Speaker 1: Welcome back to She Pivots. I'm Crystal McCrary maguire.
Speaker 2: Welcome to She Pivots, the podcast where we talk with
Speaker 2: women who dared to pivot out of one career and
Speaker 2: into something new and explore how their personal lives impacted
Speaker 2: these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman. Welcome back Pivoters.
Speaker 2: This week, I'm joined by the lovely Crystal McCrary. I
Speaker 2: first met Crystal through my mom, the way I meet
Speaker 2: most people in my life. But right away I could
Speaker 2: tell this woman was impressive, which explains why Sex and
Speaker 2: City and just like that, based a character off of her.
Speaker 2: Her superpower is combining fine and fabulous energy with an
Speaker 2: unparalleled drive and desire to tell stories that uplift and
Speaker 2: power black culture and black women. Crystal is an accomplished producer, director, lawyer.
Speaker 2: Growing up in Detroit, Cristal always knew she wanted to
Speaker 2: do something bigger, and throughout her life she's always pivoted,
Speaker 2: leveraging her circumstances to create new iterations for herself, from
Speaker 2: being a two time New York Times bestselling author to
Speaker 2: appearing on numerous television networks as a cultural legal and
Speaker 2: political pundit and who can forget? She also co hosted
Speaker 2: the view She's Really Done It All? On top of
Speaker 2: it all, Kristal's life has revolved around basketball for decades now.
Speaker 2: Her oldest son, Cole Anthony, now plays professionally for the
Speaker 2: Orlando Magic, and her other two children, Ella and Leo,
Speaker 2: also excelled in the sport, taking up nights and weekends
Speaker 2: for as long as she can remember. After years in
Speaker 2: the youth basketball scene, she's teamed up with her son
Speaker 2: Cole to share their experience and connect young basketball players
Speaker 2: with local basketball resources through.
Speaker 3: Their new app up.
Speaker 2: Crystal embodies someone who's always allowed herself to steadily explore
Speaker 2: and pivot, leading with the personal hope you enjoy. Welcome
Speaker 2: Crystal McCrary maguire. I am so excited to have you
Speaker 2: on she pivots.
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to be here. Emily, Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for having me.
Speaker 2: You have been a long inspiration in the pivoting for
Speaker 2: me and just in general in the like you bring
Speaker 2: the kind of energy that I aspire to bring into
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 3: Thank you, like with.
Speaker 2: Generosity and with kindness and general boss ladiness.
Speaker 3: But let's take it back. Let's go to the beginnings. Okay,
Speaker 3: so you grew up in Detroit, Yes, I did. Did
Speaker 3: you think you were going to stay in Detroit or
Speaker 3: did you think you'd ever leave?
Speaker 1: Well, I always knew I want it out. I mean, listen,
Speaker 1: I love Detroit and it's had an incredible resurgence right now.
Speaker 1: But I just was more so interested in the arts.
Speaker 1: I was interested in creating and content creation. And I
Speaker 1: didn't have anyone in my family who'd ever had a
Speaker 1: quote unquote creative profession. I had a lot of lawyers,
Speaker 1: few doctors, and I really didn't have that roadmap in
Speaker 1: front of me. And I guess as a kid, whatever
Speaker 1: it was that was incoming on my end, I was
Speaker 1: informed that there's something in New York City that's pretty cool.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what it was. I'd never been, but
Speaker 1: I really did always want to move to New York City.
Speaker 2: If you hadn't actually been, do you remember, like, was
Speaker 2: it images?
Speaker 4: Was it movies? Like what kind of drew you to
Speaker 4: the city. Sure, I mean it was certainly images. You know,
Speaker 4: I will say this not the most glamorous, but certainly gritty.
Speaker 4: But I do remember as a child seeing the movie
Speaker 4: Fame Ough.
Speaker 1: With Irene Kara Debbie Allen.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, that Times Square. I mean, well, first
Speaker 2: of the dancing up on the taxi.
Speaker 1: Of course, of course, in the in the school, the
Speaker 1: liberal arts school, the just the diversity, you know, the music,
Speaker 1: the excitement. There was just something that I saw in
Speaker 1: that film and all of sort of the imagery and
Speaker 1: messaging around New York City. And I think I had
Speaker 1: a cousin that had moved to New York City, and
Speaker 1: there was something sort of exotic and far off, and
Speaker 1: you know, but I will say, you know, the part
Speaker 1: of Detroit that I grew up in, you know, we
Speaker 1: used to joke it was like a little mini United Nations.
