What’s the deal with Kinston and basketball? New documentary explores rich heritage.
There are a lot of stories in Marcus Mizelle’s new documentary about the magic of basketball in Kinston, North Carolina.
At the center, of course, is Kinston’s remarkable basketball legacy and the city itself.
But orbiting around that story are smaller, yet equally compelling stories:
▪ Curtis Hines, a former college standout who now works with young Kinston talent as a trainer and mentor.
▪ The parents of former Duke star and current New Orleans Pelicans player Brandon Ingram, Donald and Joann Ingram, who give back to Kinston and the people there in appreciable ways.
▪ Dontrez Styles, a current Kinston High School senior labeled “the next big thing out of Kinston.”
Considering the big basketball names that have come out of this Eastern North Carolina town already, that expectation carries with it great weight.
We learn early in “Something in the Water: A Kinston Basketball Story,” making its debut later this month, that one out of 52.7 players that wore the varsity uniform for Kinston High School have played in the NBA. The stat for the rest of the world? One out of 10,000.
Kinston and college basketball
In addition to Brandon Ingram, who left Duke for the NBA in 2016, some of the biggest names out of Kinston High include Charles Shackleford (N.C. State), Jerry Stackhouse (UNC), Reggie Bullock (UNC), Cedric Maxwell (UNC-Charlotte) and Tony Dawson (Florida State).
There are many more Kinston alum who played professional ball, and dozens and dozens more who got college scholarships, coaching jobs and other career opportunities because of basketball.
How do you account for that?
A big ESPN profile explored the question in 2018. It’s a fascinating read, but it came up with no clear explanation for the phenomenon beyond the usual assessment that, well, there is simply a lot of support here for kids who want to play ball.
Or maybe there really is just something in the water.
Whether or not there’s more to the explanation than that, Mizelle is certain of one thing: basketball means everything to a whole lot of kids in Kinston. Basketball represents hope for the future.
The 25-minute documentary is a bit of a passion project for Mizelle and for co-producer Dustin Taylor, both Kinston natives who grew up there want this story to give a little something back to their hometown.
“You don’t see any opportunity when you live there,” Mizelle said in an interview with The News & Observer. “It’s difficult to see any sort of path beyond Kinston. For a lot of these kids, basketball is the only thing they can do to rise above the environment — which is not some war zone, but whether anybody likes it or not, they had one of the highest crime rates per capita a few years back.”
Overachieving Kinston
The ESPN article from 2018 noted that the violent crime rate in 2016 was 213% higher than the national average, according to FBI crime data. For the same year, the town’s poverty rate was 110% higher than the national average.
“Something in the Water” touches on all of that — you can’t be honest about Kinston’s story without noting the crime problem and the many jobs that have left the area — but Mizelle doesn’t want that to be what people think of when they think of Kinston.
“On one end of the spectrum is the crime rate and on the other end, it’s these overachieving badasses,” Mizelle said.
One of those overachieving basketball wonders is Styles, ranked the Class of 2021’s top player in North Carolina. He’s the one many are calling Kinston’s “next big thing.”
Mizelle’s film shows Styles training and playing AAU amateur basketball for the Stackhouse Elite team. It’s no spoiler for anyone who follows North Carolina college basketball that Styles has been offered a scholarship by UNC coach Roy Williams. He accepted in April.
This time next year, Styles will be yet another former Kinston High Viking dressing out in Tar Heel blue, another entry in Kinston Basketball History. And he’ll become fresh inspiration for hundreds of kids growing up and playing basketball in Kinston.
“You can talk all day about how Kinston is tough or Kinston’s got problems, but at the same time, Kinston is blessed,” Mizelle said. “If you want to play basketball, you probably want to just be in Kinston, really, because there’s a support system there.
“Basketball is the life blood of that place for some people.”
How to see ‘Something in the Water’
▪ “Something in the Water: A Kinston Basketball Story” will premiere virtually at the Virginia Film Festival Oct. 21-25.
▪ A PBS / UNC-TV preview screening takes place on Nov. 5, and features a Q&A w/ director Marcus Mizelle, and documentary participants Dontrez Styles, Curtis Hines and Donald Ingram.
▪ The official televised broadcast on UNC-TV is on Thanksgiving: Thursday Nov. 26 at 10 p.m.
This story was originally published October 5, 2020 at 2:50 PM with the headline "What’s the deal with Kinston and basketball? New documentary explores rich heritage.."
