April 24, 2024 • 36 mins
Crystal McCrary McGuire is what one might call an icon (she has an And Just Like That character based on her!!) but her journey has been far from linear. An accomplished entertainment lawyer, writer, producer, director, and businesswoman, Crystal is now on to her latest venture with her son and NBA player, Cole Anthony. The two co-founded GameUp, an app for parents navigating youth sports. On this episode of She Pivots, Crystal shares her feelings of “otherness” attending a majority white school in the suburbs of Detroit, how working in entertainment law gave her a roadmap to entering into a creative profession, the role of documentary filmmaking in her life, and launching GameUp with her son.
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She Pivots was created by host Emily Tisch Sussman to highlight women, their stories, and how their pivot became their success. To learn more about Crystal, follow us on Instagram @ShePivotsThePodcast or visit shepivotsthepodcast.com.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to She Pivots. I'm Crystal McCrary maguire.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Welcome to She Pivots, the podcast where we talk with
women who dared to pivot out of one career and
into something new and explore how their personal lives impacted
these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman. Welcome back Pivoters.
(00:34):
This week, I'm joined by the lovely Crystal McCrary. I
first met Crystal through my mom, the way I meet
most people in my life. But right away I could
tell this woman was impressive, which explains why Sex and
City and just like that, based a character off of her.
Her superpower is combining fine and fabulous energy with an
(00:55):
unparalleled drive and desire to tell stories that uplift and
power black culture and black women. Crystal is an accomplished producer, director, lawyer.
Growing up in Detroit, Cristal always knew she wanted to
do something bigger, and throughout her life she's always pivoted,
leveraging her circumstances to create new iterations for herself, from
(01:17):
being a two time New York Times bestselling author to
appearing on numerous television networks as a cultural legal and
political pundit and who can forget? She also co hosted
the view She's Really Done It All? On top of
it all, Kristal's life has revolved around basketball for decades now.
Her oldest son, Cole Anthony, now plays professionally for the
(01:40):
Orlando Magic, and her other two children, Ella and Leo,
also excelled in the sport, taking up nights and weekends
for as long as she can remember. After years in
the youth basketball scene, she's teamed up with her son
Cole to share their experience and connect young basketball players
with local basketball resources through.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Their new app up.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Crystal embodies someone who's always allowed herself to steadily explore
and pivot, leading with the personal hope you enjoy. Welcome
Crystal McCrary maguire. I am so excited to have you
on she pivots.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
I'm really excited to be here. Emily, Thank you so
much for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
You have been a long inspiration in the pivoting for
me and just in general in the like you bring
the kind of energy that I aspire to bring into
the world.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Thank you, like with.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Generosity and with kindness and general boss ladiness.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
But let's take it back. Let's go to the beginnings. Okay,
so you grew up in Detroit, Yes, I did. Did
you think you were going to stay in Detroit or
did you think you'd ever leave?
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Well, I always knew I want it out. I mean, listen,
I love Detroit and it's had an incredible resurgence right now.
But I just was more so interested in the arts.
I was interested in creating and content creation. And I
didn't have anyone in my family who'd ever had a
quote unquote creative profession. I had a lot of lawyers,
(03:08):
few doctors, and I really didn't have that roadmap in
front of me. And I guess as a kid, whatever
it was that was incoming on my end, I was
informed that there's something in New York City that's pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
You know.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
I didn't know what it was. I'd never been, but
I really did always want to move to New York City.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
If you hadn't actually been, do you remember, like, was
it images?
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Was it movies? Like what kind of drew you to
the city. Sure, I mean it was certainly images. You know,
I will say this not the most glamorous, but certainly gritty.
But I do remember as a child seeing the movie
Fame Ough.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
With Irene Kara Debbie Allen.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Oh my god, that Times Square. I mean, well, first
of the dancing up on the taxi.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Of course, of course, in the in the school, the
liberal arts school, the just the diversity, you know, the music,
the excitement. There was just something that I saw in
that film and all of sort of the imagery and
messaging around New York City. And I think I had
a cousin that had moved to New York City, and
(04:16):
there was something sort of exotic and far off, and
you know, but I will say, you know, the part
of Detroit that I grew up in, you know, we
used to joke it was like a little mini United Nations.
And I grew up in the seventies in downtown Detroit,
and so I grew up really and I feel very
(04:37):
fortunate to have have grown up in a community that was,
you know, just multi cultural, ethnicity, gender, everything.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Despite living in downtown Detroit, Crystal started to travel out
to Gross Point to go to school, a wealthy and
largely white area just a few miles from downtown.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Yes I did. I was.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
I wasn't like bussed in the traditional sense that I
now understand busting to mean, but in hindsight, there was
that feeling that I imagine a kid, you know, going
from a fairly urban community out to the suburbs, you
know where like the Fords of you know, their family
(05:23):
went to school an industrialist and you know, people whose
families were much more financially well off, so to speak,
than my family. And frankly, racism me being other was
made aware to me at the schools I went to
in gross Point in a way that they had never
(05:44):
been made aware to me going to school in downtown Detroit.
I became aware that, oh, you're a black girl. I
remember going to a party in middle school because I
went to the school called gross Point Academy and then
this University of Ligott. They they sound like they are, Yes,
(06:05):
I think I can picture it from the Point Academy
and I remember going to a party at a classmates
class and this is actually, can't make this up. As
I'm thinking about this, and I'm thinking about this young
lady's name you but we did. We had Muffy's, we
had Carrington's. No, we really did. I mean it was
remember like the preppy handbook, But I remember going to
a party and she lived in this mansion. You know,
(06:27):
I didn't know that people could live in houses like this, right,
And I remember a bunch of kids being outside and
I don't know what we were doing. I was the
only black girl. But then I saw this black boy
there that had never seen before.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
He wasn't a classmate.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
And my host said, oh, you'll like so and so
he's like you, and I.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Was like, whatnot?
Speaker 1 (06:51):
And then and then I gathered that he was the
son of their Jamaican nanny, and they placed us together
based on, you know, our skin color. And again I
just I had no problem meeting him and talking tom
but the fact that I'm the only black girl. He's
not even there really as a guest. He's like just
(07:13):
there as the nanny's son. And I was made acutely
aware of I was different than the rest of the
kids at this party.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Things like that.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
I mean, it wasn't you know, that wasn't like overtly
you know, rude. I don't know how to you know, like,
I know it wouldn't happen to my kids in the
same way growing up in New York City, but I was.
I was definitely made aware of my otherness and how
I was raised. You know, we actually we didn't really
talk about race, you know, we didn't talk about political
(07:46):
issues that that just was not what we talked about.
I mean I was raised, I mean I was actually
raised by my maternal grandparents. They raised me as my
mother and father because my mother, my biological mother, had
me in a very young agd. She basically left me at
their door step and there my parents, right. But they
were Depression era parents born in the Jim Crow South
(08:09):
who their families migrated north to Detroit for economic opportunity
during the you know, the Great Migration, as Isabella Wilkerson
writes about in the Warmth of other Sons.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
I mean, it was very much that.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
And so they came through the Depression, and they weren't
children of the sixties, so it was just a different
way of There wasn't like activism around civil rights in
our household. I mean, I really didn't start learning and
(08:43):
leaning into that part of who I am really until
I was in college.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Did they just not discuss civil rights or was there
did you get the sense that you really shouldn't be
talking about it?