Speaker 1: And I grew up in the seventies in downtown Detroit,
Speaker 1: and so I grew up really and I feel very
Speaker 1: fortunate to have have grown up in a community that was,
Speaker 1: you know, just multi cultural, ethnicity, gender, everything.
Speaker 2: Despite living in downtown Detroit, Crystal started to travel out
Speaker 2: to Gross Point to go to school, a wealthy and
Speaker 2: largely white area just a few miles from downtown.
Speaker 3: Yes I did. I was.
Speaker 1: I wasn't like bussed in the traditional sense that I
Speaker 1: now understand busting to mean, but in hindsight, there was
Speaker 1: that feeling that I imagine a kid, you know, going
Speaker 1: from a fairly urban community out to the suburbs, you
Speaker 1: know where like the Fords of you know, their family
Speaker 1: went to school an industrialist and you know, people whose
Speaker 1: families were much more financially well off, so to speak,
Speaker 1: than my family. And frankly, racism me being other was
Speaker 1: made aware to me at the schools I went to
Speaker 1: in gross Point in a way that they had never
Speaker 1: been made aware to me going to school in downtown Detroit.
Speaker 1: I became aware that, oh, you're a black girl. I
Speaker 1: remember going to a party in middle school because I
Speaker 1: went to the school called gross Point Academy and then
Speaker 1: this University of Ligott. They they sound like they are, Yes,
Speaker 1: I think I can picture it from the Point Academy
Speaker 1: and I remember going to a party at a classmates
Speaker 1: class and this is actually, can't make this up. As
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about this, and I'm thinking about this young
Speaker 1: lady's name you but we did. We had Muffy's, we
Speaker 1: had Carrington's. No, we really did. I mean it was
Speaker 1: remember like the preppy handbook, But I remember going to
Speaker 1: a party and she lived in this mansion. You know,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that people could live in houses like this, right,
Speaker 1: And I remember a bunch of kids being outside and
Speaker 1: I don't know what we were doing. I was the
Speaker 1: only black girl. But then I saw this black boy
Speaker 1: there that had never seen before.
Speaker 3: He wasn't a classmate.
Speaker 1: And my host said, oh, you'll like so and so
Speaker 1: he's like you, and I.
Speaker 3: Was like, whatnot?
Speaker 1: And then and then I gathered that he was the
Speaker 1: son of their Jamaican nanny, and they placed us together
Speaker 1: based on, you know, our skin color. And again I
Speaker 1: just I had no problem meeting him and talking tom
Speaker 1: but the fact that I'm the only black girl. He's
Speaker 1: not even there really as a guest. He's like just
Speaker 1: there as the nanny's son. And I was made acutely
Speaker 1: aware of I was different than the rest of the
Speaker 1: kids at this party.
Speaker 3: Things like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, it wasn't you know, that wasn't like overtly
Speaker 1: you know, rude. I don't know how to you know, like,
Speaker 1: I know it wouldn't happen to my kids in the
Speaker 1: same way growing up in New York City, but I was.
Speaker 1: I was definitely made aware of my otherness and how
Speaker 1: I was raised. You know, we actually we didn't really
Speaker 1: talk about race, you know, we didn't talk about political
Speaker 1: issues that that just was not what we talked about.
Speaker 1: I mean I was raised, I mean I was actually
Speaker 1: raised by my maternal grandparents. They raised me as my
Speaker 1: mother and father because my mother, my biological mother, had
Speaker 1: me in a very young agd. She basically left me at
Speaker 1: their door step and there my parents, right. But they
Speaker 1: were Depression era parents born in the Jim Crow South
Speaker 1: who their families migrated north to Detroit for economic opportunity
Speaker 1: during the you know, the Great Migration, as Isabella Wilkerson
Speaker 1: writes about in the Warmth of other Sons.
Speaker 3: I mean, it was very much that.
Speaker 1: And so they came through the Depression, and they weren't
Speaker 1: children of the sixties, so it was just a different
Speaker 1: way of There wasn't like activism around civil rights in
Speaker 1: our household. I mean, I really didn't start learning and
Speaker 1: leaning into that part of who I am really until
Speaker 1: I was in college.
Speaker 2: Did they just not discuss civil rights or was there
Speaker 2: did you get the sense that you really shouldn't be
Speaker 2: talking about it?
Speaker 3: They just didn't discuss it.
Speaker 1: They didn't and you know, again it was this prop
Speaker 1: you know, I'd say quote unquote properness. Right, my mom
Speaker 1: she was born and she turns in ninety eight, but
Speaker 1: she was born in nineteen twenty five.
Speaker 3: She's still alive. It's incredible.
Speaker 1: My dad was born in nineteen twenty three. He passed away.
