NBA Docuseries, Featuring Story Of Influential Black Players, In The Works From Cineflix, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar & Deborah Morales

EXCLUSIVE: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is developing a docuseries about pioneering Black basketball players including Chuck Cooper, Earl Lloyd and Nat Clifton.

The NBA legend has teamed up with Cineflix Productions, the company behind Nancy Buirski’s recent feature doc Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy, and his longtime business partner Deborah Morales, who runs Iconomy Multi-Media & Entertainment, on The Pioneers.

The four-part series, which is out to broadcasters and streamers, will tell the story of the players who paved the way toward integrating the sport.

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It will tell the complete off-the-court story behind basketball’s racial integration, beginning with the Boston Celtics’ surprising second-round selection of Cooper during the 1950 NBA draft. Breaking the color barrier, Cooper’s pick was met with severe pushback during a harsh racial climate, but it would also open doors for other Black players to make the league, including Lloyd and Clifton, whose journeys will be revealed in the docuseries.  

The production team has unprecedented access to the Chuck Cooper Foundation and its archives, as well as the backroom maneuvering in the battle for justice, including in-depth interviews with the sport’s leading stars.

Activist athlete Abdul-Jabbar, who will exec produce, will be interviewed on camera to frame the dual nature of basketball’s story through time—one of success layered with struggle and setbacks.

The Pioneers will be produced by Cineflix Productions with J.C. Mills, Morales, Robin Keats and Michael Harris exec producing alongside Abdul-Jabbar.

Cineflix is also behind Summer Qamp, a profile of Camp fYrefly, and The Descendants, which will embark on a global journey with the families of Mahatma Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Martin Luther King Jr, as well as a scripted series with Gladys Knight.

“Isaac Newton wrote, ‘If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.’ Cooper, Lloyd, and Clifton are some of the giants whose shoulders I stood on to be able to have the career and life I have had. I pay grateful homage to them every time I fight for social justice for others,” said Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

“When we first looked at the stories of Cooper, Lloyd and Clifton, it struck us how little we all knew about these three incredible trailblazers, and we weren’t alone,” added J.C. Mills, President and Head of Content at Cineflix Productions. “The Pioneers will pay homage to these game changers and their successors, who, against all odds, have braved racism while propelling themselves to stardom. We are honored to have one of those successors, NBA legend and Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, as a part of this project to give us the play by play as he experienced it firsthand.”

“It’s important to me that we celebrate the people in history who sacrificed so much so that others could live their dreams. Part of celebrating them is to make sure they don’t get lost in a climate that is trying to erase the achievements of People of Color. That’s why I am so committed to this project,” said Deborah Morales. 

“The evolution of the NBA uniquely mirrors that of the country from the 1950s through today,” added Robin Keats who brought this project to Cineflix with Michael Harris, whose father Chris was a close friend and teammate of Chuck Cooper’s on the St. Louis Hawks.

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