Speaker 3 (08:56):
They just didn't discuss it.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
They didn't and you know, again it was this prop
you know, I'd say quote unquote properness. Right, my mom
she was born and she turns in ninety eight, but
she was born in nineteen twenty five.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
She's still alive. It's incredible.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
My dad was born in nineteen twenty three. He passed away.
And also just the age wise, I mean when I
was as my parents slash grandparents, they were older parents,
and look at this in the in the seventies, you know,
they were already married, had a family established. As you know,
my mom was a school teacher and then a principal,
(09:38):
public school teacher and principal. My dad was worked for
Ford Motor Company, and so it was the era of
where you didn't change jobs.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Right, there was no pivot, right, there was no pivot.
There was no pivot.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
You know this that was not that same type of
optionality and even awareness of particularly as it relates particularly
as it relates to women in my mom. On one hand,
she was made money as a school teacher and then
a principal, but she wasn't going to do anything. There
was I'm going to stop being a teacher and go
(10:12):
and start a singing career or start a podcast or
there was.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
None of that.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, it just wasn't the vibe for moving through the timeline.
So did you always think that you were going to
go to law school like so much of your family.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Well, I did really look up to the lawyers in
my family, you know, because they were sort of that
next generation of getting advanced degrees beyond the undergraduate degree,
and there was this upward mobility associated with one that
had a law degree. I can't say that I was
(10:47):
particularly interested in it other than it to me symbolized stability.
There was a certain status to it, you know, particularly
as I juxtaposed that to the people that I went
to school with. I just looked at that as, oh,
this is an opportunity to sort of excel. I wasn't
(11:08):
particularly interested in it. I was an English major in
undergrad and would have loved to have gone straight from
undergrad into a creative profession. I didn't know what that
could have been, what that looked like.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
As I said, I.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Didn't have anybody in my family that was in the arts.
In my family, like so many families of my generation,
were what are you going to do with a quote
unquote creative profession? Are you going to get health insurance
with that? And so I sort of took that path
of least resistance, which is law school. Took that path
(11:41):
that had a level of familiarity and went to law school,
graduated from law school in nineteen ninety five, and went
to a farm in New York City called Paul Weiss.
And I did what many people who wanted to go
into the arts. I became a shadow artist as a lawyer,
(12:02):
what Julia Cameron writes about in the Artist way so eloquently.
And I was an entertainment lawyer. So I wasn't, you know,
earning a living as an artist, but I was representing artists.
But I got through. You know, I got through. I graduated,
I got a job. You've got a guide I got
(12:22):
I got a good.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
I got a good job.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
I passed the bar exam on the second time.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
Well, all that matters is that we're barked out right
and started practicing law representing all of these really extraordinary entertainers, writers, playwrights, choreographers, authors,
visual artists, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
And really hated every minute of it. Wow, But my one.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Big butt in that is it showed me that they're
is a road map for one to have a creative profession.
And so from that perspective. It was instructive. That was
one of the great things that came out of it.
I did learn, you know, just the reasoning that one learns,
(13:15):
the writing that one must practice to be a lawyer.
And then I also met a lot of really fantastic people.
In fact, one of the men who was an associate
at Paul Weiss, a senior associate when I was a
young associate, a man by the name of Andrew Hurwitz,
(13:35):
left Paul Weiss also like I did, a little after me,
but he started this company called the Film Sales Company
flash forward many years he actually sold. I went to
him to sell my first film that I produced and
met him because of being you know, at Paul Weiss together.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
So it wasn't totally for nothing.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Absolutely no. I do believe though that every saying so cliche,
everything does happen for a reason. Every coincidence is a
meaningful coincidence. I do believe in serendipity, and so I
can sort of sum up my whole legal journey as
being a part of that. That was a huge stepping
(14:21):
stone for me on the next path in my journey.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
We talked so much on this show about how every
pivot is different and the time frame is differently. You know,
some happen in an instant, but some happen over time.
So what was that timeline for you of starting to write,
staying at the firm, and what was the thing that
made you feel like, Okay, it's time to leave the firm,
I'm ready to go into this full time.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
I think I knew that my days were numbered at
the firm because I just had it was.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
It was.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
I was less than passionate. I was barely making it there,
just emotionally and mentally, and it's kind of making me
depressed is not the right, but just down. It was
every day. I just really did not look forward to
going to work, and I took enough time to kind
of save up some money. I did have a husband
(15:11):
that was making some money, but I didn't want to
have to rely on him.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Crystal was married to her first husband, Greg Anthony, an
NBA player for the New York Knicks at the time.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
So I kind of got a plan in order that
I said, you know, let me finish working on this book.
And I think it was when Rita and I.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Rita Ewing, one of her best friends, who in fact
introduced Crystal to Greg and was writing the book with.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Her Rita, and I got a completed draft of the book,
found an agent, and I think it was right around
that time that I felt ready to make the leap
and leave the firm. And so that was sort of
like the first pivot. Didn't have a buyer yet, didn't
have a publishing house yet, but I felt pretty confident
(15:58):
about it. I felt like, I'm sure you've talked to
people who are passionate about a particular profession or a
dream or an idea or something, and they bulldoze ahead
with it and they don't necessarily have a plan B.
I guess my plan B was to stay at the firm.
But I knew that I had to cut those ties
(16:21):
if I was really going to ever give it a
go to have a creative profession.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
So Crystal cut ties. She leaned into her book, eventually
publishing Home Court Advantage in nineteen ninety nine. The book
explored the flip side of the basketball scene, highlighting the
stories of the women who lived in the shadows of
quote great men. Though she never says it directly, the
book was almost certainly a reflection of Cristal's personal life
and the other accomplished women around her.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
We would joke about it or talk about it all
the time, the wives and girlfriends of that New York
Nicks team and that era. Like, let me set the
stage for you, Like, so pat Riley was the coach,
and so you had Patrick Ewing at the time, his
wife Rita Ewing, who's a very good friend of mine.
(17:10):
She's a lawyer and she's also an entrepreneur. You had
herb Williams, his wife had a PhD. You had Lisa
Bonner at the time, She's a lawyer, entrepreneur, real estate developer.
I mean, I could just go on and on with
that list of really impressive women. Home court advantage was
(17:32):
derived out of something called the Morning Pages, which was
an exercise in that book The Artist Way, which was
written by Julia Cameron, which she recommends for people that
want to begin writing. She recommends this thing called the
morning Pages, which are you wake up every morning and
before you do anything else, write a minimum of three
(17:53):
pages in a brain drain style. Don't edit yourself.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Just do that.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Commit to that act of writing and the discipline of it.
Don't edit yourself, and just see what you get after
a few months of doing that and I did that.