Speaker 1: And also just the age wise, I mean when I
Speaker 1: was as my parents slash grandparents, they were older parents,
Speaker 1: and look at this in the in the seventies, you know,
Speaker 1: they were already married, had a family established. As you know,
Speaker 1: my mom was a school teacher and then a principal,
Speaker 1: public school teacher and principal. My dad was worked for
Speaker 1: Ford Motor Company, and so it was the era of
Speaker 1: where you didn't change jobs.
Speaker 3: Right, there was no pivot, right, there was no pivot.
Speaker 3: There was no pivot.
Speaker 1: You know this that was not that same type of
Speaker 1: optionality and even awareness of particularly as it relates particularly
Speaker 1: as it relates to women in my mom. On one hand,
Speaker 1: she was made money as a school teacher and then
Speaker 1: a principal, but she wasn't going to do anything. There
Speaker 1: was I'm going to stop being a teacher and go
Speaker 1: and start a singing career or start a podcast or
Speaker 1: there was.
Speaker 3: None of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it just wasn't the vibe for moving through the timeline.
Speaker 2: So did you always think that you were going to
Speaker 2: go to law school like so much of your family.
Speaker 1: Well, I did really look up to the lawyers in
Speaker 1: my family, you know, because they were sort of that
Speaker 1: next generation of getting advanced degrees beyond the undergraduate degree,
Speaker 1: and there was this upward mobility associated with one that
Speaker 1: had a law degree. I can't say that I was
Speaker 1: particularly interested in it other than it to me symbolized stability.
Speaker 1: There was a certain status to it, you know, particularly
Speaker 1: as I juxtaposed that to the people that I went
Speaker 1: to school with. I just looked at that as, oh,
Speaker 1: this is an opportunity to sort of excel. I wasn't
Speaker 1: particularly interested in it. I was an English major in
Speaker 1: undergrad and would have loved to have gone straight from
Speaker 1: undergrad into a creative profession. I didn't know what that
Speaker 1: could have been, what that looked like.
Speaker 3: As I said, I.
Speaker 1: Didn't have anybody in my family that was in the arts.
Speaker 1: In my family, like so many families of my generation,
Speaker 1: were what are you going to do with a quote
Speaker 1: unquote creative profession? Are you going to get health insurance
Speaker 1: with that? And so I sort of took that path
Speaker 1: of least resistance, which is law school. Took that path
Speaker 1: that had a level of familiarity and went to law school,
Speaker 1: graduated from law school in nineteen ninety five, and went
Speaker 1: to a farm in New York City called Paul Weiss.
Speaker 1: And I did what many people who wanted to go
Speaker 1: into the arts. I became a shadow artist as a lawyer,
Speaker 1: what Julia Cameron writes about in the Artist way so eloquently.
Speaker 1: And I was an entertainment lawyer. So I wasn't, you know,
Speaker 1: earning a living as an artist, but I was representing artists.
Speaker 1: But I got through. You know, I got through. I graduated,
Speaker 1: I got a job. You've got a guide I got
Speaker 1: I got a good.
Speaker 3: I got a good job.
Speaker 1: I passed the bar exam on the second time.
Speaker 5: Well, all that matters is that we're barked out right
Speaker 5: and started practicing law representing all of these really extraordinary entertainers, writers, playwrights, choreographers, authors,
Speaker 5: visual artists, et cetera.
Speaker 3: And really hated every minute of it. Wow, But my one.
Speaker 1: Big butt in that is it showed me that they're
Speaker 1: is a road map for one to have a creative profession.
Speaker 1: And so from that perspective. It was instructive. That was
Speaker 1: one of the great things that came out of it.
Speaker 1: I did learn, you know, just the reasoning that one learns,
Speaker 1: the writing that one must practice to be a lawyer.
Speaker 1: And then I also met a lot of really fantastic people.
Speaker 1: In fact, one of the men who was an associate
Speaker 1: at Paul Weiss, a senior associate when I was a
Speaker 1: young associate, a man by the name of Andrew Hurwitz,
Speaker 1: left Paul Weiss also like I did, a little after me,
Speaker 1: but he started this company called the Film Sales Company
Speaker 1: flash forward many years he actually sold. I went to
Speaker 1: him to sell my first film that I produced and
Speaker 1: met him because of being you know, at Paul Weiss together.
Speaker 3: So it wasn't totally for nothing.
Speaker 1: Absolutely no. I do believe though that every saying so cliche,
Speaker 1: everything does happen for a reason. Every coincidence is a
Speaker 1: meaningful coincidence. I do believe in serendipity, and so I
Speaker 1: can sort of sum up my whole legal journey as
Speaker 1: being a part of that. That was a huge stepping
Speaker 1: stone for me on the next path in my journey.
