Filmmaker Sami Khan: The storyteller behind ‘Starting 5’

Khan was tasked with following the Boston Celtics’ Tatum and the Miami Heat’s Butler, spending the year with them and crafting their stories through eventful seasons of basketball and life: The endearingly eccentric Butler endures the loss of his father, while Tatum delivers a championship for the demanding Boston Celtics fanbase.

I recently had the opportunity to ask Khan about his journey as a filmmaker, his year with Butler and Tatum, and preseason predictions for his hometown Raptors (it’s not looking good).

This interview has been edited for clarity and length. 

Quin Nelson: How’d you come to your work?
Sami Khan: I was born in Canada. My parents were immigrants, and you know, they wanted their kids to acclimatize, assimilate, you choose the word, but they didn't really know how. And so movies were one way that they could rely on to teach us about the culture. So from a very young age, I was watching Hitchcock movies, Jaws—movies way too inappropriate for a young kid, but I was watching them and devouring them. And then I got older, and I realized that actually making films was really the only thing that I was good at. So I was like, “I better make a living with this or I’m in big trouble.”

QN: What do you look for in a story?
SK: There's a line from Bruce Springsteen where he says something like, “My songs turn everyday people into heroes.” I think that's what I seek to do: Make everyday people heroes, or people who are considered heroes into everyday people, in the case of Starting 5. And there's a lot of bullsh*t out there. There’s a lot of glossing over what life is actually like, the nitty gritty of what we all have to go through, but then also on the top level, of taking the edges off our differences, our similarities. So ultimately, I try to keep things grounded, keep them real, and not bullsh*t people.

QN: Speaking of bullsh*t, there is a ton of NBA content in the world. How do you think Starting 5 sets itself apart?
SK: There is a lot of NBA content out there. But the thing is, there's not a lot of stuff that's firmly rooted in the players' perspectives. Yes, they have their Instagram handles, and there are so many podcasts these days, but in the case of the podcast, they're so basketball focused, right? It's former players talking about why they admire a current player’s game, and they talk for 90 minutes about that. And then with the case of Instagram, it’s curated by brand relationships, it's curated by the team, it's curated by what the guys themselves want to share with the world, and it's this very small window into their life. So telling a longitudinal story over the whole season that's firmly rooted in the guys’ perspectives, I think, is kind of revelatory.

QN: What was it like to work so closely with Jimmy Butler and Jayson Tatum?
SK: Jimmy Butler is the one of the most amazing people you'll ever meet in your whole life. My first day of shooting, I was told by Jimmy's assistant to meet him in Chicago—the Heat were playing the Bulls, and he still has a house in Chicago. And I was like, “Okay, cool, we'll be able to tell some backstory about Jimmy's days in Chicago. Maybe touch on his first time coming to the Midwest, going to Marquette.”

But then I land in Chicago, and I’m told to actually meet Jimmy at the airport, in the private jet airport, and you're going somewhere. And then like, “Where are we going, where's this mystery location? Are we going to Turks and Caicos, or Nice, France or something like that?” No, we're actually going to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, because his teammate, Niko Jovic, has a G League game against the Wisconsin Herd. So he took this private jet for like 15 minutes, and we landed in Oshkosh and we went for wings at Parker John’s in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and almost immediately it was like we were one of Jimmy's best friends.

And Jimmy was just amazing. And what he opened up to me, to the show, to the viewer, was pretty incredible. He's been an underdog his whole life. He never thought he'd make it as an NBA player. So he doesn't take anything for granted. And he lives life to the max, not just basketball, but everything, dominoes, being a father, music being a friend. So he was really amazing.

With Jayson, his focus is winning a championship—it was his focus last year and he still has that focus on going back-to-back. So the challenge for him was trying to fit into the high expectations of Boston Celtics basketball, and like Kevin Garnett talks about, that huge weight that you feel in Boston. 

And Jayson was just a very genuine human being. After they won, it was such a melee. And I'm there to document it, right? We had a big crew that day, and I didn't want to get in the way. And when he was finally leaving the arena that night at whatever time it is, like two, three in the morning, the great Celtics PR person was like, “There's Sami, there's Sami, Jayson, you gotta go talk to him.” And he had the biggest smile, and gave me a big hug. And I just told him I was so proud of him. He's just an amazing human being. I don’t think his strength, both mentally and physically, gets fully appreciated. But what he's achieved at 26 years old is really incredible.

QN: Were there any connecting themes between the different stories that stood out to you while working on the show?
SK: One of the surprising things that we discovered early on was this theme of fatherhood running throughout the season: Jimmy's relationship to his father, Jimmy's relationship to his kids, Jayson's relationship to his father, Jason's relationship to his kid. They're not just this video game character I see from seven o'clock at night to 9:30 at night. They're human beings who have people that rely on them, and they have people in their lives who have sacrificed a lot and  are flawed people. Justin Tatum (Jayson Tatum’s father) admits and reveals his flaws, and I think that that's something that's really powerful at the core of the show. And I'm so appreciative of Jimmy Butler Jr. (Jimmy Butler’s father), and then Jimmy Butler III, our Jimmy, sharing that. And his kids, and his significant other, and Jayson and Justin and Deuce (Jayson’s son). So that's something that, regardless of whether you like basketball or not, I think people will love and appreciate what amazing fathers these guys are.

QN: Was fatherhood a way for you to connect with the players?
SK: Yeah, I think so. There was a day where Jimmy told me that his dad was sick, right? And no one really knew at that point. I just filed it away. And later, I learned that my dad was sick and had just been diagnosed with cancer. My dad, thankfully is okay, is recovering after surgery, but we were both dealing with ailing fathers at the same time. And I think that we bonded over that, as you do—as you get to a certain age where you know your parents are mortal. And with Jayson, my daughter, Miriam, is the same age as Deuce, so I think that gave us a window in.

QN: If you could docu-follow any team, past or present, who would it be?
SK: I'm old enough where I grew up before the Raptors existed, so I grew up a Bad Boys Pistons fan. So having a docu-follow about the back-to-back Pistons. Or, you know what team hasn't got its due is the Pistons team that beat the Lakers in 2004. That story has to get told because it also intersects on all kinds of other issues—taking down Shaq and Kobe with this ragtag group of nobodies. Everybody counted them out, and they beat the Lakers and had one of the greatest defenses of all time.

QN: How are you feeling about your Toronto Raptors this year?
SK: Oh, not good. 

QN: Really?
SK: (Raptors president Masai) Ujiri is a genius; I can't pretend to understand how he built not just the championship team, but how he built the Demar (DeRozan) and (Kyle) Lowry era (two Raptors stars in the mid-2010s). So it would be a mistake to underestimate him and (general manager) Bobby Webster. But I don't think there are any delusions of contending this year. I'm excited about the Vince Carter jersey retirement and Hall of Fame induction. It’s a complicated past with Vince. So to see him, the city, the franchise, come full circle, and him to finally get his due is amazing.

QN: What other projects are you working on that we can look out for?
SK: We're so excited that this season (of Starting 5) is out there, so just doing press. And for my own filmmaking, I've been working for the last couple years on a feature documentary about Vijay Amritraj, who's the greatest Asian tennis player of all time. That’s a really powerful story. It's been a passion project. We're working with TIME studios, who produced the Kanye doc and Frida doc, and we're just out there now about to start pitching it, and hopefully selling it and getting that out there in the next 12-18 months.