ESPN ’30 for 30': ‘Morningside 5’ Revisits LA High School Basketball Stars 25 Years Later

Made in America, ESPN’s latest “30 for 30” film delves into Los Angeles sports history once again.

Premiering Tuesday night, “Morningside 5” is a fresh, new story for most viewers, but it’s well-traveled ground for filmmaker Mike Tollin, who first filmed five high school basketball stars — Stais Boseman, Dwight Curry, Corey Saffold, Dominic Ellison and Sean Harris — from Inglewood, California, back in 1992.

[...] new to Hollywood himself, documentary filmmaker Tollin teamed up with “Head of the Class” actor Brian Robbins to capture the essence of inner city high school basketball in their debut sports documentary.

“Morningside High had an esteemed reputation for basketball excellence and had just won the state basketball title, plus their five pre-eminent players were all returning for their senior years,” Tollin told TheWrap.

Seemingly destined to be the Michael Jordans of their era, the five players “all imagined that they would be receiving full scholarships to Division 1 schools to play basketball — that was their dream,” he added.

After chronicling their senior year in 1993’s “Hardwood Dreams,” Tollin — who’s also the co-founder of Mandalay Sports Media — went on to direct and produce feature films such as “Varsity Blues” and “Radio,” plus TV hits including “Smallville,” “One Tree Hill” and “Arli$$,” but fate would always draw him back to Morningside.

Mike Tollin: I was always a documentary guy at heart, and when I moved to L.A. I had an idea to try and find an inner city high school in which the profile was largely related to athletic achievement in the face of academic underachievement.

“Hoop Dreams” was happening at the exact same time (unbeknown to us) and this behemoth was about to change the sports media landscape as we knew it, but we went merrily along our way and started digging around the Los Angeles inner city schools and found this school in Inglewood that had an esteemed reputation for basketball excellence and had just won the state basketball title, plus their five pre-eminent players were all returning for their senior years … 

The idea was (and still is) to encourage filmmakers to tell first-person stories, to really exercise their vision and address their own passions.

Byron Scott and Paul Pierce — two former NBA stars who grew up in Inglewood — came out at the L.A. screening, and to hear them gush about these guys and call them the heroes of Inglewood “because they made lives for themselves and turned around the cycle of absentee fatherhood in the inner city” made us all feel so good. 

Ratings and box office records come and go, but being able to make a change is what makes it worth while.