Origin: The Story of the Basketball Africa League is informative and inspiring, proving dreams do indeed come true.
One of the series premiering at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival is Origin: The Story of the Basketball Africa League. Co-directed by Richard Brown and Tebogo Malope, and produced by basketball heavyweights like former Toronto Raptors vice-president and chairman, Masai Ujiri, the series documents the NBA and FIBA‘s creation and launch of the Basketball Africa League, known affectionately as BAL. The league was the brainchild of former Dallas Mavericks scouting director, Amadou Gallo Fall.
But the series isn’t just about the creation of a new league, but the transformative power of sports, not only in creating local, national, and continental unity and identity, but in economic development and job creation—from maintenance and security to, food and merchandise.
The league launches with 12 existing teams from across the content, from Tunisia and Egypt, to Senegal and Nigeria. It defies regional, cultural, and linguistic differences to build unity in a way that only sport can.
The series features archival footage and interviews with the likes of Barack Obama, Noah, Ujiri, Steph Curry, and BAL player, J. Cole as they lend their perspective on the growth of the sport in Africa. We also get a look into Ujiri’s origin story as a player, his transition to coaching, and his rise to the Raptors front office.
They also look back at a seminal moment in African basketball history—Angola versus the Dream Team at the 1992 Olympics—showing that he story of African basketball isn’t a story that started in 2019. We’ve reached the climax of a story that started decades earlier and will continue into the foreseeable future. Everyone loves a good coming-of-age story, and this is what this series is about—the coming-of-age of Africa. Amadou Gallo Fall rightly notes that this league isn’t just a milestone for basketball in Africa, but for basketball all over the world. Where the world often sees Africa through the eyes of “for the price of a cup of coffee” infomercials or pictures of African safaris, Origin: The Story of the Basketball Africa League is a window into the promise and potential of Africa, presenting the continent as a cultural and economic hub on the rise, especially when paired alongside the increased global appeal of African music.
But we can’t lose of what matters most—the development of the players; not just in their skills, but in their confidence. In one scene, we see the players in amazement as they see their new facilities for the first time. The message is that they are professionals, they matter too, and there is no difference between them and the players they admire across the ocean in the NBA. This is about creating a sense of parity in the global basketball landscape. It’s also about allowing Black American players the opportunity to go home to the continent to discover their African roots.
Overall, Origin: The Story of the Basketball Africa League proves that dreams ultimately come true. It’s both informative and inspiring as Fall and his players chase their hoop dreams on their own soil and on their own terms. The magnitude and impact of this moment won’t be seen fully until many years from now, but the good new is, in the mean time, the revolution is officially being televised. The series has been acquired by ESPN in the United States and Bell Media in Canada, so stayed tuned.
Kevin Bourne is SHIFTER’s Toronto-based editor and Senior Entertainment Reporter focusing on Black music and film & TV. He was named one of 340 international voters for the Golden Globe Awards and a Tomatometer-Approved Critic by Rotten Tomatoes.
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