“Bring Your Name” Short Film Honors the Legacy of Late New York Hooper Sean Bell

One of the most successful streetball teams in New York City—year after year—is the Sean Bell All-Stars, coached by Jamaica, Queens, Raheem “Rah” Wiggins. A new animated short film, Submit Your Namereminds viewers of the story behind the group’s name.

Sean Bell was a Queens high school baseball star celebrating his upcoming wedding in November, 2006, when he was shot by plainclothes police. He died that night at the age of 23. Wiggins was a childhood friend of Bell’s who was inspired to become a basketball coach by New York legends Jimmy Salmon and Tiny Morton. Wiggins was already competing in streetball tournaments under the team name DDN (Dat’s Dem N—s), but he renamed the team to honor his late friend. And the team—not a high school AAU team but a collection of seniors, often with experience like Lance Stephenson or Tyshawn Taylor—has been a powerhouse ever since.

“We’re the best team in town,” Wiggins says in the film, which takes you up close to the game at Gersh Park in Brooklyn. “People ask when will I leave?” As soon as I lose, people make a big deal about it, I have to come back. ” He added later on the importance of the team’s name: “That’s my job, to keep [Sean’s] word in the ears of the public.”

Submit Your Name directed by Raafi Rivero, a filmmaker and artist who runs the ongoing project Unarmed, which exists “in memory of black victims of police violence.” Rivero also worked on an upcoming docuseries about the 2024 NBA postseason that will air on ESPN.

Submit Your Name will have its world premiere at the BlackStar Film Festival in Philadelphia in August. From there, Rivero hopes to show it at basketball arenas in New York City and at other film festivals. And what does Rivero want viewers to take away from the film? He says: “I hope they are inspired by the everyday bravery of people like Rah Wiggins.”

Photos by Jon Lopez.