Showtime will shine a light on some of the greatest New York-born, basketball point guards in a new sports documentary series set to premiere July 29.

The documentary, NYC Point Gods, focuses on such 1980’s and 1990’s point guards as Rafer Alston, Kenny Anderson, Mark Jackson, Stephon Marbury, God Shammgod, Kenny Smith, Rod Strickland and Dwayne “Pearl” Washington as they helped shaped and advance the game of basketball, according to Showtime.

NYC Point Guards also features rare footage of the point guards, as well as interviews with such sports and celebrity personalities as Stephen A. Smith, Cam’ron, Fat Joe, Lou Carnesecca, Jim Boeheim and Rick Pitino.

“As a basketball fan who marveled at the skill and showmanship of each of these point gods, I couldn’t be prouder of this film for its faithful depiction of a special time and special place in basketball history,” said Showtime Networks Inc. President of Sports & Event Programming Stephen Espinoza in a statement. “New York City produced some of the greatest showmen and floor generals in basketball history, players whose creativity and style – and signature moves –  continue to influence the game today.” 

NYC Point Guards is produced by Showtime Documentary Films alongside NBA superstar Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman’s Boardroom, said the network. ■ 

Also:  Showtime's 'I Love That For You' Star Jenifer Lewis Talks About New Series Role

Apple TV Plus Thursday offered a first-look trailer at its new basketball-themed drama series inspired by the life of NBA superstar Kevin Durant debuting Oct. 29.

The 10-episode series, Swagger, explores the world of youth basketball and follows  the exploits of players and their families and coaches as they walk the fine line between dreams, ambition, opportunism and corruption, said the streaming service. 

The series stars O’Shea Jackson Jr., Isaiah Hill, Shinelle Azoroh, Quvenzhané Wallis, Caleel Harris, James Bingham, Solomon Irama, Ozie Nzeribe, Tessa Ferrer, Tristan Mack Wilds and Jason Rivera.

Swagger is executive produced by Durant, Reggie Rock Bythwood, and Brian Grazer, along with Rich Kleinman, Francie Calfo, Samie Kim Falvey and Smantha Corbin-Miller.

Apple TV Plus will debut the first three episodes of the series on Oct. 29, followed by one new episode weekly every Friday thereafter through Dec. 17, said the streaming service.

When National Basketball Association All-Star Kevin Durant suffered a ruptured Achilles tendon in the first half of Game 5 of June’s NBA Finals, it all but ended the Golden State Warriors’ two-year championship reign. Without Durant, the two-time NBA Finals Most Valuable Player, the Warriors went on to lose the championship to the Toronto Raptors in six games.

The devastating injury will keep former NBA Most Valuable Player Durant — who two months later would sign a long-term deal to play for the Brooklyn Nets — off the basketball court for most of the 2019-20 season. But it hasn’t hampered his drive into the entertainment arena as an executive producer and entrepreneur. And that push has earned him recognition as the 2019 Multichannel News Athlete of the Year among men. 

From serving as executive producer of ESPN Plus’s sophomore sports series The Boardroom, to his hands-on development of Fox Sports’s prison sports documentary Q Ball and the upcoming scripted drama series Swagger for Apple TV+, Durant is looking to match the success he’s had in his fruitful 12-year NBA career.

“In addition to being a two-time NBA champion and Finals MVP, Kevin Durant is an accomplished entrepreneur with a deep passion for storytelling,” NBA deputy commissioner and chief operating officer Mark Tatum said. “Kevin’s investments across sports, media, technology and philanthropy demonstrate his wide variety of interests and his commitment to making an impact in communities around the world.”

Also Read: Thirty Five Ventures‘ Inside Game

Durant, 31, who was drafted second by the Seattle SuperSonics (now the Oklahoma City Thunder) in the 2007 NBA Draft, has already had what is arguably a hall of fame career. Heading into this season, the 10-time All-Star has already won a Rookie of the Year Award, two Olympic Gold Medals and four NBA scoring titles to go with his two NBA championships and two NBA Finals MVP awards as a member of the Warriors.

