Original subtitles

[dramatic music playing]

[train rattling]

[man] This is where it's at.

- It's New York City. - [car horn honking]

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.

[crowd cheering]

[man] The atmosphere, the energy.

It was just special.

[announcer] It's jam-packed out here.

The players are putting on a show, and the crowds are loving it.

[man] But AND1, they just took it to another level.

[announcer] AND1 basketball is sweeping the nation,

becoming one of the biggest basketball brands.

[man] Tokyo, Japan. Venezuela. Brazil.

You know, it was pandemonium.

[announcer] The competition is heating up.

AND1's newest sneakers are jumping off the shelves.

[reporter] The line is not down the block. It is the block.

[man] 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.

[announcer] The Main Event!

[crowd cheering]

[man] Shane. The Dribbling Machine.

[announcer] Get your Superman on, Shane!

[man] We talking about Hot to the Sauce.

We talking about The Professor.

[reporter] AND1 is taking on the titans of the industry

with no plans of backing down.

[man] 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.

[pop ballad playing]

♪ 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 ♪

[song ends]

- [crickets chirping] - [man panting]

[dramatic music playing]

[man] 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.

[inaudible]

[Seth] That summer, I did a free internship

in investment banking.

[indistinct chatter]

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."

[man] 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.

[Seth] 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.

[Tom] 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.

[Seth] 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?"

[Tom] 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. [laughs]

[inaudible]

[Jay] 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!"

[Tom] 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."

[Tom] 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.

[hip-hop music playing]

[Tom] 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.

[Tom chuckling]

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.

- [ringing] - 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.

[audience laughing]

You want some of me...

[Will grunting, exclaiming]

[audience laughing]

[Tom] 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.

[music stops]

[motivational music playing]

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.

[Tom] That's where the money was at,

and Nike had that whole market on lockdown.

[reporter 1] High-tech shoes and slick ads get more and more sophisticated.

Nike is just doing it.

[reporter 2] Fourth-quarter profits improves to 126 million dollars.

[man] 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.

- [announcer] Marbury behind the back to... - [whistle blows]

[continues indistinctly]

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 select Stephon Marbury from Georgia Tech University.

[reporter] This man is a can't miss.

[Seth] 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.

[camera shutters clicking]

[tense music playing]

[accelerated speech playing]

[announcer] From Georgia Tech, number 3, Stephon Marbury!

[Jay] 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.

[commercial music playing]

Who knew that all we'd been building was gonna go up in smoke that night.

[announcer speaking indistinctly]

I can still see it. Steph goes up, and I'm like, "uh-oh."

[ominous music playing]

[bones cracking]

[crowd exclaiming]

[announcer] Oh my goodness.

I just broke out in a cold sweat seeing that.

Our faces are white.

[Seth] 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.

[announcer] Stephon Marbury being helped off the floor...

[indistinct chatter]

[Stephon] 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.

[Jay] And so, we're in the tunnel,

and we see Steph's agent looking at us with just, like, daggers in his eyes.

[Seth] Someone on his team says,

"I might have Stephon 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."

[Jay] 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.

[Jay] The video blew our minds.

[Seth] I was like, "Holy shit."

I've seen a lot of basketball.

[chuckling] I've never seen this before.

[Tom] And in this game was 15-year-old Rafer Alston,

who was called "Skip 2 My Lou."

[announcer] Show some love for my homeboy,

Skip 2 My Lou!

[Skip 2 My Lou] New York streetball style,

it's a style where you just let your imagination flow.

[dramatic music playing]

[Skip 2 My Lou] 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.

[chuckling]

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.

[crowd cheering]

Winning has nothing to do with streetball.

[Skip 2 My Lou] Your team, they could lose,

but if you've electrified the crowd,

they were satisfied. [chuckling]

[The Main Event] The court is the canvas.

The style of play that you have is your ink.

And the player that you is is the artist.

[announcer speaking indistinctly]

A lot of us come up through the inner city

in single-parent homes.

[The Dribbling Machine] 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.

[The Dribbling Machine] It wasn't about money.

Because that was the NBA.

[announcer] Swish picks up Dumars, who lets it fly,

and he hits it again for three!

[The Main Event] 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.

