Basketball County: In the Water

I come from a small county

outside of Washington, D.C.,

called PG County.

There's always been great players...

Head to Jeff Green. Oh--

...from Prince George's County.

What a finish for KD!

Players from Prince George's County--

they can fill it up.

PG County guys

provide wet buckets for America.

- Here's Beasley. - Beasley!

Jeff Green!

You can come here and get ate up,

or you can eat and become successful.

Oladipo pounds it down!

With the ninth pick...

With the fifth... With the second pick...

The Miami Heat... The Seattle SuperSonics...

The Philadelphia '76ers

select Markelle Fultz,

Victor Oladipo,

Michael Beasley,

Kevin Durant.

Durant finishes with a left hand.

Almost every other NBA game,

there's somebody that I'm playing against

that's from PG County.

Always like, "Oh, you know he from home?"

Like, "Damn, him too?"

I just love to see that, you know.

We were friends. We were enemies.

Basketball, to this county, means everything.

It's just something about the water we drink.

It gotta be in the water.

It's just in the water. This is what we do.

Durant!

If somebody asked me

where's Prince George's County,

it's the heart of Maryland.

Not to get too metaphorical or whatever,

but it's this heartbeat.

Bordering the nation's capital,

Prince George's County,

once home to tobacco plantations,

is divided into two zones by I-495,

locally known as the Capital Beltway.

The outer Beltway holds

some of the richest black-majority towns

in the nation,

while many inner Beltway communities

face high rates of poverty and crime.

But the obsession that unifies this Maryland county

is basketball.

The shared passion, style, and success is undeniable.

Ask anyone from the county. They'll let you know.

It's the Mecca of basketball.

Wherever you go, you mention Prince George's County,

people--people know what it's about.

Basketball's always bouncing in--in PG County.

First time I touched a basketball,

Hilltop Gardens.

I-I must have been like three years old.

First thing I remember: I'm lookin' up...

...and I couldn't get the ball to the basket.

Like...I tried all fucking day...

...just throwing it, throwing it, until finally

I threw it like this and finally made one.

It's been the only thing in my life

these 30 years that's consistent.

Once I committed to playing basketball

and wanting to play basketball for, like, forever--

I was, like, nine--

it was like breathing.

Ever since we've been playing basketball,

me and KD been best friends.

If I'm on Branch Avenue

and I hear about a game down in Farm,

I'ma call KD,

who's all the way up in Marlboro at the time...

Oh, my goodness!

Became a norm to where--just hoop

every three, four times a day.

It go from that to this...

Here is Durant

for the win!

Kevin Durant

has won it at the buzzer!

Since 2000, over 30 NBA players,

multiple WNBA stars,

and hundreds of Division I college players

have come from PG County.

The seeds were planted over a century ago

in nearby Washington, D.C.,

where African-Americans first learned,

then transformed the art of basketball.

This area was the first

to master the game of basketball,

thanks to Dr. Edwin Bancroft Henderson,

the first black physical educator

in the nation.

Edwin B. Henderson hoped basketball

would boost college access and social mobility

for black youth.

The so-called Father of Black Basketball

had learned the sport from its creator,

James Naismith, while attending

a Harvard University sports and recreation program

in 1904.

Henderson brought the game back to D.C.,

went to the black Y,

which is known as the historic 12th Street Y,

and that was the venue

of basketball in Washington, D.C.,

as it pertains to African-Americans.

He thought if we had an athletic skill,

we could utilize that to get into good white schools

in America.

A lot of racism goes out the window

when you're competing with your white counterpart

to win games.

D.C. had a leg up

because of Dr. Henderson.

The fundamentals

and the proper way to play the game

were taught to the youngsters in Washington, D.C.

Henderson's players won championships.

Some even changed the world, like Charles Drew,

who later created the world's first blood bank

as a trailblazing physician,

and Edward Duke Ellington,

the composer who'd go on to redefine American music.

Though legal segregation

prevailed in the nation's capital,

D.C.'s black community

built a thriving city within a city,

anchored by institutions like Howard University

and the U Street business corridor.

This relative stability was shattered in 1968

by a tragedy that shook the nation.

I have some very sad news

for all of you...

...and I think sad news for all of our fellow citizens...

...and people who love peace all over the world...

...and that is that Martin Luther King

was shot and was killed tonight

in Memphis, Tennessee.

In the wake

of Martin Luther King's assassination,

Washington, D.C., erupted.

The riots would claim a dozen lives,

destroy countless businesses,

and spark an exodus of middle-class

African-Americans to suburban Prince George's County.

Each generation wants a better life

for a subsequent generation,

and during that time, the opportunity

was in the Prince George's County.

Many African-Americans were moving into the county,

and one of the offshoots of that

is that you had a number of young kids

who were excellent basketball players

now starting to go to the county schools.

From D.C., they brought skill

and deep knowledge of the game.

They also found

an ideal environment for hoops,

a county with one of the nation's best park systems.

Prince George's County has over 400 parks,

and in most of those parks,

you have basketball courts,

and you can get out there and play,

and you can raise that level of play

based upon the competition

that you receive within those communities.

Every summer, just about every day,

you know, we was playing outdoors

on that blacktop.

As soon as I woke up,

I was going downstairs and going to the court

across the street from my apartment building.

We got that competition early on.

It was very competitive.

For me, it was a young kid

walking on the court with a bunch of grown men.

And you had to go in there and prove to the older adults

that we belong on this court.

You could virtually ride in--in the neighborhoods,

and any basketball court in many neighborhoods

would be packed.

I love basketball so much.

It was like an amusement park,

'cause you could learn something

every single day from somebody.

First of all, you'd better get into court early.

If you're not there at 9:00,

you might not play until 11:00,

and if you lost a game, you might as well go home.

If we were playing and it got too dark,

there were no lights.