St. Louis ? All that drama during the Quin Snyder meltdown at Missouri must have rubbed off on Jimmy McKinney.
The former guard and sometime scapegoat for the teams’ woes during those tumultuous years, while refusing to give up on his dream of someday making it to the NBA, has embarked on a second career in acting. He’s the star of a well-received independent film called “Streetballers,” in a role that plays to his strengths while somewhat mirroring his life as a kid who made it out of a rough inner-city upbringing.
“On the screen with a camera right in your face it’s totally different,” said McKinney, a four-year starter at Missouri from 2003-06. “But I can be more myself, so that makes it easier.”
The film took the second place jury prize at the recent Hollywood Black Film Festival, played to a receptive crowd at the Tivoli Theater in suburban St. Louis late last month and will be shown in September at the Urban World Film Festival in New York City. The story centers on two junior college basketball players coming from broken homes in St. Louis, one from the south side and one from the north side, both hoping to use sport as their escape.
“This could be any neighborhood in the U.S.,” said Matthew Krentz, the film’s writer, director and co-star opposite McKinney and Patrick Rooney. “There’s hundreds of thousands of athletes who aren’t going pro, who are just trying to get scholarships and coping with life on a daily basis.
“And there’s a lot of stuff in their environments that are holding them back.”
In one scene, McKinney stays on the court the night before the game while getting accustomed to his surroundings, a feeling he’ll draw on during the pressure of the game.
“No lights on, not a soul in the place,” McKinney’s character says. “When the game starts, I can always come back to the same place when I need to. You dig?”
McKinney, 24, was a standout at Vashon High School before coming to Missouri as a highly heralded do-it-all recruit. Though his college career was somewhat frustrating, he’s been successful in three seasons playing professionally in Germany.
McKinney averaged 19 points last season even after rupturing a ligament in his right wrist three months before the season ended. He’s needed each offseason to recover from an injury, hampering his NBA hopes, yet remains optimistic.
“I’m one of the fortunate ones,” McKinney said. “It’s a slim chance, to make it. And I’m still going to reach my goal.”
McKinney refuses to second-guess a Missouri career that after a promising start never seemed to take off.
“I don’t regret anything, because I learned from it,” McKinney said. “I learned a lot from it. But I don’t think of it as a great career, because my standards are real high.”
McKinney is part of an all-St. Louis cast in a two-hour movie that was wrapped up in a tidy 28 days but also is the culmination of a marathon effort, given that Krentz began writing five years ago. Krentz, 28, also is a former player at Rockhurst University in Kansas City.