[crowd cheering]

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.

[news theme music playing]

[reporter] We interrupt this program to bring you the following Special Report.

[anchor] 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.

[Jay] 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.

[crowd cheering]

[Jay] As a business,

how can we take that experience of a streetball game at the Rucker

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 the World Famous Wake Up Show,

and y'all are about to view the AND1 Mixtape on video.

Coming to you live. Keep it banging!

- [crowd cheering] - [announcer speaking indistinctly]

[hip-hop music playing]

[crowd cheering]

AND1 pressed 50,000 old-school VHS tapes.

We gave away through the street teams, clubs, courts, neighborhood barbershops.

[indistinct chatter]

And it was like the new crack. It went rampant in the inner city.

[Tom] Each person sharing it with another dozen or two dozen or three dozen people.

We had this insane viral marketing in the pre-internet age. [chuckling]

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?"

[crowd cheering]

[Sway] Look out for Volume 2, y'all! AND1 Mixtape!

[music stops]

[phone ringing]

[light orchestral music playing]

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.

- [beeps] - [man] Yo, that mixtape was sick.

[man 2] Killed it, AND1!

[man 3] Skip 2 My Lou!

[man 4] Hold on.

[man 5] Need another one, please!

- [man 6] Where is Volume 2? - [beeps]

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.

[inaudible]

[man] 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.

[announcer] Shane!

[The Main Event] 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.

[phone ringing]

[The Main Event] 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.

[The Dribbling Machine] Playing streetball, but it'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.

[phone ringing]

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."

[Duke] 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.

[Tom] 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.

[The Main Event] This is Chris Hightower's itinerary.

- [Gee Lock] This is a Hightower original? - Official.

[Chris] When I went on tour. they gave me a corporate car,

six grand in cash, and was like, "Make it work."

[The Dribbling Machine] 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.

[Chris] 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.

[Jay] 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.

[indistinct chatter]

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.

[man] 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.

[hip-hop music playing]

[The Dribbling Machine] When we played in Atlanta,

that atmosphere was totally different.

[indistinct chatter]

[crowd] Hot Sauce! Hot Sauce!

I can hear the crowd. The crowd is saying, "Hot Sauce."

[crowd chanting rhythmically]

[The Dribbling Machine] Yo, like, who is Hot Sauce?

[Hot Sauce] I used to play in the hoods in Georgia,

stealing balls out of other people's yards.

[man] 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.

[Hot Sauce] 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.

[crowd exclaiming]

[crowd] Oh!

[crowd cheering]

It was like, "Yo. What is this?"

[Skip 2 My Lou] A lot of us are like, "What is he doing?"

It was... It was amazing.

[crowd] 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.

[Jay] 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.

[Gee Lock] From the first game on,

he was like an icon.

[crowd exclaiming]

[Gee Lock] Once he came on the tour,

it was a whole nother animal.

[chuckling] You know what I'm saying? Like, no more minivans.

It was three-million-dollar tour buses decked out.

[indistinct chatter]

- 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! - [man 1] I know.

[man 2] Oh my God!

They were studying his moves.

- [The Dribbling Machine] Y2K. - [The Main Event] Y2K.

[The Dribbling Machine] The Flintstone.

The Boomerang.

[announcer] Come on, Hot Sauce!

[crowd cheering]

Then you see people on the court trying to figure out,

"How did he do that?" And then doing it themselves.

[man] 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.

- [hip-hop music playing] - [indistinct chatter]

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.

[crowd cheering]

[upbeat music playing]

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.

[man] 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.

[ominous music playing]

[Seth] I'll never forget.

Someone sent me a video from Nike's sales meeting.

They had a picture of AND1 in the crosshairs.

[gun cocking, firing]

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.

[crowd clamoring]

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.

[ominous music swelling]

We got it. Let's roll sound.

[woman] Camera speeds.

[bus hissing, engine revving]

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.

[Chris] The basis of the ESPN show was to find that next guy.

Who's that next level of talent?

[Tom] 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.

[Chris] We were always looking for new talent, but no one stood out.

[train horn blaring]

[uplifting music playing]

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.

[crowd cheering]

[Grayson] 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.

[playful music playing]

[indistinct chatter]

[Grayson] 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.