Penchant for Storytelling

While Durant has made his mark in the NBA, TV industry executives said his talents go beyond the basketball court. Durant in 2016 co-founded media company Thirty Five Ventures with business partner Rich Kleiman with the idea of telling stories through the lens of sports, according to Thirty Five Ventures general manager Sarah Flynn.

“As the business of sports has changed, fans want and expect more access to what goes on off the court/field, and it's important to show them the way that athletes and executives are really talking about their business,” Flynn said. “Kevin is extremely involved in the process.”

Also Read: Simone Biles Is on Point

Former NBA player Jay Williams said Durant — through content from Thirty Five Ventures — is one of several elite athletes, including fellow NBA star LeBron James, who are breaking down barriers in the sports documentary genre by developing content that allows athletes to provide an unfiltered point of view about issues on and off the field of play.

“Kevin Durant can now say, ‘Hey, you might not like exactly what I have to say, but this is how I feel,’” said Williams, who played for the Chicago Bulls in the early 2000s and currently co-hosts ESPN Plus’s sports documentary series The Boardroom, executive produced by Durant.

The Boardroom, in which Durant and prominent business executives talk about the business of sports from the perspective of those in the trenches, will launch its second season in February 2020. ESPN Plus vice president of original content Brian Lockhart said Durant’s input and flexibility in creating content that offers a unique, behind-the-scenes look at the business of sports has been instrumental in the show’s development. In its six-episode first season, The Boardroom delved into such topics as the burgeoning sneaker industry, team ownership, athlete brand-building and player development and the business of social media.

“I think the show is driven by a genuine curiosity by Kevin in the topic as he himself was going through learning what the broader business industry had to offer,” Lockhart said. “He wanted to have a conversation that included an athlete’s perspective in that space.”

Durant has also turned his passion for basketball into several other television projects. Thirty Five Ventures recently teamed with Imagine Entertainment, CBS Television Studios and Apple to produce Swagger, a scripted series based on Durant’s early basketball career, for Apple TV+. Actor Winston Duke (Black Panther, Us) will star in the series, which has already begun production.

Durant also helped turn a 2015 visit he made with the Golden State Warriors to San Quentin State Prison in California into a Fox Sports documentary, Q Ball, which debuted on Fox Sports in May after a brief theatrical run.

Hands-On Producer

Q Ball director Michael Tolajian said Durant was enthusiastic to get behind the project, which chronicled the lives of incarcerated basketball players at the state penitentiary. Durant participated in the editing for the project, and also filmed more than a dozen promos and clips promoting the documentary that he personally shared through social media.

“Almost instantaneously they responded positively and wanted to be involved in the project as executive producers and help us create and promote the show,” said Tolajian, who also serves as Fox Sports Films senior vice president. “It wasn’t just about him throwing his name on the project — he had been to San Quentin and he was passionate about it, so he was able to be involved early on creatively on the theme of the project. We couldn’t ask for a better partnership than to have someone who believes in the project … it was very much a win-win all the way around.”

Tolajian also said he thinks Durant has a bright future in the entertainment business once he hangs up his sneakers.

“I think his interest in entertainment is genuine, and I don’t see why he wouldn’t continue,” he said. “If and when he has another idea, believe me, we want to hear it.”

Added ESPN Plus’s Lockhart: “I can tell just by interacting with him that he has a passion for creating content, whether it’s The Boardroom or his new Apple TV+ scripted series, I see him being super excited about taking that next step in his career whenever the NBA career is over.

“I believe that he would love to be doing more in the entertainment space ... but he’s still very focused on his primary career,” Lockhart said. 

Thirty Five Ventures, the vehicle Kevin Durant and business partner Rich Kleiman founded in 2016 to branch out into the entertainment field, already has several sports-themed shows to its credit, including ESPN+ documentary series The Boardroom and Swagger, a scripted series for Apple TV+ based on Durant’s experiences in youth basketball. Sarah Flynn, general manager of Thirty Five Ventures, spoke with Multichannel News about why Durant created the company and what its future plans for programming might be. Here’s an edited excerpt from that interview.

