Madison Square Garden may be home to the Knicks, but Harlem’s Rucker Park is the nation’s basketball stage. In his new documentary, “Gunnin’ For That No. 1 Spot,” Beastie Boys rapper Adam Yauch examines the asphalt on the corner of 155th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard – where Julius “Dr. J” Erving and Wilt Chamberlain once played – and uses it as a backdrop for profiles of two dozen high school basketball stars picked to participate in 2006’s inaugural “Boost Mobile Elite 24 Hoops Classic” game.
“[Rucker Park] is a character in the film – it has such a historic background,” Yauch says. “Gunnin’ ” screens tomorrow at the Tribeca Film Festival and opens nationwide in June.
Set to beats by Jay-Z, Nas and others, the film gets intimate with eight of the 24 ballers by traveling to their hometowns and conducting interviews with family members, friends and coaches.
By peppering these clips with eye-popping basketball highlights from the Harlem-played game, Yauch exposes far more than the players’ ability to nail a jump shot. He focuses on everything from Donte Greene’s attempt to cope with the loss of his mother to Brandon Jennings avoiding danger on the streets of Compton, Calif.
“I expected kids to talk trash about each other in the interviews,” says Yauch. “I was not expecting it to get as personal as it did.”