When you think of basketball hubs places like New York City, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles come to mind. However, Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman, co-founder of Thirty Five Ventures and Kevin Durant’s Business Partner, want to show PG County’s place on the map.
The two have teamed up with SHOWTIME to deliver Basketball County: In The Water a documentary premiering tonight.
“I think probably the point is that if you ask a consensus of people they wouldn’t think that but if you ask people that know, they would immediately say basketball in PG County.
“I think the goal was to show that to as many people as possible and give back as a gift to the people of PG County because its such an incredible story of just the kind of resilience that the County has and the relationship that basketball plays in it all.”
Just The Beginning
However, Kleiman wants the documentary to be the first of many stories about other areas where basketball has coalesced in the community.
“What we want to do now is tell stories of different counties and tell stories and allow the players and people that are important from those counties to collaborate with us.
“So if ‘Basketball County: In The Water’ is about PG County then it makes all the sense in the world to be the first one and kind of carries the flag for what we hope is a brand of some sort that we can roll out then the other ones, wherever they may be like we’ll lean on some of those people from those particular counties to tell those stories.”
The New Story Teller
Durant and Kleiman have been paving their own way in sports narrative storytelling. ‘Basketball County’ is just another iteration that will hold a special place for KD.
“I think we’ve done a lot. We’ve been telling stories and creating now for maybe six years. We’ve had 6-7 projects that we’ve started and they all have been produced, finished, distributed and live on certain platforms and outlets. We’ve created our own platform to tell stories constantly on.
“But I think this is a pivotal one and an imperative one in his journey as a storyteller and one he will always hold close to his heart just because it wraps up in a nutshell everything he’s wanted to do for his County and now to kind of document it is something no one can take away or forget about.”
Durant has been expanding his business portfolio while still playing basketball for a few years. Now it is full circle with projects closer to his heart.
“I think outside of LeBron, who everyone points to as creating an enterprise while you’re playing and doing it to the level he did, but I think everyone at this point is aware of Kevin’s hat as a businessman. The audience now during this time period in the world is bigger than it ever has been just in terms of consuming content.”