MCN: What is Kevin Durant looking to accomplish through his Thirty Five Ventures?
Sarah Flynn: Thirty Five Ventures is always looking to tell compelling stories primarily through the lens of sports. Sports is really a microcosm of the world itself, from culture to business to philanthropy, and through verticals like our sports business platform The Boardroom, we’ve really been able to explore that in new ways.

MCN: What does Kevin Durant bring to the table in terms of creating and developing original television content?
SF: Kevin has a natural curiosity and drive that fuels creative projects as much as it does his on-court world. He’s always learning, and wants to learn from the best in every industry. Partnering with Imagine Entertainment, Apple, ESPN and other networks has given us all the opportunity to do that while working on our original projects.

RELATED: Kevin Durant Scripts a Career Beyond Basketball

MCN: How involved is Kevin in the creative process of the shows Thirty Five Ventures is creating?
SF: Kevin is extremely involved in the process, and on many of our projects, it’s a unique opportunity for him to — for the most part — step out from in front of the camera and be more creative behind the scenes.

MCN: Will sports be the focus of Thirty Five Ventures’ original content or will the company look to create content within other genres?
SF: We live and breathe sports, so those stories are what we’re most immediately drawn to, but our interests are definitely not limited to sports, so there are certainly opportunities to create content across other verticals in the future.

The National Hockey League and National Basketball Association finals are headed to exciting conclusions this week.

June 12 broadcast network NBC will air the seventh and final game of the NHL Stanley Cup championship between the St. Louis Blues and the Boston Bruins. The game is the first Stanley Cup Game seven to take place since the Bruins beat the Vancouver Canucks in 2011.

NBC is hoping to build on its audience for game six, which drew a Total Audience Delivery of 6.6 million—the most viewed game of the series thus far, according to NBC Sports.

Overall, this year’s NHL Stanley Cup finals are averaging 4.8 million viewers, slightly down from the 4.9 million viewers generated by last year’s five-game Washington Capitals-Las Vegas Golden Knights finals, according to Nielsen.

Broadcast network ABC on Thursday will continue its NBA Finals coverage with Game six between the two-time defending champion Golden State Warriors and the Toronto Raptors. The Raptors are up three games to two, but the Warriors are coming off an emotional win Monday night on the road and will look to even the series at home.

Game five, in which Warriors’ superstar Kevin Durant made his first on the court Finals appearance—only to suffer a serious Achilles injury in the first half—drew a 4.4 rating among adults 18-49, the highest rating for the series so far, according to Nielsen.

If the Warriors win Thursday, ABC will air game seven of the NBA Finals live on Sunday from Toronto.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai took to the op ed pages of the Los Angeles Timesto explain his plans to roll back Title II classification of ISPs, likening the former FCC's decision to impose those rules to the Oklahoma City Thunder trading James Harden for fear of running up against the salary cap.

Pai is noted for his love of analogies (and song references).

Pai said that reclassifying ISPs for fear of prospective harms to Internet openness he argues were speculative, and not in evidence is like that trade, which he and others argue broke up a winning combination for fear of prospective problems with the NBA salary cap.

He said that Thunder fans "would give anything to undo a trade motivated by speculative fears," suggesting he was trying to undo the Title II-related effects of that unwise moves, which he says include that "fewer Americans have high-speed broadband access, fewer Americans are working to build next-generation networks, and fewer Americans have competitive choice than would have been the case had the FCC not gone down the Title II path.

And while the Thunder team is unlikely to be reconstituted, "we can correct a past mistake by moving away from government control of the Internet," he said. "And that’s exactly what we intend to do."

A vote is scheduled May 18 on Pai's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which proposes to reclassify ISPs, wired and mobile wireless, as Information services; roll back FCC authority to regulate interconnections under the Open Internet order, and ask whether the prohibitions against blocking, throttling or paid prioritization, and requirements of enhanced transparency about network management, are in the public interest.