You know, in hindsight, I'm proud that I actually had
the discipline to do it. But I got up every
morning like an hour before. This was while I was
(18:20):
actually still at Paul Weiss and did that. And that
was the beginnings of Home Court Advantage. And I said, Rita,
I was like, I've been doing this.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
This came up.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
It was originally actually called Seasonal Ties because it was
about the season ties, you know, And she said, because
you and I would laugh so much about the various
stories being these wives. And we talked about it and
thought it would be really fun to write it together.
And we did and it became Home Court Advantage, and
we were fortunate enough to, you know, get the first
(18:52):
book published and it was a New York Times bestseller,
and many efforts to.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
Make it into a movie a series.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
I think I was just telling somebody the other days
and I think I made more money from optioning that
book than I did for my actual advance.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Even after Crystal's divorced from Greg Anthony, basketball was ever
present in her life because of her children. When we
come back, Crystal talks about balancing the demands of her
own life with her kids, extremely active youth basketball career.
Now back to the show. You have three children who
(19:32):
are very involved in basketball. In particular, you are a
very present parent, and you've said that you started in
national championships with your oldest when he was as young
as fourth grade, and even younger once you got to
the third child.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Yes, but that takes time. That takes time, and that takes.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Brain power and bandwidth and time in your It takes
space in your life and in your thinking. How did
you navigate, Like I don't think there is such a
thing as work life balance, but how did you navigate it?
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Being so present?
Speaker 1 (20:01):
You know, it's been a real journey. I mean, what
is it you hear you can have everything, just not
at the same time. And then the great Jackie Oh
quote of I'm only as happy as my least happy child,
and so there's kind of like a mashup of those
that I think that every working mom tries to walk
in balance of that. And I have tried to be
(20:25):
as present as I could possibly be, but I know
that a lot of things have fallen through the cracks.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
And your kids are approximately ten years apart, like the
two and then right.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
The younger, right, right, So Yeah, Leo's eleven, and Ella
is twenty one and Cole is twenty three. So I
have like the ten year age difference between my youngest
and my middle and then the twelve year age difference
between my youngest and my eldest. So in any event, yes,
of course stuff falls through the cracks. You know. Of
(20:57):
course I have not always given the best advice, but
I guess what I have sort of gotten to the
point of, you can always be doing more, but you
can always be doing less.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Also, what do you mean by that?
Speaker 1 (21:12):
I've struck a balance with myself and have decided to
be a little easier on me than these last several years.
I've decided to show myself some grace and do what
I can do, you know, because now I like, I
have three kids in three different states, at three very
(21:32):
different stages of their lives. You know, I have a
fifth grader who that's the hands on, taking to basketball practices,
taking to birthday parties, taking to mommy and me activities,
taking a Broadway. But then I have a college student
who's a junior in college, who there's parent weekends, there's
(21:54):
you know, she wants me to be there, ready to edit.
She writes for the Harvard Crimson. She wants me to
be there to edit something for her, her or you know,
there's a breakup or something to talk about that, you know,
just there to be present in in that way. But
there's never just enough time. Like there's parents weekend. I'm sorry,
I can't come up for the whole weekend. I can
come up for one night. Well, mom, that's not enough.
(22:15):
Why you know things like that, My you know, eldest
who's a professional basketball player in place with the Orlando Magic.
And you know, there's a part of me that, gosh,
I wish I wish I could live down in Orlando.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Well maybe not.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
I wish I could be at every game home and away,
but I can't. And he has, you know, like he's
like other parents are down here, other parents, you know,
but other parents have packed up and moved. All my
teammates parents they packed up and moved to Florida, and
our neighbors with you know, like.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
I have things to do here.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
It's like, I love you, baby, but I have a job,
and you have a little brother who's here. I mean,
you know, so and I realized that this is a
very fortunate, blessed situation I am describing, But as you're
living and going through it as a parent, as a
working parent, you do feel that, well, at least I
(23:12):
feel that I'm not there for everything, and I may
have bouts of guilt about that from time to time,
but I do do a.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Lot, and she does.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Crystal continued to evolve her creative career, eventually moving into film.
But do you feel like it was a pivot into
documentary films? Was that another like big moment for you?
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Before I did a documentary film, I actually produced a
scripted film that I was asked to come on board.
Its called Dirty Laundry. It was such a fun film
and it was like became a festival. Darling did it
independently with a group of folks. It was a gay
love story that had this incredible cast.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Gildon Davis seemed to have it all perfectly. Fate is
about to crash the party.
Speaker 5 (24:00):
I'm looking for mister Davis.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
I'm mister Davis. Who are you, Gabriel your son?
Speaker 6 (24:06):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (24:09):
This is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
It's Dirty Laundry.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
And so that was my first foray actually into filmmaking.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Soon after producing Dirty Laundry, Crystal was asked to produce
regularly Viacom while working on documentary style shows for BT
and MTV.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
She fell in love with the format.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
So there were a few shows I did there, Leading Women,
Leading Men, where we profiled men and women of color
who've impacted the country socially, politically, culturally, artistically. And so
I was doing that, which coincided with Cole playing this
youth basketball as like a third grader, fourth grader, and
I was also the team mom. All the kids would
(24:55):
always come to our house. I was always you know, carpooling,
doing all that stuff, and really got to know these kids'
close teammates that were from an array of socioeconomic backgrounds
that otherwise Cole would have not gotten to know kids
like that, being you know, frankly being raised in Manhattan.
Again we call it a melting pot, but let's be honest,
(25:18):
Manhattan it's you know, economically prohibitive for many, and you
don't get much diversity in that. And so I was
struck by how different all of these young men, all
these boys, how their backgrounds were. But they were brothers,
they were teammates, and I just felt like there was
(25:39):
something there in their stories.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Leveraging her background in documentary style film, Crystal knew this
was her moment to bring the personal and the professional together.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
And I said, I'd love to put a camera on
these boys and really kind of highlight their friendship also
to show that black boys aren't to show their common
goal of wanting to win a national championship, and that
became little Ballers. There were some kids that their families
were immigrants from Jamaica. There was a boy on the
(26:12):
team whose family was homeless. There was a boy on
the team whose family lived in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and the
mom had him playing so he could get away from
his community, which was really filled with a lot of
gang violence. And I looked at this also as I'd
love to make a documentary that shows the tells the
(26:33):
story of these boys before the dream has died, that
you're not actually going to go to the NBA, and
that everybody has a dream and let's capture them in
this last age of innocence.
Speaker 6 (26:47):
When you think of AAU, I think of everybody on
the team just having the same goal, and that's to
get a college scholarship and then playing in the NBA.
You know that was everybody's dream. Everybody wanted to make it.
Speaker 7 (27:03):
Everybody has dreams, everybody has a talent. If you're a
basketball player, it's nothing to be the best in New York.
You want to be one of the best players in
the country. If you ain't trying to be the best player,
that you possibly do something else. That's in anything. If
there's a muscle seed, a doubt, you might as well quit.
If you ain't trying to be the best, then what
are you doing it for.
Speaker 8 (27:25):
How is it that basketball became this cultural cathedral in
the African American community. It's almost like the African tribe
in that you can have individual expression within the context
of a try and the same thing with basketball. You're
(27:45):
part of a team, the past and all that, but
you could also create. You could also be individual as well.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
When that was my first time directing a documentary and
again did that independently, I call it real of filmmaking.