[man] 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.

[announcer] Okay. Let me see them feet.

[crowd exclaiming]

[Grayson] 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... [chuckling] "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.

[The Main Event] I made the overall pick.

Gotta go with you.

[Grayson] 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.

[Headache] 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.

[crowd cheering]

Sometimes you have, like, 14, 15 people on the bench,

and you just try to make the best with the time you got.

[motivational music playing]

[Duke] 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!

[crowd cheering]

Anything a talented white boy could do in the hood

is amplified a million times.

But Professor is the real deal.

[crowd cheering]

One of these three guys right here will be sent home tonight.

Every elimination game, magic would happen.

[Duke] 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?

- [Gee Lock] 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.

[Duke] Yeah. Look at the hold on Headache.

Oh yeah! Oh yeah!

Yeah! Yeah!

Yeah, baby!

[The Professor] 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.

[indistinct chatter]

[The Professor] 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.

[crowd] Oh!

[Duke] Professor. Hot Sauce. Hot Sauce. Professor.

[crowd cheering]

- [Duke] That's the game! - [man] That's it!

[indistinct chatter]

When they go to the final vote, I didn't think I would get the votes.

[Half Man Half Amazing] I wanna tell y'all congratulations

that the man to get this contract is gonna be...

[tense music playing]

El Professor.

[scattered applauding]

- Okay? - Thanks, man.

[Half Man Half Amazing] 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.

[hip-hop music playing]

Checking out the first episode. Looks pretty good.

[Seth] When the TV show on ESPN came out,

I wasn't, quite frankly, even sure if people would watch.

[indistinct chatter]

[reporter] Yo, the line is not down the block. It is the block.

Like, open up the door, bam!

Shane, Shane, Shane! Man, man, man!

[crowd cheering, shouting]

Wow. This is something. People were going crazy.

[indistinct shouting]

We out here, mad love. Mad love out here.

- Give me your headband! Give me something! - Give me your do-rag!

[AO laughing]

The AND1 Mixtape Tour is coming to town this weekend.

- [anchor] Who's that guy, The Professor? - [anchor 2] Isn't he something?

The fanfare was surreal because it happened for me overnight.

Thank you, sweetie! [laughing]

America loves this kid. The ratings is going out of this world.

[funky music playing]

[Gee Lock] 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.

[both laughing]

Hold on.

I was a really shy kid in high school, but I definitely embraced it, you know?

[girls exclaiming]

The ESPN show, it just put us out there on a whole nother level.

[The Dribbling Machine] 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!

[inaudible]

At that point, we started to charge money for people to come to a game,

and we were selling out NBA venues.

[crowd erupts cheering]

[Skip 2 My Lou] A couple of arenas we went to,

we had more fans in that arena than they had for their own home team.

[crowd cheering]

[The Dribbling Machine] 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."

[commentator] Chauncey Billups, a likely candidate for the MVP Award.

And then the DJ looked at me and says, "Man, fuck them. Y'all here."

[Duke] 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! - [crowd roars]

[Skip 2 My Lou] This is the AND1 Mixtape Tour.

Right now, Australian zoo. Me and my homie the koala right now.

[men chanting]

[upbeat music playing]

Now, everything was first class.

We're staying in the Ritz-Carlton.

These guys was rock star shit.

[crowd cheering]

[Gee Lock] So, dudes used to go to the autographs

'cause chicks was gonna fucking swarm.

[speaking indistinctly] Go to Hot Sauce.

I love him.

[woman] AND1, baby.

[The Dribbling Machine] 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?"

[indistinct chatter]

AND1 tour? We're partying, drinking, smoking.

[inaudible]

[Gee Lock] 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!" [laughing]

[chuckling] He lying.

No, just... [laughing]

He just joking again.

The AND1 groove, it was so fast that nobody could stop us.

The AND1 Mixtape Tour, presented by Mountain Dew.

[Jay] Now we've got sponsors coming in.

Took it from the streets, to the arenas, to video games.

[Seth] 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."

[indistinct chatter]

[man] What's up?

[man talking indistinctly]

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.

[indistinct chatter]

[Jay] 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.

[Jay] 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.

[man] 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.

