah, I'm gonna take it.
I don't care
what y'all got to say about it.
"Oh, you're not loyal. Shit is..."
Loyal to what?
That loyalty ain't gonna give me no check.
I know that.
Did they love us for what we did? Yeah.
But did they respect us?
Answer me that.
One of my biggest regrets.
Had we thought of the Mixtape players
like employees
as opposed to endorsed athletes,
then we could have given them
some stock options.
And that would have resulted
in some incremental wealth
going to all those players.
Our lives didn't matter to them.
- I think it's a... I think it's a...
- Our lives didn't matter, man.
- Main. Our lives... My man...
- Maybe.
I... Listen, listen, listen.
My last final year with AND1,
I asked that man for $16,000
to put my son in school for a contract,
and then they told me,
"I cannot help you."
After all that shit we did.
I... I don't remember it.
I'm sad that I don't remember it.
It is possible Shane spoke directly to me,
um, and if... and if that's the case
and we were not able to take care of him
and his kid, I feel terrible.
Honestly, we can say they robbed us,
but the money
will never, ever supersede the experience.
Having a passport
and traveling from country to country,
it's educational.
I've always felt
so indebted to AND1
for what it's provided me.
There's things I probably wouldn't do
because my mom and dad didn't have
the resources for me to travel.
That's big-time, man.
This church is crazy.
AND1 created opportunities
that you was never getting.
I would have never
thought of
leaving the city, of leaving Brooklyn.
Bro.
I didn't know it was gonna be like this.
I did not know Tokyo
and all these other cities
were gonna be like this.
AND1 basketball allowed a guy,
Waliyy Dixon, from Linden, New Jersey,
make some of our dreams come true.
The Pharmacist!
AND1 has allowed everyone
to think outside the box about this game.
Their stuff was for all people, you know,
not just people that make it
in the professional world.
Butler's gonna trigger
the inbound. It's Alston.
This is for the win! It's good!
Are you kidding me?
AND1 changed the game.
The NBA is now
more entertaining and free-going.
- Oh no, he didn't!
- What a play by Paul!
You seesome of the guys right now, today,
we're talking about superstars,
do some of the moves...
Curry.
Oh, pretty fake! Pulls up.
They don't have to give props.
We know who it came from.
Footwork! Left foot. Right foot.
Bang, bang, bang, bang. Finish.
Main, the legacy, when you say that...
Was it... Was it big, and did we make it?
Main, of course we made it
because when you walking down
the street with your son
and a stranger tell your son,
"Do you know who your father is?"
That... That doesn't happen
to ordinary people.
At the end of the day,
we will always be,
"Yo, that's them dudes from AND1."
- One, two, three, AND1!
- AND1
Allegations against one basketball ref
of betting the outcome of games
is rocking the NBA.
Man, did I fuck my life up.
Just like
the feel-good hit of the summer,
the Manti Te'o story isn't real.
Cruel, twisted folks.
It was the longest winning streak
in history of sport.
This is the finest day
in the history of Australian sports!
AND1 was making millions of dollars.
But did they respect us?
AND1 basketball, baby!
Shut your fucking mouth.
Keep it between us.
Stick to the fucking story.
It could not get
any stranger than this one...
Donaghy is under investigation...
Front page news all over town.
She physically did not existoutside of
being Manti Te'o's dead girlfriend.
I was like, "Boy, that would be
fucking crazy if it weren't true!"