Sons of the City: New York Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.5

Sons of the City: New York Blu-ray Movie Review

More NBA on Blu-ray

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater May 30, 2011

Which American metropolis produces the best basketball players? At the beginning of Sons of the City, several once and former NBA stars, historians, and journalists give a unanimous response: New York. Other cities are close contenders—Los Angeles, Philly, Chicago—but NYC’s status as the breeding ground for basketball talent is well established and, by this point, irrefutable. The sport has a celebrated history in the five boroughs, from throwdown street matches at legendary parks like the Rucker Playground to the annual, sold-out, riot-inducing Madison Square Garden All-City games between the champions of the public school and Catholic high school leagues. It’s high time we had a comprehensive documentary about New York’s steeped basketball history—the street culture, the legendary-but-now-unknown players, the coaches, promoters, and fans who made it happen—but Sons of the City, unfortunately, is not that film. Rather, what we have here is a series of glorified highlight reels showcasing the skills of the greatest NBA players to come from New York. Sons of the City isn’t bad—it gives decent career overviews for some of the best b-ballers of all time—but it’s unambitious, short on substance, and ultimately underwhelming.

The best way I can describe it is this: Sons of the City feels like something you’d catch on ESPN in the dead of night, something a basketball fan would use as a sleep aid, not because the material is necessarily boring, but simply because it’s so familiar and repetitive. The presentation is pretty typical for these kinds of shows; the producers have gathered a bunch of highlight clips, conducted interviews with a few journalists and former stars—all of whom wax poetic about jump shots, ball control, and “basketball I.Q.,” etc.—and organized it into a watchable but far from inspired 54-minute program. For better or worse, it’s basically the sports equivalent of a VH1 pop-culture retrospective. And it’s about as substantive as one.

Running under an hour long, Sons of the City simply doesn’t have the time to go in depth on its material. In a rush to cover roughly ten players, along with a handful of influential New York coaches, each section often seems like the outline for a full-fledged documentary that’s yet to be written. The interviewees dole out career stats and give enthusiastic descriptions of each player’s attributes and legacy, but there’s little context or continuation. For example, you’ll hear numerous references to “the grand tradition of the New York point guard,” but by the end you’ll have little clue what defines that tradition. What makes a New York point guard distinctive? I’m still not quite sure.

And this brings us to the program’s biggest shortcoming: Despite being specifically about the New York “school” of basketball—you’d think, anyway— the show says little about the influence that the city and its street culture have had on the players throughout history who have hailed from the Big Apple. Cursory mention is made of neighborhood parks, fierce semi-pro city leagues, and high school ball, but the emphasis is almost entirely on the players’ NBA careers, not how growing up in NYC affected their playing styles.

Still, if all you’re after is vintage highlight footage and colorful, sometimes hyperbolic commentary from the likes of b-ball historian Tom Konchalski, journalist Mitch Lawrence, and former Celtics champ Tom “Satch” Sanders, Sons of the City certainly delivers. The show starts by looking at Bob Cousy, the so-called “greatest little man in basketball history,” a 6’1” point guard from Queens who went on to lead the Celtics in six NBA titles. If you plotted the history of New York point guards out as a family tree, Cousy would be the trunk, we’re told, but once again, we’re never explicitly shown what influential attributes were passed down in his athletic DNA. Nonetheless, Sons of the City gives us a rundown of Cousy’s hoop- shooting progenitors, from Brooklynite Mark Jackson and Bronx baller Nate Archibald—“the Allen Iverson of his time”—to left-handed Lenny Wilkins, who would become the winningest coach in NBA history.

Point guards don’t get all the love, though. Forward/center Billy Cunningham, a.k.a. The Kangaroo Kid, gets his due for being a player who demolished the “white man can’t jump” stereotype, and offensive forward Connie Hawkins—a former Harlem Globetrotter—is trotted out as “Michael Jordan twenty-one years before Michael Jordan.” 1950’s Knicks power forward Dolph Shayes is described as both “the first great Jewish star of the NBA” and “the Larry Bird of his era.” As you’ve probably noticed, the commentators have a tendency to define these players by noting their similarities to more recently memorable stars. The inimitable Kareem Abdul-Jabbar escapes this comparison, however, with his distinctive “sky hook” shot and status as the NBA’s all-time leading scorer.

The archival footage shows these men at their high-flying, rebound-grabbing, point-scoring best, but seen in quick succession, it all gets to be a bit routine. Sons of the City would be more entertaining—and enlightening—if it focused less on the NBA highlights and more on the players’ early years as prep school all-stars and playground hustlers.

Sons of the City: New York Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

A Blu-ray presentation is only as good as its source material, and in the case of Sons of the City, much of that material comes from ancient, upscaled video broadcasts, old film reels—from before video was used to tape games—and what looks like video dubs of film footage. Compared to modern broadcast standards, it all looks pretty rough—soft and smeary, with occasional chromatic ringing, light ghosting, and some aliasing on certain hard lines—but, well, it is what it is, and it's not likely to look any better. Most of the interview portions were shot natively in 1080i, however, and these look much better. Detail isn't exceptional, but the image during the talking head sequences is clearly high definition, which is about the best you can ask for this kind of release. Color varies according to source as well—some of the older material looks faded, and shifted toward a yellow cast—but the interviews have strong hues and balanced skin tones. I'm giving the video quality fairly high marks for being true to source, but don't expect a pristine high definition picture.

Sons of the City: New York Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The same could be said for the DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 stereo track that's included here. Some of the vintage play-by-play commentary sounds a bit fuzzy, but the voices in the modern interview sections are clean and well-mixed. Otherwise, there's not much else to say about this track. The whole documentary is underscored by persistent and generic funk soundtrack, and although it sounds okay—clean, at least, if dynamically inert—it sometimes feels like the backing music to some cheesy softcore porno. It would've been better if they could've licensed a few real songs from the '60s, '70s, and '80s, but oh well. I have no substantial complaints, other than the fact that there are no subtitles on the disc whatsoever.

Sons of the City: New York Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Basketballography: Dolph Schayes (1080i, 15:15): A retrospective of Dolph Schayes' career, complete with interviews with the star himself.
• NBA Legends with Johnny Hoops: Bernard King (1080i, 23:07): Likewise, Bernard King gets his time in the spotlight with a comprehensive career overview.
• Interviews (1080i): There are five short bonus interviews here, Phil Jackson on Red Holzman (3:33), Pat Riley on Red Auerbach (4:08), Lamar Odom on Connie Hawkins (2:53), Kenny Anderson on Bernard King (3:13), and Tim Hardaway on Nate Archibald (3:02).

Sons of the City: New York Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

NBA fans have been clamoring for more basketball-related Blu-ray releases, and slowly but surely they've been trickling out over the past months. Sons of the City may be short—it's only 54-minutes long—but it features some great clips and gives a solid introduction to the key players in the "New York" school of basketball, from Dolph Shayes to Kareem-Abdul Jabbar. Just don't expect a proper documentary; this is more of an extended, multi- player highlight reel. For diehard fans and basketball-on-Blu-ray completists only.