[indistinct chatter]

- Hey! What's up? - What's up?

I remember the feeling of shock when those Tai Chis flew off the shelves.

[man] This is a really dope look.

Whoo! Fire on these.

One of the best basketball shoes, period.

[Seth] It became AND1's all-time best-selling shoe.

That product went from 0 to 65 million in 18 months.

[The Main Event] 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.

[Tom] We had styles that would either outsell Nike or be number two to them.

[indistinct chatter]

[Tom] 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. [chuckling]

Sometimes Tom would be in his office for, like, three days.

[Tom] I logged long hours, but I really loved it.

That energy was infectious to the rest of us.

[anchor] Jordan's have sprung

from the creative partnership of shoe designer Tinker Hatfield.

[Jay] 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.

[Duke] Playing at Madison Square Garden, the mecca.

You know that I was hyped.

[hip-hop music playing]

[indistinct chatter]

[The Main Event] The anticipation was crazy.

[crowd cheering in distance]

[The Main Event] 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.

[crowd cheering faintly]

[exhaling]

[indistinct chatter]

[dramatic music playing]

[crowd cheers fading]

[crowd cheering, applauding]

[announcer] 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.

[The Main Event] 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.

[crowd cheering]

[Hot Sauce] 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.

[motivational music playing]

[Gee Lock] 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.

[crowd cheering]

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."

[announcer] Are you ready?

[crowd cheering]

[whistle blowing]

[inaudible]

[Duke] Professor! Alley-oop!

- Oh yeah! Yeah! - [crowd shouting, cheering]

It was ridiculous.

I couldn't believe it.

It took so much time and energy to get here.

[Duke] Oh baby! It's Sizzle and The Pharmacist.

[triumphant music playing]

[crowd cheering, shouting]

The New York game was a competitive game.

It was unlike all of most of our other games.

[Duke] 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.

[Duke] Looking to change. Professor. AO!

No matter who's on the floor, we gotta keep this intensity.

[Duke] 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.

[The Main Event] 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.

[Duke] New York City!

If you like what you see, then make some noise!

[crowd cheering loudly]

[inaudible]

[Duke] Let's give it up for both these ball clubs!

[indistinct chatter]

You got it. You can get it.

- [man] Tell me about playing it, though. - Hey, man...

That shit was fun, man.

Let's get in, man.

- One, two, three, AND1. - [all] AND1!

[dramatic music playing]

[commentator] 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.

[commentator 1] ...and here is the man that this crowd wants to see.

Vince Carter with his first dunk!

[crowd cheering loudly]

[commentator 2] 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."

[Tom] 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.

- [man grunting] - [Seth] 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.

[hip-hop beat playing]

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.

[Jay] That TV commercial achieved more in 30 seconds

than we did over five years of the Mixtape.

Gotta be the shoes. Nike surging.

[reporter 1] Investors came running back to Nike.

It's living up to its motto. "Just Do It."

[reporter 2] 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.

[narrator] 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."

[hip-hop beat swelling]

[music stops]

[man speaking indistinctly]

[indistinct chatter]

[man] Stop calling me.

I'm sick of this damn phone, man.

[man 1 speaking indistinctly]

[man 2] That was worse.

I'm on TV!

[producer] 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?

[man] We sold out again.

[Gee Lock] Players be like, "Yo. I ain't get paid for that."

It was the downfall of everything.

[somber music playing]

[woman] We're at the warehouse.

We receive, ship, and pack, uh, the AND1 product for everyone.

[The Dribbling Machine] 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 filet mignon, calamari, seltzer water,

all the good shit.

What are you eating, Shane?

Before the game, uh,

Buca shrimp parmesan.

[Chris] 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.

[indistinct chatter]

[tense music playing]

[Headache] I'm throwing it... I'm throwing it on their bus.

Uh-oh.

[Duke] It's over now.

He throws a hot pizza on the tour manager's face!

[Headache] Tell her what I said. Tell her she got one more time.

I'll smack the shit out of her. I'm dead serious.

[camera beeping]

[producer] 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.

[Seth] 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.

[indistinct chatter]

Dollars, dollars, dollars. Yeah.

[basketball bouncing]

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.

[car] Greetings, Hot Sauce.

