Spike Lee's Lil' Joints

When University of Missouri football players threatened to boycott their game with Brigham Young University last November unless president Tim Wolfe resigned, they made news far beyond the sports pages and Columbia, Missouri. But that was only one chapter in a tale that began long before that - a tale that director Spike Lee unspools in this Lil' Joints documentary for ESPN Films. Yes, the athletes played a significant role in forcing Wolfe's resignation, but it was really the female organizers of the Concerned Student 1950 movement, as well as a man, Jonathan Butler,...

The first historically black college to win an NCAA title should've been the 1971 Howard University soccer team. Coached by a man named Lincoln Phillips, a collection of men of color from all over the world beat predominantly white powerhouse Saint Louis University 3-2 in the championship game, only to have NCAA take the title away because of two minor infractions. Directed by Kenan K. Holley for Spike Lee's ESPN series, Lil' Joints, this film chronicles the rise and fall and rise again of Howard soccer, all within a four-year period. As former Howard student Rock ...

“We wuz robbed” is an old boxing expression. But not until the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul, South Korea, did people fully understood its meaning. That’s when Roy Jones Jr. thoroughly destroyed Park Si-Hun in the light heavyweight gold medal match, landing 86 punches to Park’s 32, only to watch the judges steal the match from him. In this film directed by Randy Wilkins for Spike Lee’s Lil’ Joints series, Jones and others relive that travesty of justice. Eventually, Jones would become a world champion in several divisions, but as this mini-documentary — part animation and part painful memory — makes clear, Olympic boxing and Park Si-Hun have never recovered.

In 2006, former NBA star Stephon Marbury endorsed a revolutionary low-cost sneaker called the Starbury. $15 Kicks revisits the Starbury sneaker's altruistic mission and media frenzy. The film will highlight proponents and skeptics of the brand's humble gross margin and its tumultuous discontinuation in 2009. In a world ruled by multi million-dollar sneaker endorsements, could a rising NBA basketball star and growing discount retailer successfully sell the $15 kicks?