Forged ahead and ended up with my one of my
producing partners who was representing her name's Tammy Brooks. She
was representing Amri Stotdomeier at the time, who was playing
for the Knicks.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Brought him on.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
He loved the story, brought him on, he became an
executive producer. He was in the film that was a pivot,
you know, when it was a pivot based on my life,
my kids' lives.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Crystal is continuing to work at the intersection of the
personal and professional with her latest venture with her son
Cole for the app Game Up. So tell us about
this new venture and new relationship with your son, a
business partnership.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Yeah, so, you know, speaking of like going full circle
with your kid. You know, Cole likes me again after
high school. He's finally listening to me again. His favorite
thing that he said to me, you know, like his
first two seasons in the NBA, when I tried to
give him some advices. You know, Mom, listen, I'm a
grown ass man.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
I don't need you. I'm paying my own bills. You
tell me this, that and the other, you don't you know.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
I finally realized I cannot give him any basketball advice
because he knows more and is one pinky than I
will ever know. But what has been happening for ten
plus years is that I have been that basketball parent
that people would come to and say, can you make
a recommendation for a team for my kid? Can you
(29:23):
make a recommendation for a developmental program, for a trainer,
for a tournament, for a camp, for this, that, and
that and the other. And I had been spending hours
and hours on calls, on emails, on text messages, sharing
knowledge with parents who really have just been trying to
navigate this youth's basketball landscape that's getting bigger and bigger,
that's getting more and more complicated, that's gotten more and
(29:46):
more expensive. And I really started aggregating all of this
information in the youth basketball landscape and people would ask
whole the same thing, but from a player perspective. And
I started talking talking to him about this idea, and
I said, why don't we make sort of a one
stop shop platform where we can defragment this information, make
(30:10):
it sort of like the Angie's List for you know,
youth basketball. And that began the beginning of making Game Up.
Speaker 9 (30:21):
Navigating youth sports can be tough for parents. There's so
many options out there. But there's a new sports at
that's changing the basketball landscape. It's called Game Up. New
York native and NBA point guard Cole Anthony's mom, Krystin
McCrary maguire, teamed up to create a one stop shop
to help parents out and connect their kid with the
best basketball team and trainer based on their age, goals,
(30:42):
and location. Join me now to speak more about Game
Up is co founder Krystal mccrairy McGuire. She's also a
New York Times bestselling author and producer, just to name
a few. Good morning, Chrystal, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
With the Wrens Frinds, I with the team Real in
Jersey and then high school FOPSA Cardinals I played with
was that six to seven different AU programs levels of
youth basketball.
Speaker 10 (31:01):
And went through all of these great programs that developed
him at every stage.
Speaker 11 (31:06):
And that is really what parents are looking for.
Speaker 10 (31:09):
Most parents that are trying to find a program for
their kid, it's not like they enter into it saying,
I have this elite kid that's, you know, gonna go
D one or go to the NBA.
Speaker 11 (31:18):
That may be the ultimate dream.
Speaker 10 (31:19):
But they're really looking trying to figure out how to
navigate this system.
Speaker 11 (31:23):
And Cole as a as my.
Speaker 10 (31:25):
Son, as a resource and as somebody who truly lived
it as a player, was the perfect person.
Speaker 11 (31:31):
Plus we get along pretty.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Well tolerator, and so we've been working on it together,
we hired you know, we seeded it ourselves again, just
forging ahead, seated ourselves, that's right. Got a chief app
designer and coders computer software engineers, got the graphics UXUI designers,
got the chief strategy officer, chief operating officer, and built
(31:55):
this and we launched in the Tri State area and
now in Q one, twenty twenty four, we are expanding
across the US.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Is there something that holistically not just on little ballers,
but is there something that at the time you feel
like you felt like was a real low point negative,
like you weren't really sure you're gonna get out of it,
and then now in retrospect, you see it as having
really launched the next step for you.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
I actually had an experience where it wasn't that it
was what was rather male dominated, but I had an
experience with somebody under the Viacom umbrella when I was
working on the shows there that I was executive producing
and creating. There was a very senior executive there that
(32:43):
will I will never forget it, Like I think I
was talking to him sort of like one of those
career advice kind of talks, and I will never forget again.
You remember those things that light a fire under you.
But I remember he said to me, you know, Crystal,
this was before I had done Little Ballers, and he said, listen,
if you just keep reaching, you know, for that low
(33:05):
hanging fruit, he called it low hanging fruit. He said,
if you keep reaching for that low hanging fruit, there's
something there for you in that. See where that gets you.
And I just remember being so offended low hanging fruit, Like,
what the heck does that mean?
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Yeah? What are you?
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Are you trying to give me a ceiling where I'm
just beginning.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
But it doesn't lights a fire. It lights a fire.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
And you know, so that was that was a period
that that did inspire me, and it was it was
you know, there were so many other parts of that,
but there was certainly that.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Oh I'm going to show you, you know, just you wait, okay,
one last question. What everybody wants to know, what is
it like to have a sex and the city character
based on you?
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Well, listen, first of all, the fact that the character
quote unquote inspired by me is played by the you know,
pretty amazing Nicole Ari Parker. I'm like, okay, I'm just
you've you've flattered me beyond you know, it's it's kind
(34:17):
of you know, it's kind of cool.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
Totally, it's kind of cool.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
I mean Susan fails Hill, who's a writer there and
a very good friend of mine, you know.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
She and then there was Kelly Goff who was there.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
She's she's no longer with the show, but they somehow
were inspired by some aspect of my life. I think
there are many inspirations for ltw's character, but I'm just,
you know, really flattered. Did you know did they tell
you or you just watched it in your thought, oh,
we seem similar. I started getting rumblings maybe four or
(34:49):
five months before the first season came out, and I
was like what. I was like, that was like that
just sounds crazy. I had that one girlfriend, you know,
who's like the gossip the town crier, and she was like, girl,
there's a character Texas City three Kids documentary, Viille mak
her husband's running for mayor because at the time, my
husband Ray was running for mayor, and like, that certainly
(35:10):
sounds like you. And then it started picking up momentum,
and you know, look, I've been in sort of the
writer room places and they're like this character is like
so and so this is sort of think of, sort of,
so I get how that can happen. I think that
there again, I think that there are many people that
sort of you know, are part of the inspiration. But
you know, if you want to say it's me, I'll
take the good part of it for sure.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Well, thank you so much, Krystal for coming to she Pivots.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Thank you so much for having me. It was a
joy and an honor.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
As always, thank you, You're the best. Crystal still lives
in New York City. Her weekend's still filled with lots
of basketball and now growing game up to be available
to youth basketball players across the country. To learn more
about Crystal, follow her on Instagram at Krystal McCrary Talk to.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
You next week. Thanks for listening to this episode of
she Pivots.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
If you made it this far, you're a true pivot
So thanks for being part of this community. I hope
you enjoyed this episode, and if you did leave us
a rating, please be nice and tell your friends about us.
