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Portland State Athletics will host a screening of "Inner City Champions" a documentary about the Manual Arts High School basketball program, Portland State Basketball Legend Freeman Williams, and basketball great Dwayne Polee. The screening takes place on July 15 at Hoffmann Hall on the PSU campus. A social takes place at 6 p.m. with the screening at 7 p.m. Admission is free.
Williams and Polee were both stars at Manual Arts - Williams in the early 70s and Polee in the early 80s - who went on to different basketball lives. Polee came back to Manual Arts to rebuild the high school program, and soon added Williams as an assistant coach. The different turns of their lives are explored, as well as the Manual Arts basketball program.
A trailer for the film - which won the Los Angeles Underground Film Festival Award - can be found here: http://www.innercitychampion.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Freeman Williams will be in attendance at the screening of the film, as well as Inner City Champions creator and producer Frederick Hawthorne.
Freeman Williams played basketball at Portland State from 1974-78. He scored 3,249 points in his career - second only to Pete Maravich in NCAA history. Williams was a first team All-American in 1978. He want on to play six seasons in the NBA for the San Diego Clippers, Atlanta Hawks, Utah Jazz and Washington Bullets.
"Inner City Champions" Plot Outline
Who knew that Manual Arts High School in South Central Los Angeles, according to ESPN, would produce two of the greatest high school basketball players of all time? Dwayne Polee was labeled the LeBron James of his era and Freeman WIlliams would become college basketball's living all-time leading scorer.
Inner City Champions chronicles the story of these two men putting their inner city adversities on their back and overcoming the obstacles of drugs, abuse, family poverty, inner city violence and the climate that arises when attempting to trail blaze through the ghettos of Inner City, USA.
Using these adversities as fuel, Polee and WIlliams would go on to become College Basketball All-Americans, play for the same NBA team - the Los Angeles Clippers - and more importantly come back to the inner city and team up to coach and become role models at the very same high school where their hoop dreams began, Manual Arts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA59fEPf3-4