Not sure if this was posted yet. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/movies/la-et-mcgrady16-2008sep16,0,6995290.story He helps the poorest of the poor as he visits refugee camps. By John Horn, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer September 16, 2008 Basketball all-star Tracy McGrady certainly enjoys a good life. "Am I spoiled?" he asks. "Yes, I'm spoiled." McGrady's first paycheck came from Adidas in a $500,000 endorsement deal, and his first job was playing in the NBA. The Houston Rockets guard/forward lives in a mansion, has no shortage of jewelry and clothes, and flies on private planes. Unlike so many professional athletes, though, McGrady chose to leave all such luxuries behind and see firsthand how the world's least fortunate survive. His riches-to-rags journey is chronicled in the new documentary, “3 Points,” an account of McGrady's visit last year to three African refugee camps. Africa's genocidal crisis, sparked by a civil war between Sudan's Arab leaders and the country's ethnic Africans in its Darfur region, has triggered any number of documentary films, including George Clooney's "Sand and Sorrow," Don Cheadle's "Darfur Now" and former Marine Brian Steidle's "The Devil Came on Horseback." But few of those films have at their center as compelling a chronicler as McGrady, who travels to Africa “3 Points,” openly admitting he knows next to nothing about what's going on in Darfur. His honest reactions "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 organized a visit, working with documentary filmmaker and photographer Josh Rothstein and humanitarian John Prendergast of the Enough Project. Yet it's not simply what McGrady observes during his trip that anchors "3 Points," which was just completed and is now in search of a broadcast or theatrical distributor. Rather, it's how he reacts to the tragedy that he witnesses: He doesn't really know what to do. After encountering children playing soccer without a field, McGrady says he'll pay $1,000 for a new pitch only to be told that green grass isn't really the refugees' greatest need. "A lot of the film has to deal with his being out of his element," says Rothstein. "And he realized that was maybe the most important part of the trip for him." McGrady's journey was both personal and emotional. To visit the barren camps, he had to forsake any number of usual niceties. That included McGrady's having to sleep in a tent for the first time. His trying to get along without air conditioning. Eating food that wasn't prepared in a four-star restaurant. As McGrady's wife, CleRenda Harris, notes in the film, "Tracy is definitely stepping out of his comfort zone." But it wasn't all such trivial concerns. He had to worry about land mines. Listen to stories of rape, murder, torture. And his eyes were quickly opened. Precisely because he is not an expert in Sudanese politics, the 29-year-old McGrady can serve as a conduit for the audience. He may be supreme on the court, but he's like almost everyone else when it comes to the outside world: He's unsure of what's going on. "People are really hesitant about expressing that they don't know something -- but what's the big deal?" McGrady says in an interview to discuss the film. "I'm not ashamed about that at all. And my going out and saying, 'I don't know a lot about this' will make people feel OK that they don't know about it, either." Adds his longtime manager and assistant, Elissa Grabow, who accompanied McGrady on his Africa trip: "This is not to market his brand. It's not about that, but about what I don't know, and that I am not afraid to say that I don't know." "By the end of my trip," McGrady says, "I started to realize what they really needed -- and that's schools." When he returned to the United States, McGrady decided to try to help build them. Others in the game 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." john.horn@latimes.com
This is not only going to improve his 3 point shooting, but his mental toughness as well now that he knows (and what the rest of the athletes should know) what real pain is.
Wow...that's pretty cool of him to get involved and learn first hand what hardships people in Africa go thru... I think he'll be a better person for it and hopefully it'll translate into improving mental toughness and his game...
And you think the Chinese are the only government to be selling weapons to others that commit crime against humanity. You should reorganize your priorities and get some education before you spend your time watching basketball and sounding dumb while writing on forums. American government is one of the biggest arms dealers in the world and not always moral in there dealing.
Ever heard of the U.S. not selling, but donating weapons to Israel to commit genocide? Shut your mouth and read up on your history before you make dumb comments like that on a basketball forum
[rquoter]"People are really hesitant about expressing that they don't know something -- but what's the big deal?" McGrady says in an interview to discuss the film. "I'm not ashamed about that at all. And my going out and saying, 'I don't know a lot about this' will make people feel OK that they don't know about it, either."[/rquoter] Is that really the message this film is trying to send? Hopefully that's not really what he meant, because I don't think ignorance is ever something people should be "OK" with.
those weapons the U.S. Donated were not used to commit genocide, it was used to protect a nation against terrorism... real terrorism that Israel faces EVERY DAY. They don't face Muslim's that want to destroy everything in their own nation.. they fight muslims from OTHER NATIONS with those weapons. Africa has muslims attacking non-muslims everyday because they are cowards, and the Chinese supports it to protect their interest. I never seen the United States of America SUPPORT Genocide to protect their interest. Show me one case where the United States does that directly and as blatant as the Chinese do it, and I'll eat my crow.
I think they are trying to imply that many people may be ignorant but are fearful to speak out about it i.e. I'd rather keep my mouth shut for fear of saying something incorrect or that can be construed as stupid. I would assume that beyond this, they are trying to say that it's alright if you don't know much about the situation because many people do not. But you should try to learn more about what is going on around you. America is a bubble country and most Americans, unfortunately, are unaware of what's going on in the world - many are unaware of what happens in the country. Therefore, TMAC is trying to relate his situation everyone i.e. he didn't know much before, but now that he does, he is trying to do something about it. At the very least, his video should educate some people on the happenings of Darfur and the greater Africa.