To learn more about our guests, follow us on Instagram
at she Pivots the podcast, or sign up for our
newsletter where you can get exclusive behind the scenes content
or on our website, she Pivots the podcast Talk to
(36:25):
You Next Week Special thanks to the she pivots team,
Executive producer Emily Edavlosk, Associate producer and social media connoisseur
Hannah Cousins, Research director Christine Dickinson, Events and Logistics coordinator
Madeline Sonovak, and audio editor and mixer Nina pollock I
(36:47):
endorseh she Pivots
Welcome back to She Pivots. I'm Crystal McCrary maguire.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Welcome to She Pivots, the podcast where we talk with
women who dared to pivot out of one career and
into something new and explore how their personal lives impacted
these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman. Welcome back Pivoters.
(00:34):
This week, I'm joined by the lovely Crystal McCrary. I
first met Crystal through my mom, the way I meet
most people in my life. But right away I could
tell this woman was impressive, which explains why Sex and
City and just like that, based a character off of her.
Her superpower is combining fine and fabulous energy with an
(00:55):
unparalleled drive and desire to tell stories that uplift and
power black culture and black women. Crystal is an accomplished producer, director, lawyer.
Growing up in Detroit, Cristal always knew she wanted to
do something bigger, and throughout her life she's always pivoted,
leveraging her circumstances to create new iterations for herself, from
(01:17):
being a two time New York Times bestselling author to
appearing on numerous television networks as a cultural legal and
political pundit and who can forget? She also co hosted
the view She's Really Done It All? On top of
it all, Kristal's life has revolved around basketball for decades now.
Her oldest son, Cole Anthony, now plays professionally for the
(01:40):
Orlando Magic, and her other two children, Ella and Leo,
also excelled in the sport, taking up nights and weekends
for as long as she can remember. After years in
the youth basketball scene, she's teamed up with her son
Cole to share their experience and connect young basketball players
with local basketball resources through.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Their new app up.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Crystal embodies someone who's always allowed herself to steadily explore
and pivot, leading with the personal hope you enjoy. Welcome
Crystal McCrary maguire. I am so excited to have you
on she pivots.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
I'm really excited to be here. Emily, Thank you so
much for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
You have been a long inspiration in the pivoting for
me and just in general in the like you bring
the kind of energy that I aspire to bring into
the world.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Thank you, like with.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Generosity and with kindness and general boss ladiness.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
But let's take it back. Let's go to the beginnings. Okay,
so you grew up in Detroit, Yes, I did. Did
you think you were going to stay in Detroit or
did you think you'd ever leave?
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Well, I always knew I want it out. I mean, listen,
I love Detroit and it's had an incredible resurgence right now.
But I just was more so interested in the arts.
I was interested in creating and content creation. And I
didn't have anyone in my family who'd ever had a
quote unquote creative profession. I had a lot of lawyers,
(03:08):
few doctors, and I really didn't have that roadmap in
front of me. And I guess as a kid, whatever
it was that was incoming on my end, I was
informed that there's something in New York City that's pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
You know.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
I didn't know what it was. I'd never been, but
I really did always want to move to New York City.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
If you hadn't actually been, do you remember, like, was
it images?
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Was it movies? Like what kind of drew you to
the city. Sure, I mean it was certainly images. You know,
I will say this not the most glamorous, but certainly gritty.
But I do remember as a child seeing the movie
Fame Ough.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
With Irene Kara Debbie Allen.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Oh my god, that Times Square. I mean, well, first
of the dancing up on the taxi.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Of course, of course, in the in the school, the
liberal arts school, the just the diversity, you know, the music,
the excitement. There was just something that I saw in
that film and all of sort of the imagery and
messaging around New York City. And I think I had
a cousin that had moved to New York City, and
(04:16):
there was something sort of exotic and far off, and
you know, but I will say, you know, the part
of Detroit that I grew up in, you know, we
used to joke it was like a little mini United Nations.
And I grew up in the seventies in downtown Detroit,
and so I grew up really and I feel very
(04:37):
fortunate to have have grown up in a community that was,
you know, just multi cultural, ethnicity, gender, everything.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Despite living in downtown Detroit, Crystal started to travel out
to Gross Point to go to school, a wealthy and
largely white area just a few miles from downtown.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Yes I did. I was.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
I wasn't like bussed in the traditional sense that I
now understand busting to mean, but in hindsight, there was
that feeling that I imagine a kid, you know, going
from a fairly urban community out to the suburbs, you
know where like the Fords of you know, their family
(05:23):
went to school an industrialist and you know, people whose
families were much more financially well off, so to speak,
than my family. And frankly, racism me being other was
made aware to me at the schools I went to
in gross Point in a way that they had never
(05:44):
been made aware to me going to school in downtown Detroit.
I became aware that, oh, you're a black girl. I
remember going to a party in middle school because I
went to the school called gross Point Academy and then
this University of Ligott. They they sound like they are, Yes,
(06:05):
I think I can picture it from the Point Academy
and I remember going to a party at a classmates
class and this is actually, can't make this up. As
I'm thinking about this, and I'm thinking about this young
lady's name you but we did. We had Muffy's, we
had Carrington's. No, we really did. I mean it was
remember like the preppy handbook, But I remember going to
a party and she lived in this mansion. You know,
(06:27):
I didn't know that people could live in houses like this, right,
And I remember a bunch of kids being outside and
I don't know what we were doing. I was the
only black girl. But then I saw this black boy
there that had never seen before.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
He wasn't a classmate.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
And my host said, oh, you'll like so and so
he's like you, and I.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Was like, whatnot?
Speaker 1 (06:51):
And then and then I gathered that he was the
son of their Jamaican nanny, and they placed us together
based on, you know, our skin color. And again I
just I had no problem meeting him and talking tom
but the fact that I'm the only black girl. He's
not even there really as a guest. He's like just
(07:13):
there as the nanny's son. And I was made acutely
aware of I was different than the rest of the
kids at this party.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Things like that.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
I mean, it wasn't you know, that wasn't like overtly
you know, rude. I don't know how to you know, like,
I know it wouldn't happen to my kids in the
same way growing up in New York City, but I was.
I was definitely made aware of my otherness and how
I was raised. You know, we actually we didn't really
talk about race, you know, we didn't talk about political
(07:46):
issues that that just was not what we talked about.
I mean I was raised, I mean I was actually
raised by my maternal grandparents. They raised me as my
mother and father because my mother, my biological mother, had
me in a very young agd. She basically left me at
their door step and there my parents, right. But they
were Depression era parents born in the Jim Crow South
(08:09):
who their families migrated north to Detroit for economic opportunity
during the you know, the Great Migration, as Isabella Wilkerson
writes about in the Warmth of other Sons.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
I mean, it was very much that.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
And so they came through the Depression, and they weren't
children of the sixties, so it was just a different
way of There wasn't like activism around civil rights in
our household. I mean, I really didn't start learning and
(08:43):
leaning into that part of who I am really until
I was in college.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Did they just not discuss civil rights or was there
did you get the sense that you really shouldn't be
talking about it?
