Untold: The Rise and Fall of AND1 Review: Street Basketball at its Helm

Untold: The Rise and Fall of AND1 is a sports documentary film released on Netflix on 23 August 2022. Directed by Kevin Wilson Jr, it is a part of the Untold series. Untold Volume 2 is a four-week docu-series event that once again brings fresh eyes to epic tales from the wide world of sports on Netflix.

The films will premiere weekly and each film kicks off at a pivotal moment and then delves deep into what happened beyond the headlines, as told by those who lived it, to reveal the grit, resilience, heartbreak, triumph, violence, comedy and pathos beneath the sweat.

The Rise and Fall of AND1 is a rags-to-riches tale of a scrappy company transforming streetball into a phenomenon. As the title suggests, it follows the trajectory of how the company became larger than life but eventually met with a decline due to a number of factors. The film has a runtime of about 1 hour and 9 minutes.

Netflix’s synopsis of the documentary reads:

Inspired by New York City streetball, influential brand AND1 turned local legends on the court into international icons. So why did it come to an end?

-Untold: The Rise and Fall of AND1 Review Contain Some Spoilers-

Born out of the playgrounds of New York City, the ‘AND1 Mixtape Tour’ took streetball to the masses, challenging convention and picking up a team of basketball misfits along the way. This documentary traces the journey of how three young friends with a dream of bringing greater acclaim to the game they loved.

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How they connected with the underground artform of streetball and ended up flipping the billion-dollar basketball industry on its head. AND1 co-founders along with streetball legends The Professor, Hot Sauce, Skip 2 My Lou, The Main Event, Shane the Dribbling Machine and more reflect on their experience and the brand’s journey.

It all started in 1993 as a graduate school project partnership of Jay Coen Gilbert, Seth Berger and Tom Austin while they were graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Seth and Jay were already friends since middle school and they met Tom while playing basketball in their free time.

The company name is also derived from a phrase used in basketball to denote a free throw awarded to a player against whom a foul has been committed while scoring a goal. They actually found success with their company in 1995, when they started selling trash-talking T-shirts. It became so big that even Chandler Bing on Friends wore the AND1 merch t-shirt.

But their goal to expand was met with some unfortunate incidents when they signed the NBA star Stephon Marbury as the spokesman for their first line of shoes, but he ended up breaking his ankles in his game. It had a damping effect on the brand and lost its model as well. That’s when they found a tape of a street basketball game featuring a streetballer Rafer Alston.

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And at the right moment, they took the decision to form a team of local streetballers and distribute their game as mix-tapes. It soon turned into an AND1 Mixtape tour where a group of streetball players travel from town to town and challenge teams composed of local talent. Games tend to be characterized by isolation one-on-one ball handling moves and acrobatic slam dunks and alley-oops.

And in a very short amount of time, these players and the company became as popular as NBA and Nike respectively. They were everywhere, getting sponsors, selling out arenas, and adding immense merch sales to having the number one rated show on ESPN. So what went wrong, if everything was so great?

The same thing that destroys many big names and corporations, the fame, money and jealousy. The company wants to grow more, and the players feel underappreciated or even exploited. With no direct communication and difference in goals, pressure and stress mount to people drifting away.

Summing Up: Untold: The Rise and Fall of AND1

The hour-long documentary film is an incredible success story about a brief sports cultural phenomenon with a bittersweet end. It is an interesting watch, more so if you are a basketball fan or know about the players featured in the documentary. Streetball was definitely a breakthrough that could have been much bigger now if only some wise decisions were made.

The founders of the company were just some college grads trying to make big with something that they like. They didn’t foresee the amount of success they actually got and the undermanagement got them. If only they invested in the paperwork, finance, and legalities of things outside the ballcourt, they might have been at a different place.

Untold: The Rise and Fall of AND1 is currently streaming on Netflix.

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