'The Town Game' Film Review: The Moving Tale of Two Basketball Players

Hoops documentary The Town Game: Two Lives, Two Paths (Running Monday, April 9 at 9 p.m. PT on Comcast SportsNet Bay Area) explores what might have been through two basketball players who took decidedly different paths. "The Town" is Oakland, and the documentary is telling a real story from the perspective of Oakland's more blighted avenues. 

Hook Mitchell is one of the two primary subjects; the other is former Cal star Leon Powe. Hook is still a legend, even though his exploits on Oakland's playgrounds ceased when the '90s started. I've seen older men, mostly middle aged, wearing T-shirts that show a young Hook jumping over a car. Whatever happened back then mattered enough that it still matters—which is hard to fathom, really. Technological advances have made us so present that it's difficult for the past to have any meaning in our lives. And yet, here's Hook, still living in the local consciousness, despite laying no claim to any great NBA classic game or even a viral YouTube video. 

While plenty of basketball players come through these parts and go on to careers in the NBA, many talented athletes just never get it together. But, Hook's legend trumps and endures. Maybe he was truly extraordinary, like ABA Dr. J, but we'll never know because we never got to. And the mystery animates much of our interest.  

But if you want to know the current Hook, the movie has that covered. He's short, emaciated and missing teeth. His face appears smashed, partially ravaged by something other than age. His eyes are oddly bright and opaque at the same time, like DeMarcus Cousins'. We're a long way from 1985, when people would pack the famed Mosswood Park to see Mitchell jump over cars in a manner that might embarrass Blake Griffin. Hook's been addicted to heroin, in and out of jail. The dream died a long time ago. 

His countenance bears a stark contrast to that of Leon Powe. Leon's quick to smile, his eyes are windows. Unlike Hook, he made it out of Oakland, despite his mother dying, despite having to do homework in a rat-infested kitchen. But there is a connection between the two, and it may be the reason that Powe did not turn out like Mitchell. 

Bernard Ward, a childhood friend of Hook's, shepherded fatherless Powe through the fray and helped him avoid the pratfalls of the Oakland streets. While the two stories do not run in seamless concurrence and it's a story as old as the inner city, the movie is moving.