There may be little left that defines New York Metropolis basketball, save for the Knicks’ everlasting seek for an impactful lead guard. It’s a search that has at all times been infected, exacerbated and magnified by the abundance of level guards bred by the town.

There was the incandescent Pearl Washington, who rode a bike and typically wore a fur to playground video games, and whose great dribbling for Syracuse destroyed Georgetown’s dominant full-court press within the Huge East event.

And God Shammgod, the worshiped Harlem guard who performed a sport inside the sport by providing the ball as much as defenders along with his proper hand after which ripping it again along with his left. The transfer, nonetheless replicated in N.B.A. video games by Russell Westbrook and others, is called the Shammgod.

From them and others, New York level guards realized that moxie, aptitude and unimpeachable handles have been simply as necessary as the power to provoke an offense. However the period that established the archetype of the New York level guard — pillared within the Nineteen Seventies and 80s by Catholic faculties which have since closed for lack of funding and playground courts that noticed their rims eliminated through the Covid-19 pandemic — is gone.

For a uncommon second on Wednesday night time, it was reanimated at a screening of “NYC Level Gods,” a feature-length Showtime documentary that pays homage to the guards who gave the town its rep. The movie was produced by Kevin Durant and his enterprise accomplice and agent, Wealthy Kleiman. Durant, a New York transplant, wore Dior as he doled out hugs to the documentary’s topics. Kleiman, a local, gleamed in gold aviator glasses as he launched the movie to shouts from the viewers that referred to him as Ace, as in Rothstein, the protagonist of the film “On line casino.”

The venue was Manhattan West Plaza, a cathedral to the ability of actual property improvement ordained into usefulness by a New York custom: hoopers paying homage to hoopers.

That time period is an honorific that disregards skilled standing and statistics and will be conferred solely by one other hooper. It doesn’t matter in the event you had a 20-year N.B.A. profession or in case your greatest performances at the moment are remembered solely by basketball griots. There’s a reverence amongst hoopers. Did you make those that watched you play love the sport as you probably did? Did you give the gang an “I used to be there when” story?

Outdoors the theater, digital camera flashes greeted Rafer Alston and Kenny Anderson, who walked the purple carpet along with his mother. Sabrina Ionescu, of the W.N.B.A.’s Liberty, sidled up for hugs with Nancy Lieberman and Niesha Butler. Jayson Tatum, of the Boston Celtics, deferentially cupped palms with Anderson as Paul Pierce spelled his title for a puzzled list-holding publicist.

As soon as the filmed rolled, although, the guards’ trademark toughness washed away as they listened to one another’s tales. “It was very emotional, not only for myself, however, you realize, I lived and witnessed these tales of the opposite guys and women additionally,” stated Mark Jackson, a former Knicks level guard who starred at St. John’s. Seated alongside his 4 kids, he dabbed at his eyes as he heard Kenny Smith, a Queens-born retired N.B.A. champion, describe how Jackson’s smarts led him to an almost 17-year professional profession.

At its coronary heart, “Level Gods” is the hoopers’ oral historical past of how the town created a lineage on the place. Shammgod developed his dribble as a result of his fitness center trainer, Tiny Archibald, instructed him it might make him perpetually invaluable to any group. Solely by watching a V.H.S. mixtape compilation of level guard highlights referred to as “Under the Rim” did he be taught of Archibald’s earlier work.

That revelation drew a crack of laughter contained in the screening, the place, earlier, attendees jostled over seats and settled in with the shoulder-to-shoulder intimacy of the town’s bandbox parks. Dao-Yi Chow, a lauded clothier, sat close to a far wall carrying Jackson’s Knicks jersey. Clark Kent, whose actual title is Rodolfo Franklin and who goes by the Rucker Park-ian nickname “God’s Favourite DJ,” held down a back-row seat. Kent produced a bit of Jay-Z’s debut “Affordable Doubt,” which dropped in 1996, the yr Jeff Van Gundy took over the Knicks.

For his half, Jay-Z had welcomed Shammgod on a close-by rooftop patio earlier than the screening. The rapper and mogul was a mainstay of Rucker Park’s Entertainer’s Basketball Basic within the early aughts, and his try and woo Kareem Reid from a rival’s group with a bag of money is instructed by that rival, the rapper Fats Joe. The precise sum, rumored to be within the hundreds, is bleeped out within the retelling as Joe recounts the Mafioso-style assembly he had with Reid to persuade him to not bounce ship. Reid, who had a cup of espresso with the N.B.A.’s Hornets in 2003, stayed.

When the movie confirmed LeBron James, Beyoncé and N.B.A. Commissioner David Stern (carrying Joe’s platinum and diamond chain) making summer season pilgrimages to the park, a lady seated 4 rows from the display screen yelped, “I used to be there,” “I used to be there,” “There too,” each tallying her attendance and bringing Harlem into the room.

In one other scene, the rapper Cam’ron — a Harlem native who performed on a number of highschool journey groups alongside a number of the documentary’s topics — defined that oohs and ahhs from the gang have been price “5 or 6 factors” to a New York level guard.

Minimize to Anderson in a 1991 A.C.C. sport. He’d been a highschool legend at Archbishop Molloy in Queens, and New Yorkers who adopted his profession to Georgia Tech couldn’t wait to see him combine up Duke’s Bobby Hurley, who was infamous for his lax protection. The purpose guard forged hypes up what’s about to come back, and Smith urges the director to tug the sport footage up so he can narrate a grainy ESPN clip of the one-on-one conflict.

Anderson meets Hurley on the elbow, then takes his dribble behind his again and between his legs earlier than gliding previous a dazed Hurley for a floating layup. Unnoted was the truth that Duke received the sport.

Small matter. When it occurred, solely Dickie V’s hyperventilation on ESPN marked the second as one thing particular. “NYC Level Gods,” although, layered within the soundtrack of the hoopers who’ve instructed and retold the story as one among many chapters of their aggrandizing mythology.

On movie, although, Shammgod is awed. Stephon Marbury, who sported Anderson’s center-parted haircut in highschool and adopted him to Georgia Tech, leans into the retelling. The unscripted, ephemeral whoops from contained in the screening, from N.B.A. stars and highschool coaches and their playground friends, fell anew upon Anderson within the theater’s darkish.