This story appears in SLAM 251. Get your copy now.
One of the most successful streetball teams in New York City—year after year after year—is the Sean Bell All-Stars, coached by Jamaica, Queens, native Raheem “Rah” Wiggins. A decorated new short film, Bring Your Name, reminds viewers of the story behind the team’s name.
Sean Bell was a former high school baseball star from Queens celebrating his impending marriage in November, 2006, when he was shot by plain-clothes police officers. He died that night at age 23. Wiggins was a childhood friend of Bell’s who had been inspired to become a basketball coach by New York-area legends Jimmy Salmon and Tiny Morton. Wiggins was already entering streetball tournaments under the team name DDN (Dat’s Dem N—s), but he renamed the squad in honor of his fallen friend. And the team—not a high school AAU squad but a collection of adults, often with pro experience like Lance Stephenson or Tyshawn Taylor—has been a powerhouse ever since.
“We’re the best team in the city,” Wiggins says in the film, which takes you up close and personal to a game at Brooklyn’s Gersh Park. “People ask when I’m gonna walk away? As long as when I lose, people make a big deal out of it, I gotta come back.” He adds later, of the significance of the team’s name: “That’s my job, to keep [Sean’s] name to the public ear.”
Bring Your Name is directed by Raafi Rivero, the filmmaker and artist behind the ongoing Unarmed project, which exists “in memoriam of Black victims of police violence.” Rivero also worked on an upcoming docuseries around the 2024 NBA postseason that will air on ESPN.
Bring Your Name will make its world premiere at the BlackStar Film Festival in Philadelphia in August. From there, Rivero hopes to screen it at playground basketball venues in New York City as well as at other film festivals. And what does Rivero want viewers to take away from the film? “I hope they are inspired,” he says, “by the everyday heroism of people like Rah Wiggins.”
Portraits by Jon Lopez.