Speaker 2: We talked so much on this show about how every
Speaker 2: pivot is different and the time frame is differently. You know,
Speaker 2: some happen in an instant, but some happen over time.
Speaker 2: So what was that timeline for you of starting to write,
Speaker 2: staying at the firm, and what was the thing that
Speaker 2: made you feel like, Okay, it's time to leave the firm,
Speaker 2: I'm ready to go into this full time.
Speaker 1: I think I knew that my days were numbered at
Speaker 1: the firm because I just had it was.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 1: I was less than passionate. I was barely making it there,
Speaker 1: just emotionally and mentally, and it's kind of making me
Speaker 1: depressed is not the right, but just down. It was
Speaker 1: every day. I just really did not look forward to
Speaker 1: going to work, and I took enough time to kind
Speaker 1: of save up some money. I did have a husband
Speaker 1: that was making some money, but I didn't want to
Speaker 1: have to rely on him.
Speaker 2: Crystal was married to her first husband, Greg Anthony, an
Speaker 2: NBA player for the New York Knicks at the time.
Speaker 1: So I kind of got a plan in order that
Speaker 1: I said, you know, let me finish working on this book.
Speaker 1: And I think it was when Rita and I.
Speaker 2: Rita Ewing, one of her best friends, who in fact
Speaker 2: introduced Crystal to Greg and was writing the book with.
Speaker 1: Her Rita, and I got a completed draft of the book,
Speaker 1: found an agent, and I think it was right around
Speaker 1: that time that I felt ready to make the leap
Speaker 1: and leave the firm. And so that was sort of
Speaker 1: like the first pivot. Didn't have a buyer yet, didn't
Speaker 1: have a publishing house yet, but I felt pretty confident
Speaker 1: about it. I felt like, I'm sure you've talked to
Speaker 1: people who are passionate about a particular profession or a
Speaker 1: dream or an idea or something, and they bulldoze ahead
Speaker 1: with it and they don't necessarily have a plan B.
Speaker 1: I guess my plan B was to stay at the firm.
Speaker 1: But I knew that I had to cut those ties
Speaker 1: if I was really going to ever give it a
Speaker 1: go to have a creative profession.
Speaker 2: So Crystal cut ties. She leaned into her book, eventually
Speaker 2: publishing Home Court Advantage in nineteen ninety nine. The book
Speaker 2: explored the flip side of the basketball scene, highlighting the
Speaker 2: stories of the women who lived in the shadows of
Speaker 2: quote great men. Though she never says it directly, the
Speaker 2: book was almost certainly a reflection of Cristal's personal life
Speaker 2: and the other accomplished women around her.
Speaker 1: We would joke about it or talk about it all
Speaker 1: the time, the wives and girlfriends of that New York
Speaker 1: Nicks team and that era. Like, let me set the
Speaker 1: stage for you, Like, so pat Riley was the coach,
Speaker 1: and so you had Patrick Ewing at the time, his
Speaker 1: wife Rita Ewing, who's a very good friend of mine.
Speaker 1: She's a lawyer and she's also an entrepreneur. You had
Speaker 1: herb Williams, his wife had a PhD. You had Lisa
Speaker 1: Bonner at the time, She's a lawyer, entrepreneur, real estate developer.
Speaker 1: I mean, I could just go on and on with
Speaker 1: that list of really impressive women. Home court advantage was
Speaker 1: derived out of something called the Morning Pages, which was
Speaker 1: an exercise in that book The Artist Way, which was
Speaker 1: written by Julia Cameron, which she recommends for people that
Speaker 1: want to begin writing. She recommends this thing called the
Speaker 1: morning Pages, which are you wake up every morning and
Speaker 1: before you do anything else, write a minimum of three
Speaker 1: pages in a brain drain style. Don't edit yourself.
Speaker 3: Just do that.
Speaker 1: Commit to that act of writing and the discipline of it.
Speaker 1: Don't edit yourself, and just see what you get after
Speaker 1: a few months of doing that and I did that.
Speaker 1: You know, in hindsight, I'm proud that I actually had
Speaker 1: the discipline to do it. But I got up every
Speaker 1: morning like an hour before. This was while I was
Speaker 1: actually still at Paul Weiss and did that. And that
Speaker 1: was the beginnings of Home Court Advantage. And I said, Rita,
Speaker 1: I was like, I've been doing this.
Speaker 3: This came up.
Speaker 1: It was originally actually called Seasonal Ties because it was
Speaker 1: about the season ties, you know, And she said, because
Speaker 1: you and I would laugh so much about the various
Speaker 1: stories being these wives. And we talked about it and
Speaker 1: thought it would be really fun to write it together.