In WWII, before the US officially joined the war, they turned away thousands of Jewish immigrants trying to flee into America. In my opinion, trying to stay neutral and not helping to save those people equivalently sent them to their death. And do not try to say that the US did not understand what was happening in the Holocaust in the early 40's. The public may not have known but FDR and his intelligence agency sure knew what was going on. Time and time again we have ignored what has happened in the world (see Rwanda, 1994 as an example). Now, this isn't to say that other countries are better than the U.S. But I will say that through ignorance or blatant support, those people are still dead and our hands, in my opinion, are as bloody as every other country.
Your ignorance shows by the naivety of your comments. Have the donations of weapons from our glorious nation to Osama bin ladin and Saddam Hussein in past times eluded you? The contention that the weapon's donated to Israel are only used to protect its borders is an asinine remark. You have evidently failed to see the destruction resulting from homes being torn down, and bullet ridden bodies coming from U.S. made tanks, tractors (caterpillar specifically) and M16's. *eat your crow*
Good point Ngadban. During the USSR-Afghanistan conflict, the CIA trained Bin-Laden and his friends and gave them huge donations in the billions that they used to fend off the USSR. When the war ended, they eventually turned to use said training and money to attack us. The same goes for Saddam in Iraq when there was the Iraq-Iran conflict.
Read up on our relationship with Indonesia throughout their occupation of East Timor. Here: [rquoter] Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975, illegally annexing it the following year. At the time, 90% of the Indonesian military's arms were made in America, and provided, along with President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger's nod of approval, U.S. support for the takeover. Amnesty International and other human rights groups have estimated that more than 100,000 Timorese out of a population of only 700,000 were killed in the first five years. Since 1980 another 100,000 are thought to have been killed or to have died of hunger and disease.[/rquoter] http://www.fas.org/asmp/profiles/indonesia.htm And: [rquoter] The Indonesian invasion of East Timor in December 1975 set the stage for the long, bloody, and disastrous occupation of the territory that ended only after an international peacekeeping force was introduced in 1999. President Bill Clinton cut off military aid to Indonesia in September 1999—reversing a longstanding policy of military cooperation—but questions persist about U.S. responsibility for the 1975 invasion; in particular, the degree to which Washington actually condoned or supported the bloody military offensive. Most recently, journalist Christopher Hitchens raised questions about the role of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in giving a green light to the invasion that has left perhaps 200,000 dead in the years since. Two newly declassified documents from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, released to the National Security Archive, shed light on the Ford administration’s relationship with President Suharto of Indonesia during 1975. Of special importance is the record of Ford’s and Kissinger’s meeting with Suharto in early December 1975. The document shows that Suharto began the invasion knowing that he had the full approval of the White House. Both of these documents had been released in heavily excised form some years ago, but with Suharto now out of power, and following the collapse of Indonesian control over East Timor, the situation has changed enough that both documents have been released in their entirety. Other documents found among State Department records at the National Archives elucidate the inner workings of U.S. policy toward the Indonesian crisis during 1975 and 1976. Besides confirming that Henry Kissinger and top advisers expected an eventual Indonesian takeover of East Timor, archival material shows that the Secretary of State fully understood that the invasion of East Timor involved the "illegal" use of U.S.-supplied military equipment because it was not used in self-defense as required by law. Although Indonesia was a major site of U.S. energy and raw materials investment, an important petroleum exporter, strategically located near vital shipping lanes, and a significant recipient of U.S. military assistance, the country—much less the East Timor question—barely figures into Henry Kissinger’s memoirs of the Nixon and Ford administrations. Gerald Ford’s memoir briefly discusses the December 1975 visit to Jakarta but does not mention the discussion of East Timor with Suharto. Indeed, as important as the bilateral relationship was, Jakarta's brutal suppression of the independence movement in East Timor was a development that neither Ford nor Kissinger wanted people to remember about their time in power. That the two decided on a course of action of dubious legality and that resulted in the slaughter of thousands of Timorese may well have also discouraged further reflection, at least in public. No doubt the omissions from Ford's and Kissinger's memoirs also reflect the low priority that East Timor had during the Ford administration. For senior officials, the fate of a post-colonial East Timor paled in comparison to the strategic relationship with the anti-communist Suharto regime, especially in the wake of the communist victory in Vietnam, when Ford and Kissinger wanted to strengthen relations with anti-communists and check left-wing movements in the region.(1) But it is not simply a matter of omission; on several occasions Kissinger has explicitly denied that he ever had substantive discussions of East Timor with Suharto, much less having consented to Indonesian plans.(2) The new evidence contradicts Kissinger's statements: Indonesian plans for the invasion of East Timor were indeed discussed with Suharto, and Ford and Kissinger gave them the green light. As Kissinger advised Suharto on the eve of the invasion: "it is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly" but that "it would be better if it were done after we returned" to the United States. [/rquoter] http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/
He made the Darfur trip before last season started, so any noticeable effects should already have been noticed. If people thought McGrady seemed tougher last season then its working.
