When Gotham Chopra launched the Religion of Sports with co-founders Tom Brady and Michael Strahan in 2016, he set out to capture the similarities between sports events and religious ones, and even to understand sports as religion. Last year, he created the Facebook Watch documentary series Tom vs Time, which studied how age is impacting Brady’s NFL career. Now, Chopra is releasing a new series, Stephen vs The Game, focused on Golden State Warriors point guard Steph Curry.
Chopra recently talked to SportTechie about the new series, the connection between sports and religion, and the experience and process of making documentaries for Facebook Watch.
“A filmmaker needs a story,” Chopra explained, “and not just a story like ‘Wow this guy’s amazing, and his team’s amazing, and they’re going to see if they can win a third championship in a row,’ but more like ‘What’s the story underneath this guy?’ What fuels his greatness?’”
To find that hook, Chopra spent time with Curry, getting to know the basketball star and his family. His eventual conclusion may seem obvious given how public Curry has been about his Christianity: “Steph is largely driven by his faith,” Chopra said. But the filmmaker wanted to explore not just what drove Curry, but how it drove him. And how it might be a part of the Warriors phenomenon—Golden State has won three of the past four NBA Finals.
“He’s created this incredible chemistry and dynamic with his team,” Gotham said. “I want to really understand that. I want to understand what that means and how that works.”
The parallels between sports and religion are significant. People adapt their lives around both. Fans and followers are driven by belief and superstition. And both can defy cold, hard logic. Midway through Game 2 of the first round of the 2019 Playoffs, the Los Angeles Clippers were down by 31 points to Curry’s Warriors on the road. Improbably, impossibly, the Clippers won by four.
“You go to Oracle arena, you’re part of a congregation. You’re in a community, you’re in place where a little bit of mythology has been generated over the years, and a lot of miracles—game winning shots,” Chopra said.
“Watching Steph Curry take a jump shot is one of the most pure things. It’s probably like watching Mozart play the piano. There’s a spirituality to that.”
Tom vs Time was the first documentary series Chopra directed for Facebook Watch, and Stephen vs The Game will be the second. His videography also includes sports documentaries produced for more traditional outlets. In 2015, both Kobe Bryant’s Muse and I Am Giant, which focused on New York Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz, aired on Showtime, and The Little Master, about Indian cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar, was part of ESPN’s 30 for 30 series.
Facebook Watch is a video-on-demand service operated through the social media site. Videos are free, with the platform is. monetized through advertising breaks. Because Facebook Watch exists within Facebook itself, both the experience of watching and creating content is social.
“Facebook Watch in particular is unique because of the community aspect of it,” Chopra said. Not only is there a possibility for direct interaction between Chopra and his audience, but there is also the ability to better understand that audience and learn what type of content people would like to see.
“Because Steph is very active on social media, and you can see what are people responding to,” Chopra explained. “I don’t want to overstate that—we’re [not] just operating off of algorithms—but I think you can’t ignore, I think it would be foolish to ignore it.”
With both Brady and Curry, Chopra has not just covered two of the greatest athletes of all time, but also been fortunate to select those on the verge of winning championships. Though the first episode of Tom vs Time was released 10 days before Super Bowl LII, and the New England Patriots lost that game to the Philadelphia Eagles, Brady’s team returned to the top at Super Bowl LIII this year. The Warriors are currently two games up against the Houston Rockets in the Western Conference semifinals, and easily among the favorites to go all the way.
But Chopra may not be able to rely on Curry to give Stephen vs The Game a significant personal social boost. “He’s also an elite athlete, and part of what drives his success is his ability to focus,” Chopra said. “Right now, which is an irony, we’re about to release the Facebook series, he’s not really on social media. He’s hyper focused on basketball.”
Two series into working on Facebook Watch, Chopra said he is still learning how to make documentaries for the platform, and that his approach is still evolving. With traditional documentaries, the choices were always whether to make 30-minute, hour, or feature-length programs. With Facebook Watch, he initially targeted just 15-minute episodes, but then one ran long, over 20 minutes, and did really well. Some of his initial cuts for Stephen vs The Game were 36 minutes long.
“Facebook watch didn’t exist two years ago. It didn’t exist,” Chopra said. “And now here it is. You can reach tens of millions of people, and it’s a different form of storytelling and it’s a different format.”
The first episode of Stephen vs The Game goes live on Facebook Watch today. Following episodes will be published weekly, with a gap between the fifth and final show, depending on how deep the Warriors go into the Playoffs.