Speaker 1: And we did and it became Home Court Advantage, and
Speaker 1: we were fortunate enough to, you know, get the first
Speaker 1: book published and it was a New York Times bestseller,
Speaker 1: and many efforts to.
Speaker 3: Make it into a movie a series.
Speaker 1: I think I was just telling somebody the other days
Speaker 1: and I think I made more money from optioning that
Speaker 1: book than I did for my actual advance.
Speaker 2: Even after Crystal's divorced from Greg Anthony, basketball was ever
Speaker 2: present in her life because of her children. When we
Speaker 2: come back, Crystal talks about balancing the demands of her
Speaker 2: own life with her kids, extremely active youth basketball career.
Speaker 2: Now back to the show. You have three children who
Speaker 2: are very involved in basketball. In particular, you are a
Speaker 2: very present parent, and you've said that you started in
Speaker 2: national championships with your oldest when he was as young
Speaker 2: as fourth grade, and even younger once you got to
Speaker 2: the third child.
Speaker 3: Yes, but that takes time. That takes time, and that takes.
Speaker 2: Brain power and bandwidth and time in your It takes
Speaker 2: space in your life and in your thinking. How did
Speaker 2: you navigate, Like I don't think there is such a
Speaker 2: thing as work life balance, but how did you navigate it?
Speaker 3: Being so present?
Speaker 1: You know, it's been a real journey. I mean, what
Speaker 1: is it you hear you can have everything, just not
Speaker 1: at the same time. And then the great Jackie Oh
Speaker 1: quote of I'm only as happy as my least happy child,
Speaker 1: and so there's kind of like a mashup of those
Speaker 1: that I think that every working mom tries to walk
Speaker 1: in balance of that. And I have tried to be
Speaker 1: as present as I could possibly be, but I know
Speaker 1: that a lot of things have fallen through the cracks.
Speaker 2: And your kids are approximately ten years apart, like the
Speaker 2: two and then right.
Speaker 1: The younger, right, right, So Yeah, Leo's eleven, and Ella
Speaker 1: is twenty one and Cole is twenty three. So I
Speaker 1: have like the ten year age difference between my youngest
Speaker 1: and my middle and then the twelve year age difference
Speaker 1: between my youngest and my eldest. So in any event, yes,
Speaker 1: of course stuff falls through the cracks. You know. Of
Speaker 1: course I have not always given the best advice, but
Speaker 1: I guess what I have sort of gotten to the
Speaker 1: point of, you can always be doing more, but you
Speaker 1: can always be doing less.
Speaker 3: Also, what do you mean by that?
Speaker 1: I've struck a balance with myself and have decided to
Speaker 1: be a little easier on me than these last several years.
Speaker 1: I've decided to show myself some grace and do what
Speaker 1: I can do, you know, because now I like, I
Speaker 1: have three kids in three different states, at three very
Speaker 1: different stages of their lives. You know, I have a
Speaker 1: fifth grader who that's the hands on, taking to basketball practices,
Speaker 1: taking to birthday parties, taking to mommy and me activities,
Speaker 1: taking a Broadway. But then I have a college student
Speaker 1: who's a junior in college, who there's parent weekends, there's
Speaker 1: you know, she wants me to be there, ready to edit.
Speaker 1: She writes for the Harvard Crimson. She wants me to
Speaker 1: be there to edit something for her, her or you know,
Speaker 1: there's a breakup or something to talk about that, you know,
Speaker 1: just there to be present in in that way. But
Speaker 1: there's never just enough time. Like there's parents weekend. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I can't come up for the whole weekend. I can
Speaker 1: come up for one night. Well, mom, that's not enough.
Speaker 1: Why you know things like that, My you know, eldest
Speaker 1: who's a professional basketball player in place with the Orlando Magic.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's a part of me that, gosh,
Speaker 1: I wish I wish I could live down in Orlando.
Speaker 3: Well maybe not.
Speaker 1: I wish I could be at every game home and away,
Speaker 1: but I can't. And he has, you know, like he's
Speaker 1: like other parents are down here, other parents, you know,
Speaker 1: but other parents have packed up and moved. All my
Speaker 1: teammates parents they packed up and moved to Florida, and
Speaker 1: our neighbors with you know, like.
Speaker 3: I have things to do here.
