The women’s game shines in Basketball: A Love Story

ESPN Films presents Basketball: A Love Story, a Dan Klores film.
ESPN Films presents Basketball: A Love Story, a Dan Klores film.
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High Post Hoops chats with Val Ackerman and filmmaker Dan Klores about Basketball: A Love Story

Sep 1998: WNBA president Val Ackerman, right, at the 1998 WNBA Finals at the Compaq Center in Houston, TX. (Photo by Icon Sportswire)
Sep 1998: WNBA president Val Ackerman, right, at the 1998 WNBA Finals at the Compaq Center in Houston, TX. (Photo by Icon Sportswire)

Filmmaker Dan Klores grew up in the Coney Island area of Brooklyn, New York. If you ask him though, he belongs not to his Borough, but to his block.

“My block–7th Street–was not basketball. It was stickball and softball and touch football,” Klores told High Post Hoops in a phone interview Friday morning.  In seventh grade, Klores moved with his family to a distant world five blocks away. Suddenly, the favorite game of the neighborhood changed to basketball.  It was then, as he entered the seventh grade, that he fell in love.

On Tuesday, October 9, Basketball: A Love Story makes its network premiere. The 20-hour, 10-part documentary is not a chronology of the game. It also does not cram the women’s game into one short. Instead, Klores walks us through a museum of basketball moments and feelings–with a wonderful soundtrack, might I add.

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High Post Hoops spoke with Klores and Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman about the project ahead of the network premiere. There are three shorts in particular that capture to essence of the film by way of the women’s game: “The W”, “Title IX: Immaculata”, and “Pat vs Geno”.

Each serves as a unique milestone in the history of basketball. Each, like any love story, comes with its moments of joy, pain, and doubts. Yet, even in the unsteady moments, the love of the game willed those around it to find a way through.

The project was over 10 years in the making and will finally debut on ESPN tomorrow night. Commissioner Ackerman and Klores were kind enough to provide some insight into the creation of the film, and the importance of women in basketball.

Here is an overview of three shorts that capture the essence of the women’s game.