Speaker 3 (08:56):
They just didn't discuss it.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
They didn't and you know, again it was this prop
you know, I'd say quote unquote properness. Right, my mom
she was born and she turns in ninety eight, but
she was born in nineteen twenty five.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
She's still alive. It's incredible.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
My dad was born in nineteen twenty three. He passed away.
And also just the age wise, I mean when I
was as my parents slash grandparents, they were older parents,
and look at this in the in the seventies, you know,
they were already married, had a family established. As you know,
my mom was a school teacher and then a principal,
(09:38):
public school teacher and principal. My dad was worked for
Ford Motor Company, and so it was the era of
where you didn't change jobs.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Right, there was no pivot, right, there was no pivot.
There was no pivot.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
You know this that was not that same type of
optionality and even awareness of particularly as it relates particularly
as it relates to women in my mom. On one hand,
she was made money as a school teacher and then
a principal, but she wasn't going to do anything. There
was I'm going to stop being a teacher and go
(10:12):
and start a singing career or start a podcast or
there was.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
None of that.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, it just wasn't the vibe for moving through the timeline.
So did you always think that you were going to
go to law school like so much of your family.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Well, I did really look up to the lawyers in
my family, you know, because they were sort of that
next generation of getting advanced degrees beyond the undergraduate degree,
and there was this upward mobility associated with one that
had a law degree. I can't say that I was
(10:47):
particularly interested in it other than it to me symbolized stability.
There was a certain status to it, you know, particularly
as I juxtaposed that to the people that I went
to school with. I just looked at that as, oh,
this is an opportunity to sort of excel. I wasn't
(11:08):
particularly interested in it. I was an English major in
undergrad and would have loved to have gone straight from
undergrad into a creative profession. I didn't know what that
could have been, what that looked like.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
As I said, I.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Didn't have anybody in my family that was in the arts.
In my family, like so many families of my generation,
were what are you going to do with a quote
unquote creative profession? Are you going to get health insurance
with that? And so I sort of took that path
of least resistance, which is law school. Took that path
(11:41):
that had a level of familiarity and went to law school,
graduated from law school in nineteen ninety five, and went
to a farm in New York City called Paul Weiss.
And I did what many people who wanted to go
into the arts. I became a shadow artist as a lawyer,
(12:02):
what Julia Cameron writes about in the Artist way so eloquently.
And I was an entertainment lawyer. So I wasn't, you know,
earning a living as an artist, but I was representing artists.
But I got through. You know, I got through. I graduated,
I got a job. You've got a guide I got
(12:22):
I got a good.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
I got a good job.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
I passed the bar exam on the second time.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
Well, all that matters is that we're barked out right
and started practicing law representing all of these really extraordinary entertainers, writers, playwrights, choreographers, authors,
visual artists, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
And really hated every minute of it. Wow, But my one.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Big butt in that is it showed me that they're
is a road map for one to have a creative profession.
And so from that perspective. It was instructive. That was
one of the great things that came out of it.
I did learn, you know, just the reasoning that one learns,
(13:15):
the writing that one must practice to be a lawyer.
And then I also met a lot of really fantastic people.
In fact, one of the men who was an associate
at Paul Weiss, a senior associate when I was a
young associate, a man by the name of Andrew Hurwitz,
(13:35):
left Paul Weiss also like I did, a little after me,
but he started this company called the Film Sales Company
flash forward many years he actually sold. I went to
him to sell my first film that I produced and
met him because of being you know, at Paul Weiss together.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
So it wasn't totally for nothing.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Absolutely no. I do believe though that every saying so cliche,
everything does happen for a reason. Every coincidence is a
meaningful coincidence. I do believe in serendipity, and so I
can sort of sum up my whole legal journey as
being a part of that. That was a huge stepping
(14:21):
stone for me on the next path in my journey.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
We talked so much on this show about how every
pivot is different and the time frame is differently. You know,
some happen in an instant, but some happen over time.
So what was that timeline for you of starting to write,
staying at the firm, and what was the thing that
made you feel like, Okay, it's time to leave the firm,
I'm ready to go into this full time.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
I think I knew that my days were numbered at
the firm because I just had it was.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
It was.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
I was less than passionate. I was barely making it there,
just emotionally and mentally, and it's kind of making me
depressed is not the right, but just down. It was
every day. I just really did not look forward to
going to work, and I took enough time to kind
of save up some money. I did have a husband
(15:11):
that was making some money, but I didn't want to
have to rely on him.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Crystal was married to her first husband, Greg Anthony, an
NBA player for the New York Knicks at the time.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
So I kind of got a plan in order that
I said, you know, let me finish working on this book.
And I think it was when Rita and I.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Rita Ewing, one of her best friends, who in fact
introduced Crystal to Greg and was writing the book with.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Her Rita, and I got a completed draft of the book,
found an agent, and I think it was right around
that time that I felt ready to make the leap
and leave the firm. And so that was sort of
like the first pivot. Didn't have a buyer yet, didn't
have a publishing house yet, but I felt pretty confident
(15:58):
about it. I felt like, I'm sure you've talked to
people who are passionate about a particular profession or a
dream or an idea or something, and they bulldoze ahead
with it and they don't necessarily have a plan B.
I guess my plan B was to stay at the firm.
But I knew that I had to cut those ties
(16:21):
if I was really going to ever give it a
go to have a creative profession.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
So Crystal cut ties. She leaned into her book, eventually
publishing Home Court Advantage in nineteen ninety nine. The book
explored the flip side of the basketball scene, highlighting the
stories of the women who lived in the shadows of
quote great men. Though she never says it directly, the
book was almost certainly a reflection of Cristal's personal life
and the other accomplished women around her.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
We would joke about it or talk about it all
the time, the wives and girlfriends of that New York
Nicks team and that era. Like, let me set the
stage for you, Like, so pat Riley was the coach,
and so you had Patrick Ewing at the time, his
wife Rita Ewing, who's a very good friend of mine.
(17:10):
She's a lawyer and she's also an entrepreneur. You had
herb Williams, his wife had a PhD. You had Lisa
Bonner at the time, She's a lawyer, entrepreneur, real estate developer.
I mean, I could just go on and on with
that list of really impressive women. Home court advantage was
(17:32):
derived out of something called the Morning Pages, which was
an exercise in that book The Artist Way, which was
written by Julia Cameron, which she recommends for people that
want to begin writing. She recommends this thing called the
morning Pages, which are you wake up every morning and
before you do anything else, write a minimum of three
(17:53):
pages in a brain drain style. Don't edit yourself.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Just do that.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Commit to that act of writing and the discipline of it.
Don't edit yourself, and just see what you get after
a few months of doing that and I did that.
You know, in hindsight, I'm proud that I actually had
the discipline to do it. But I got up every
morning like an hour before. This was while I was
(18:20):
actually still at Paul Weiss and did that. And that
was the beginnings of Home Court Advantage. And I said, Rita,
I was like, I've been doing this.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
This came up.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
It was originally actually called Seasonal Ties because it was
about the season ties, you know, And she said, because
you and I would laugh so much about the various
stories being these wives. And we talked about it and
thought it would be really fun to write it together.