Speaker 1: It's like, I love you, baby, but I have a job,
Speaker 1: and you have a little brother who's here. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, so and I realized that this is a
Speaker 1: very fortunate, blessed situation I am describing, But as you're
Speaker 1: living and going through it as a parent, as a
Speaker 1: working parent, you do feel that, well, at least I
Speaker 1: feel that I'm not there for everything, and I may
Speaker 1: have bouts of guilt about that from time to time,
Speaker 1: but I do do a.
Speaker 3: Lot, and she does.
Speaker 2: Crystal continued to evolve her creative career, eventually moving into film.
Speaker 2: But do you feel like it was a pivot into
Speaker 2: documentary films? Was that another like big moment for you?
Speaker 1: Before I did a documentary film, I actually produced a
Speaker 1: scripted film that I was asked to come on board.
Speaker 1: Its called Dirty Laundry. It was such a fun film
Speaker 1: and it was like became a festival. Darling did it
Speaker 1: independently with a group of folks. It was a gay
Speaker 1: love story that had this incredible cast.
Speaker 3: Gildon Davis seemed to have it all perfectly. Fate is
Speaker 3: about to crash the party.
Speaker 5: I'm looking for mister Davis.
Speaker 3: I'm mister Davis. Who are you, Gabriel your son?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 1: This is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
Speaker 3: It's Dirty Laundry.
Speaker 1: And so that was my first foray actually into filmmaking.
Speaker 2: Soon after producing Dirty Laundry, Crystal was asked to produce
Speaker 2: regularly Viacom while working on documentary style shows for BT
Speaker 2: and MTV.
Speaker 3: She fell in love with the format.
Speaker 1: So there were a few shows I did there, Leading Women,
Speaker 1: Leading Men, where we profiled men and women of color
Speaker 1: who've impacted the country socially, politically, culturally, artistically. And so
Speaker 1: I was doing that, which coincided with Cole playing this
Speaker 1: youth basketball as like a third grader, fourth grader, and
Speaker 1: I was also the team mom. All the kids would
Speaker 1: always come to our house. I was always you know, carpooling,
Speaker 1: doing all that stuff, and really got to know these kids'
Speaker 1: close teammates that were from an array of socioeconomic backgrounds
Speaker 1: that otherwise Cole would have not gotten to know kids
Speaker 1: like that, being you know, frankly being raised in Manhattan.
Speaker 1: Again we call it a melting pot, but let's be honest,
Speaker 1: Manhattan it's you know, economically prohibitive for many, and you
Speaker 1: don't get much diversity in that. And so I was
Speaker 1: struck by how different all of these young men, all
Speaker 1: these boys, how their backgrounds were. But they were brothers,
Speaker 1: they were teammates, and I just felt like there was
Speaker 1: something there in their stories.
Speaker 2: Leveraging her background in documentary style film, Crystal knew this
Speaker 2: was her moment to bring the personal and the professional together.
Speaker 1: And I said, I'd love to put a camera on
Speaker 1: these boys and really kind of highlight their friendship also
Speaker 1: to show that black boys aren't to show their common
Speaker 1: goal of wanting to win a national championship, and that
Speaker 1: became little Ballers. There were some kids that their families
Speaker 1: were immigrants from Jamaica. There was a boy on the
Speaker 1: team whose family was homeless. There was a boy on
Speaker 1: the team whose family lived in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and the
Speaker 1: mom had him playing so he could get away from
Speaker 1: his community, which was really filled with a lot of
Speaker 1: gang violence. And I looked at this also as I'd
Speaker 1: love to make a documentary that shows the tells the
Speaker 1: story of these boys before the dream has died, that
Speaker 1: you're not actually going to go to the NBA, and
Speaker 1: that everybody has a dream and let's capture them in
Speaker 1: this last age of innocence.
Speaker 6: When you think of AAU, I think of everybody on
Speaker 6: the team just having the same goal, and that's to
Speaker 6: get a college scholarship and then playing in the NBA.
Speaker 6: You know that was everybody's dream. Everybody wanted to make it.
Speaker 7: Everybody has dreams, everybody has a talent. If you're a
Speaker 7: basketball player, it's nothing to be the best in New York.
Speaker 7: You want to be one of the best players in
Speaker 7: the country. If you ain't trying to be the best player,
Speaker 7: that you possibly do something else. That's in anything. If
Speaker 7: there's a muscle seed, a doubt, you might as well quit.
Speaker 7: If you ain't trying to be the best, then what
Speaker 7: are you doing it for.
Speaker 8: How is it that basketball became this cultural cathedral in
Speaker 8: the African American community. It's almost like the African tribe
Speaker 8: in that you can have individual expression within the context
Speaker 8: of a try and the same thing with basketball. You're
Speaker 8: part of a team, the past and all that, but
Speaker 8: you could also create. You could also be individual as well.
