Sports

Tracy McGrady Films Documentary About Sudan

by Jon Azpiri | September 16, 2008 at 08:47 am

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During the NBA offseason, Houston Rockets forward Tracy McGrady paid a visit to refugee camps in war-torn Sudan. His visit was chronicled by a film crew and turned into a documentary entitled "3 Points."

"I had no clue what genocide was, and I'm still learning about it," he says in the film before he travels to refugee camps in eastern Chad. "I really don't know what I am going to see."

Teammate Dikembe Mutombo helped spark McGrady's concern for Africa's dispossessed. McGrady contributed to a Congolese hospital Mutombo opened last summer, and soon thereafter McGrady saw Luol Deng (a Chicago Bulls player whose family is Sudanese) talking about the steep cost of the civil war, which has killed hundreds of thousands of Sudanese.

McGrady is hoping to find to distribute the film commercially. He has already secured plans to screen the documentary to a special audience--fellow NBA players.

So this week, McGrady is taking his film to -- and asking for more donations from -- players in the National Basketball Assn., which is helping to show "3 Points" to teams. (In addition to the long-range field goal, the movie's title refers to three strategies to fight genocide: peace, protection and punishment.) The goal is to raise awareness and money; players who, like McGrady, contribute $75,000 can build a new school in a camp, train teachers and purchase educational supplies.

McGrady has enlisted his Florida high school as a sister school to a new school in Chad, the first of which is to be built later this year. So far, Grabow says, six NBA players have made donations, including Derek Fisher and Jermaine O'Neal.

"Some of the players need to be educated," McGrady says. "But some of them are caring guys, know that something has to be done and are willing to help."