And we did and it became Home Court Advantage, and
we were fortunate enough to, you know, get the first
(18:52):
book published and it was a New York Times bestseller,
and many efforts to.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
Make it into a movie a series.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
I think I was just telling somebody the other days
and I think I made more money from optioning that
book than I did for my actual advance.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Even after Crystal's divorced from Greg Anthony, basketball was ever
present in her life because of her children. When we
come back, Crystal talks about balancing the demands of her
own life with her kids, extremely active youth basketball career.
Now back to the show. You have three children who
(19:32):
are very involved in basketball. In particular, you are a
very present parent, and you've said that you started in
national championships with your oldest when he was as young
as fourth grade, and even younger once you got to
the third child.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Yes, but that takes time. That takes time, and that takes.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Brain power and bandwidth and time in your It takes
space in your life and in your thinking. How did
you navigate, Like I don't think there is such a
thing as work life balance, but how did you navigate it?
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Being so present?
Speaker 1 (20:01):
You know, it's been a real journey. I mean, what
is it you hear you can have everything, just not
at the same time. And then the great Jackie Oh
quote of I'm only as happy as my least happy child,
and so there's kind of like a mashup of those
that I think that every working mom tries to walk
in balance of that. And I have tried to be
(20:25):
as present as I could possibly be, but I know
that a lot of things have fallen through the cracks.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
And your kids are approximately ten years apart, like the
two and then right.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
The younger, right, right, So Yeah, Leo's eleven, and Ella
is twenty one and Cole is twenty three. So I
have like the ten year age difference between my youngest
and my middle and then the twelve year age difference
between my youngest and my eldest. So in any event, yes,
of course stuff falls through the cracks. You know. Of
(20:57):
course I have not always given the best advice, but
I guess what I have sort of gotten to the
point of, you can always be doing more, but you
can always be doing less.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Also, what do you mean by that?
Speaker 1 (21:12):
I've struck a balance with myself and have decided to
be a little easier on me than these last several years.
I've decided to show myself some grace and do what
I can do, you know, because now I like, I
have three kids in three different states, at three very
(21:32):
different stages of their lives. You know, I have a
fifth grader who that's the hands on, taking to basketball practices,
taking to birthday parties, taking to mommy and me activities,
taking a Broadway. But then I have a college student
who's a junior in college, who there's parent weekends, there's
(21:54):
you know, she wants me to be there, ready to edit.
She writes for the Harvard Crimson. She wants me to
be there to edit something for her, her or you know,
there's a breakup or something to talk about that, you know,
just there to be present in in that way. But
there's never just enough time. Like there's parents weekend. I'm sorry,
I can't come up for the whole weekend. I can
come up for one night. Well, mom, that's not enough.
(22:15):
Why you know things like that, My you know, eldest
who's a professional basketball player in place with the Orlando Magic.
And you know, there's a part of me that, gosh,
I wish I wish I could live down in Orlando.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Well maybe not.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
I wish I could be at every game home and away,
but I can't. And he has, you know, like he's
like other parents are down here, other parents, you know,
but other parents have packed up and moved. All my
teammates parents they packed up and moved to Florida, and
our neighbors with you know, like.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
I have things to do here.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
It's like, I love you, baby, but I have a job,
and you have a little brother who's here. I mean,
you know, so and I realized that this is a
very fortunate, blessed situation I am describing, But as you're
living and going through it as a parent, as a
working parent, you do feel that, well, at least I
(23:12):
feel that I'm not there for everything, and I may
have bouts of guilt about that from time to time,
but I do do a.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Lot, and she does.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Crystal continued to evolve her creative career, eventually moving into film.
But do you feel like it was a pivot into
documentary films? Was that another like big moment for you?
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Before I did a documentary film, I actually produced a
scripted film that I was asked to come on board.
Its called Dirty Laundry. It was such a fun film
and it was like became a festival. Darling did it
independently with a group of folks. It was a gay
love story that had this incredible cast.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Gildon Davis seemed to have it all perfectly. Fate is
about to crash the party.
Speaker 5 (24:00):
I'm looking for mister Davis.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
I'm mister Davis. Who are you, Gabriel your son?
Speaker 6 (24:06):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (24:09):
This is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
It's Dirty Laundry.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
And so that was my first foray actually into filmmaking.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Soon after producing Dirty Laundry, Crystal was asked to produce
regularly Viacom while working on documentary style shows for BT
and MTV.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
She fell in love with the format.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
So there were a few shows I did there, Leading Women,
Leading Men, where we profiled men and women of color
who've impacted the country socially, politically, culturally, artistically. And so
I was doing that, which coincided with Cole playing this
youth basketball as like a third grader, fourth grader, and
I was also the team mom. All the kids would
(24:55):
always come to our house. I was always you know, carpooling,
doing all that stuff, and really got to know these kids'
close teammates that were from an array of socioeconomic backgrounds
that otherwise Cole would have not gotten to know kids
like that, being you know, frankly being raised in Manhattan.
Again we call it a melting pot, but let's be honest,
(25:18):
Manhattan it's you know, economically prohibitive for many, and you
don't get much diversity in that. And so I was
struck by how different all of these young men, all
these boys, how their backgrounds were. But they were brothers,
they were teammates, and I just felt like there was
(25:39):
something there in their stories.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Leveraging her background in documentary style film, Crystal knew this
was her moment to bring the personal and the professional together.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
And I said, I'd love to put a camera on
these boys and really kind of highlight their friendship also
to show that black boys aren't to show their common
goal of wanting to win a national championship, and that
became little Ballers. There were some kids that their families
were immigrants from Jamaica. There was a boy on the
(26:12):
team whose family was homeless. There was a boy on
the team whose family lived in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and the
mom had him playing so he could get away from
his community, which was really filled with a lot of
gang violence. And I looked at this also as I'd
love to make a documentary that shows the tells the
(26:33):
story of these boys before the dream has died, that
you're not actually going to go to the NBA, and
that everybody has a dream and let's capture them in
this last age of innocence.
Speaker 6 (26:47):
When you think of AAU, I think of everybody on
the team just having the same goal, and that's to
get a college scholarship and then playing in the NBA.
You know that was everybody's dream. Everybody wanted to make it.
Speaker 7 (27:03):
Everybody has dreams, everybody has a talent. If you're a
basketball player, it's nothing to be the best in New York.
You want to be one of the best players in
the country. If you ain't trying to be the best player,
that you possibly do something else. That's in anything. If
there's a muscle seed, a doubt, you might as well quit.
If you ain't trying to be the best, then what
are you doing it for.
Speaker 8 (27:25):
How is it that basketball became this cultural cathedral in
the African American community. It's almost like the African tribe
in that you can have individual expression within the context
of a try and the same thing with basketball. You're
(27:45):
part of a team, the past and all that, but
you could also create. You could also be individual as well.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
When that was my first time directing a documentary and
again did that independently, I call it real of filmmaking.