Speaker 1: When that was my first time directing a documentary and
Speaker 1: again did that independently, I call it real of filmmaking.
Speaker 1: Forged ahead and ended up with my one of my
Speaker 1: producing partners who was representing her name's Tammy Brooks. She
Speaker 1: was representing Amri Stotdomeier at the time, who was playing
Speaker 1: for the Knicks.
Speaker 3: Brought him on.
Speaker 1: He loved the story, brought him on, he became an
Speaker 1: executive producer. He was in the film that was a pivot,
Speaker 1: you know, when it was a pivot based on my life,
Speaker 1: my kids' lives.
Speaker 2: Crystal is continuing to work at the intersection of the
Speaker 2: personal and professional with her latest venture with her son
Speaker 2: Cole for the app Game Up. So tell us about
Speaker 2: this new venture and new relationship with your son, a
Speaker 2: business partnership.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, you know, speaking of like going full circle
Speaker 1: with your kid. You know, Cole likes me again after
Speaker 1: high school. He's finally listening to me again. His favorite
Speaker 1: thing that he said to me, you know, like his
Speaker 1: first two seasons in the NBA, when I tried to
Speaker 1: give him some advices. You know, Mom, listen, I'm a
Speaker 1: grown ass man.
Speaker 3: I don't need you. I'm paying my own bills. You
Speaker 3: tell me this, that and the other, you don't you know.
Speaker 1: I finally realized I cannot give him any basketball advice
Speaker 1: because he knows more and is one pinky than I
Speaker 1: will ever know. But what has been happening for ten
Speaker 1: plus years is that I have been that basketball parent
Speaker 1: that people would come to and say, can you make
Speaker 1: a recommendation for a team for my kid? Can you
Speaker 1: make a recommendation for a developmental program, for a trainer,
Speaker 1: for a tournament, for a camp, for this, that, and
Speaker 1: that and the other. And I had been spending hours
Speaker 1: and hours on calls, on emails, on text messages, sharing
Speaker 1: knowledge with parents who really have just been trying to
Speaker 1: navigate this youth's basketball landscape that's getting bigger and bigger,
Speaker 1: that's getting more and more complicated, that's gotten more and
Speaker 1: more expensive. And I really started aggregating all of this
Speaker 1: information in the youth basketball landscape and people would ask
Speaker 1: whole the same thing, but from a player perspective. And
Speaker 1: I started talking talking to him about this idea, and
Speaker 1: I said, why don't we make sort of a one
Speaker 1: stop shop platform where we can defragment this information, make
Speaker 1: it sort of like the Angie's List for you know,
Speaker 1: youth basketball. And that began the beginning of making Game Up.
Speaker 9: Navigating youth sports can be tough for parents. There's so
Speaker 9: many options out there. But there's a new sports at
Speaker 9: that's changing the basketball landscape. It's called Game Up. New
Speaker 9: York native and NBA point guard Cole Anthony's mom, Krystin
Speaker 9: McCrary maguire, teamed up to create a one stop shop
Speaker 9: to help parents out and connect their kid with the
Speaker 9: best basketball team and trainer based on their age, goals,
Speaker 9: and location. Join me now to speak more about Game
Speaker 9: Up is co founder Krystal mccrairy McGuire. She's also a
Speaker 9: New York Times bestselling author and producer, just to name
Speaker 9: a few. Good morning, Chrystal, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: With the Wrens Frinds, I with the team Real in
Speaker 1: Jersey and then high school FOPSA Cardinals I played with
Speaker 1: was that six to seven different AU programs levels of
Speaker 1: youth basketball.
Speaker 10: And went through all of these great programs that developed
Speaker 10: him at every stage.
Speaker 11: And that is really what parents are looking for.
Speaker 10: Most parents that are trying to find a program for
Speaker 10: their kid, it's not like they enter into it saying,
Speaker 10: I have this elite kid that's, you know, gonna go
Speaker 10: D one or go to the NBA.
Speaker 11: That may be the ultimate dream.
Speaker 10: But they're really looking trying to figure out how to
Speaker 10: navigate this system.
Speaker 11: And Cole as a as my.
Speaker 10: Son, as a resource and as somebody who truly lived
Speaker 10: it as a player, was the perfect person.
Speaker 11: Plus we get along pretty.
Speaker 1: Well tolerator, and so we've been working on it together,
Speaker 1: we hired you know, we seeded it ourselves again, just
Speaker 1: forging ahead, seated ourselves, that's right. Got a chief app
Speaker 1: designer and coders computer software engineers, got the graphics UXUI designers,
Speaker 1: got the chief strategy officer, chief operating officer, and built
Speaker 1: this and we launched in the Tri State area and
Speaker 1: now in Q one, twenty twenty four, we are expanding
Speaker 1: across the US.