[laughing] 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.

[director] And action.

There was definitely a little jealousy rolling around

from players being promoted more than others.

[AO] 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 what AND1 was.

[Headache] Oh man, don't get me wrong. Professor's a heck of a basketball player,

but, um, I question sometimes his motive.

[camera shutter clicking]

[The Professor] 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!

[man] 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... [bleep]

Why not? I ask the coach a question!

- [man] That's why. - [Hot Sauce] I don't disrespect you.

- [Ziggy] 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? - [Ziggy] You!

[both shouting, scuffling]

[man] Bro, don't get this shit.

We look like clowns.

[men shouting]

That shit's getting crazy.

[men clamoring]

[man 2] Yo, why y'all grabbing me? Why you grabbing me, though, man?

[music fades]

- [car horn blaring] - [indistinct chatter]

[Tom] 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.

[Jay] So Tom decided to move over to Taiwan

because he could influence the quality of the product much better

sitting there at the factory.

[phone ringing]

I was worried because Tom's an incredibly hard worker.

[tense music playing]

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.

[man] 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.

[phone ringing]

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.

[Seth] So Tom comes into my office.

He says, "Seth, I'm resigning."

I'm like, "Wait. What?" Like, that's impossible.

[Jay] 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.

- [basketball bouncing] - [indistinct chatter]

[Duke] Paoli, Pennsylvania.

The 2005 minicamp. Mixtape Tour!

AO!

[The Professor] 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.

[hip-hop music playing]

It's going down. It's official.

[indistinct chatter]

Right. We gotta frame this right here.

[dramatic music playing]

[The Professor] 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.

[The Professor] 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."

[The Professor] 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.

[somber music playing]

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.

[chuckling]

Definitely.

[somber music playing]

[announcer] You may recognize his face from ESPN Streetball!

- Shane "The Dribble Machine" Woney! - [crowd cheering, applauding]

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."

[tense music playing]

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.

[Jay] 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.

[crowd cheering]

[The Dribbling Machine] 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.

[music fades]

[contemplative music playing]

[The Dribbling Machine] 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.

[indistinct chatter]

[Skip 2 My Lou] 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.

[man] This church is crazy.

[Gee Lock] AND1 created opportunities that you was never getting.

I would have never

thought of

leaving the city, of leaving Brooklyn.

[AO] 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.

[The Main Event] AND1 basketball allowed a guy,

Waliyy Dixon, from Linden, New Jersey,

make some of our dreams come true.

[indistinct chatter]

The Pharmacist!

[dramatic music playing]

[Skip 2 My Lou] 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.

[commentator] Butler's gonna trigger the inbound. It's Alston.

This is for the win! It's good!

Are you kidding me?

[crowd cheering loudly]

AND1 changed the game.

The NBA is now more entertaining and free-going.

- [man] Oh no, he didn't! - [man 2] What a play by Paul!

You see some of the guys right now, today,

we're talking about superstars, do some of the moves...

[commentator] Curry. Oh, pretty fake! Pulls up.

They don't have to give props.

- [announcer speaking indistinctly] - [crowd cheering]

[Hot Sauce] We know who it came from.

[whistles blowing]

[crowd cheering loudly]

[inaudible]

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."

- [man] One, two, three, AND1! - [all] AND1

[voices echoing]

Allegations against one basketball ref

of betting the outcome of games is rocking the NBA.

[man] Man, did I fuck my life up.

[ominous music playing]

[reporter 1] Just like the feel-good hit of the summer,

the Manti Te'o story isn't real.

[man] Cruel, twisted folks.

It was the longest winning streak in history of sport.

[reporter 2] This is the finest day in the history of Australian sports!

[The Dribbling Machine] AND1 was making millions of dollars.

But did they respect us?

[Duke] AND1 basketball, baby!

[man] Shut your fucking mouth.

Keep it between us.

Stick to the fucking story.

[anchor 1] It could not get any stranger than this one...

[anchor 2] Donaghy is under investigation...

[anchor 3] Front page news all over town.

She physically did not exist outside of being Manti Te'o's dead girlfriend.

I was like, "Boy, that would be fucking crazy if it weren't true!"

[laughs]

[music fades]