Forged ahead and ended up with my one of my
producing partners who was representing her name's Tammy Brooks. She
was representing Amri Stotdomeier at the time, who was playing
for the Knicks.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Brought him on.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
He loved the story, brought him on, he became an
executive producer. He was in the film that was a pivot,
you know, when it was a pivot based on my life,
my kids' lives.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Crystal is continuing to work at the intersection of the
personal and professional with her latest venture with her son
Cole for the app Game Up. So tell us about
this new venture and new relationship with your son, a
business partnership.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Yeah, so, you know, speaking of like going full circle
with your kid. You know, Cole likes me again after
high school. He's finally listening to me again. His favorite
thing that he said to me, you know, like his
first two seasons in the NBA, when I tried to
give him some advices. You know, Mom, listen, I'm a
grown ass man.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
I don't need you. I'm paying my own bills. You
tell me this, that and the other, you don't you know.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
I finally realized I cannot give him any basketball advice
because he knows more and is one pinky than I
will ever know. But what has been happening for ten
plus years is that I have been that basketball parent
that people would come to and say, can you make
a recommendation for a team for my kid? Can you
(29:23):
make a recommendation for a developmental program, for a trainer,
for a tournament, for a camp, for this, that, and
that and the other. And I had been spending hours
and hours on calls, on emails, on text messages, sharing
knowledge with parents who really have just been trying to
navigate this youth's basketball landscape that's getting bigger and bigger,
that's getting more and more complicated, that's gotten more and
(29:46):
more expensive. And I really started aggregating all of this
information in the youth basketball landscape and people would ask
whole the same thing, but from a player perspective. And
I started talking talking to him about this idea, and
I said, why don't we make sort of a one
stop shop platform where we can defragment this information, make
(30:10):
it sort of like the Angie's List for you know,
youth basketball. And that began the beginning of making Game Up.
Speaker 9 (30:21):
Navigating youth sports can be tough for parents. There's so
many options out there. But there's a new sports at
that's changing the basketball landscape. It's called Game Up. New
York native and NBA point guard Cole Anthony's mom, Krystin
McCrary maguire, teamed up to create a one stop shop
to help parents out and connect their kid with the
best basketball team and trainer based on their age, goals,
(30:42):
and location. Join me now to speak more about Game
Up is co founder Krystal mccrairy McGuire. She's also a
New York Times bestselling author and producer, just to name
a few. Good morning, Chrystal, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
With the Wrens Frinds, I with the team Real in
Jersey and then high school FOPSA Cardinals I played with
was that six to seven different AU programs levels of
youth basketball.
Speaker 10 (31:01):
And went through all of these great programs that developed
him at every stage.
Speaker 11 (31:06):
And that is really what parents are looking for.
Speaker 10 (31:09):
Most parents that are trying to find a program for
their kid, it's not like they enter into it saying,
I have this elite kid that's, you know, gonna go
D one or go to the NBA.
Speaker 11 (31:18):
That may be the ultimate dream.
Speaker 10 (31:19):
But they're really looking trying to figure out how to
navigate this system.
Speaker 11 (31:23):
And Cole as a as my.
Speaker 10 (31:25):
Son, as a resource and as somebody who truly lived
it as a player, was the perfect person.
Speaker 11 (31:31):
Plus we get along pretty.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Well tolerator, and so we've been working on it together,
we hired you know, we seeded it ourselves again, just
forging ahead, seated ourselves, that's right. Got a chief app
designer and coders computer software engineers, got the graphics UXUI designers,
got the chief strategy officer, chief operating officer, and built
(31:55):
this and we launched in the Tri State area and
now in Q one, twenty twenty four, we are expanding
across the US.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Is there something that holistically not just on little ballers,
but is there something that at the time you feel
like you felt like was a real low point negative,
like you weren't really sure you're gonna get out of it,
and then now in retrospect, you see it as having
really launched the next step for you.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
I actually had an experience where it wasn't that it
was what was rather male dominated, but I had an
experience with somebody under the Viacom umbrella when I was
working on the shows there that I was executive producing
and creating. There was a very senior executive there that
(32:43):
will I will never forget it, Like I think I
was talking to him sort of like one of those
career advice kind of talks, and I will never forget again.
You remember those things that light a fire under you.
But I remember he said to me, you know, Crystal,
this was before I had done Little Ballers, and he said, listen,
if you just keep reaching, you know, for that low
(33:05):
hanging fruit, he called it low hanging fruit. He said,
if you keep reaching for that low hanging fruit, there's
something there for you in that. See where that gets you.
And I just remember being so offended low hanging fruit, Like,
what the heck does that mean?
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Yeah? What are you?
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Are you trying to give me a ceiling where I'm
just beginning.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
But it doesn't lights a fire. It lights a fire.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
And you know, so that was that was a period
that that did inspire me, and it was it was
you know, there were so many other parts of that,
but there was certainly that.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Oh I'm going to show you, you know, just you wait, okay,
one last question. What everybody wants to know, what is
it like to have a sex and the city character
based on you?
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Well, listen, first of all, the fact that the character
quote unquote inspired by me is played by the you know,
pretty amazing Nicole Ari Parker. I'm like, okay, I'm just
you've you've flattered me beyond you know, it's it's kind
(34:17):
of you know, it's kind of cool.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
Totally, it's kind of cool.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
I mean Susan fails Hill, who's a writer there and
a very good friend of mine, you know.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
She and then there was Kelly Goff who was there.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
She's she's no longer with the show, but they somehow
were inspired by some aspect of my life. I think
there are many inspirations for ltw's character, but I'm just,
you know, really flattered. Did you know did they tell
you or you just watched it in your thought, oh,
we seem similar. I started getting rumblings maybe four or
(34:49):
five months before the first season came out, and I
was like what. I was like, that was like that
just sounds crazy. I had that one girlfriend, you know,
who's like the gossip the town crier, and she was like, girl,
there's a character Texas City three Kids documentary, Viille mak
her husband's running for mayor because at the time, my
husband Ray was running for mayor, and like, that certainly
(35:10):
sounds like you. And then it started picking up momentum,
and you know, look, I've been in sort of the
writer room places and they're like this character is like
so and so this is sort of think of, sort of,
so I get how that can happen. I think that
there again, I think that there are many people that
sort of you know, are part of the inspiration. But
you know, if you want to say it's me, I'll
take the good part of it for sure.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Well, thank you so much, Krystal for coming to she Pivots.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Thank you so much for having me. It was a
joy and an honor.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
As always, thank you, You're the best. Crystal still lives
in New York City. Her weekend's still filled with lots
of basketball and now growing game up to be available
to youth basketball players across the country. To learn more
about Crystal, follow her on Instagram at Krystal McCrary Talk to.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
You next week. Thanks for listening to this episode of
she Pivots.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
If you made it this far, you're a true pivot
So thanks for being part of this community. I hope
you enjoyed this episode, and if you did leave us
a rating, please be nice and tell your friends about us.
To learn more about our guests, follow us on Instagram
at she Pivots the podcast, or sign up for our
newsletter where you can get exclusive behind the scenes content
or on our website, she Pivots the podcast Talk to
(36:25):
You Next Week Special thanks to the she pivots team,
Executive producer Emily Edavlosk, Associate producer and social media connoisseur
Hannah Cousins, Research director Christine Dickinson, Events and Logistics coordinator
Madeline Sonovak, and audio editor and mixer Nina pollock I
(36:47):
endorseh she Pivots
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