Speaker 2: Is there something that holistically not just on little ballers,
Speaker 2: but is there something that at the time you feel
Speaker 2: like you felt like was a real low point negative,
Speaker 2: like you weren't really sure you're gonna get out of it,
Speaker 2: and then now in retrospect, you see it as having
Speaker 2: really launched the next step for you.
Speaker 1: I actually had an experience where it wasn't that it
Speaker 1: was what was rather male dominated, but I had an
Speaker 1: experience with somebody under the Viacom umbrella when I was
Speaker 1: working on the shows there that I was executive producing
Speaker 1: and creating. There was a very senior executive there that
Speaker 1: will I will never forget it, Like I think I
Speaker 1: was talking to him sort of like one of those
Speaker 1: career advice kind of talks, and I will never forget again.
Speaker 1: You remember those things that light a fire under you.
Speaker 1: But I remember he said to me, you know, Crystal,
Speaker 1: this was before I had done Little Ballers, and he said, listen,
Speaker 1: if you just keep reaching, you know, for that low
Speaker 1: hanging fruit, he called it low hanging fruit. He said,
Speaker 1: if you keep reaching for that low hanging fruit, there's
Speaker 1: something there for you in that. See where that gets you.
Speaker 1: And I just remember being so offended low hanging fruit, Like,
Speaker 1: what the heck does that mean?
Speaker 3: Yeah? What are you?
Speaker 1: Are you trying to give me a ceiling where I'm
Speaker 1: just beginning.
Speaker 3: But it doesn't lights a fire. It lights a fire.
Speaker 1: And you know, so that was that was a period
Speaker 1: that that did inspire me, and it was it was
Speaker 1: you know, there were so many other parts of that,
Speaker 1: but there was certainly that.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm going to show you, you know, just you wait, okay,
Speaker 2: one last question. What everybody wants to know, what is
Speaker 2: it like to have a sex and the city character
Speaker 2: based on you?
Speaker 1: Well, listen, first of all, the fact that the character
Speaker 1: quote unquote inspired by me is played by the you know,
Speaker 1: pretty amazing Nicole Ari Parker. I'm like, okay, I'm just
Speaker 1: you've you've flattered me beyond you know, it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of you know, it's kind of cool.
Speaker 3: Totally, it's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: I mean Susan fails Hill, who's a writer there and
Speaker 1: a very good friend of mine, you know.
Speaker 3: She and then there was Kelly Goff who was there.
Speaker 1: She's she's no longer with the show, but they somehow
Speaker 1: were inspired by some aspect of my life. I think
Speaker 1: there are many inspirations for ltw's character, but I'm just,
Speaker 1: you know, really flattered. Did you know did they tell
Speaker 1: you or you just watched it in your thought, oh,
Speaker 1: we seem similar. I started getting rumblings maybe four or
Speaker 1: five months before the first season came out, and I
Speaker 1: was like what. I was like, that was like that
Speaker 1: just sounds crazy. I had that one girlfriend, you know,
Speaker 1: who's like the gossip the town crier, and she was like, girl,
Speaker 1: there's a character Texas City three Kids documentary, Viille mak
Speaker 1: her husband's running for mayor because at the time, my
Speaker 1: husband Ray was running for mayor, and like, that certainly
Speaker 1: sounds like you. And then it started picking up momentum,
Speaker 1: and you know, look, I've been in sort of the
Speaker 1: writer room places and they're like this character is like
Speaker 1: so and so this is sort of think of, sort of,
Speaker 1: so I get how that can happen. I think that
Speaker 1: there again, I think that there are many people that
Speaker 1: sort of you know, are part of the inspiration. But
Speaker 1: you know, if you want to say it's me, I'll
Speaker 1: take the good part of it for sure.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you so much, Krystal for coming to she Pivots.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me. It was a
Speaker 1: joy and an honor.
Speaker 2: As always, thank you, You're the best. Crystal still lives
Speaker 2: in New York City. Her weekend's still filled with lots
Speaker 2: of basketball and now growing game up to be available
Speaker 2: to youth basketball players across the country. To learn more
Speaker 2: about Crystal, follow her on Instagram at Krystal McCrary Talk to.
Speaker 3: You next week. Thanks for listening to this episode of
Speaker 3: she Pivots.
Speaker 2: If you made it this far, you're a true pivot
Speaker 2: So thanks for being part of this community. I hope
Speaker 2: you enjoyed this episode, and if you did leave us
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