When NBC dropped the puck on its coverage of the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup Playoffs earlier this week, it did so with the hopes of boosting viewership by offering wall-to-wall live coverage across several networks and platforms.

Along with airing every first-round playoff games across four networks — NBC, NBCSN, USA Network and CNBC — its telecasts were not blacked out for the first time in local-team markets since NBC Sports Group acquired the NHL’s rights in 2005. Boston and Pittsburgh were the only markets where first-round blackouts remained in place, NBC said.

 “The fans are the real winners here,” NBC Sports and NBCSN president of programming Jon Miller said of the side-by-side telecasts. “They now have more options than ever to watch first-round playoff coverage of their local teams.”

The losers could be the regional sports networks, which will now have to compete with national network coverage for eyeballs — although for most hockey fans, local-team telecasts are often more palatable than national network coverage.

At worst, NBC Sports executive producer Sam Flood said the new setup should eliminate the confusion over which games are blacked out in which markets. “Now you know where to go,” Flood said during a pre-playoffs conference call with reporters. “We like that. Simplicity is a good thing.”

 On the digital side, the NBC Sports app will provide live streaming of every NHL playoff game televised by NBC, NBCN, USA and CNBC, giving hockey fans multiple points of entry to watch live playoff games on multiple platforms.  

With baseball season in full swing — and with the LeBron James and Kevin Durant-led NBA Playoffs launching this weekend — NBC Sports is hoping its one-stop shop approach to distributing the chase for the Stanley Cup will keep hockey’s post-season excitement competitive in a crowded TV sports arena by streamlining the fan experience and making the competition easier to find.

TNT heads into its coverage of the NBA All-Star weekend festivities in New Orleans looking to build some ratings momentum heading into the NBA playoffs push. TNT’s  NBA live game coverage -- which includes exclusive Thursday night doubleheader games and a new package of Monday night NBA telecasts -- is averaging 1.7 million viewers thus far this season, on par with last year’s performance.

I caught up with Turner president David Levy prior to his departure to New Orleans to discuss the state of the league going into the All-Star break, as well as the prospects for a strong TNT ratings performance during the second-half of the NBA season.  

MCN: How has the NBA on TNT performed thus far heading into the All-Star Game?

David Levy: The numbers have been pretty good – I believe we’re flat year to year but we added more games on Monday nights. I like the storylines developing with Golden State and Oklahoma City, and I like the fact that Boston and the Clippers are playing a little better; San Antonio is always there, and let’s not forget about LeBron (James) and Cleveland. So I think the NBA is going to be in a really good position, and I think the playoffs are going to be really exiting this year.

MCN: What are your expectations for the All-Star game thig year?

DL: First of all its back in the US [last year’s game in Toronto] -- from a ratings perspective last year wasn’t one of our best rated games. I think it’s going to be a ratings success having it in New Orleans, but I also think there’s interest in the NBA right now. Carmelo Anthony just got in – he’s the commissioner’s pick but some have asked does he deserve to be in? I love to see [former teammates] Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant have to practice with each other on the same team, so I think there are a number of underlying stories that people will look at.

MCN: If the elite teams in the league start to pull away from the pack, do you think that will hurt ratings for TNT’s NBA game telecasts in the second half of the season?

DL: No. I know a lot of people like to say parity is great, but it’s really about brands and strong teams. If we get some exciting [regular-season] games and then some game 7’s in the playoffs, the ratings will be there.

HBO Sports will team with NBA superstar Kevin Durant for a documentary special that profiles the league’s Most Valuable Player, the network said Thursday.

The special, The Offseason: Kevin Durant, will air Nov. 4 and will take a first person account of the Oklahoma City Thunder superstar from his team’s Western Conference finals loss on May 31 to NBA training camp in late September, said network officials. Cameras and microphones were embedded with the 26-year-old five-time All-Star throughout the summer.

“This is an exciting partnership, and we are delighted to work with an exceptional individual like Kevin Durant,” says Ken Hershman, president, HBO Sports. “He has a magnetic personality that enables fans to connect with him far beyond the hardwood and we look forward to a very revealing program.”