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Allen Iverson driving to the basket for a layup. Steph Curry draining a deep 3-pointer. To RaMell Ross, this is basketball at its best. Speed, motion and athleticism all on display.
Roughly a decade ago, a professional basketball career would have been the highlight of his life. Ross played pro ball in the United Kingdom during the 2000s. He was a regional player of the year in high school and was considered for the prestigious McDonald’s All-American Game. As a teen, he had NBA aspirations after signing to play college ball at Georgetown in 2000.
This Sunday, winning an Oscar would be equal to putting on an NBA championship ring.
Ross’ name is rising in the filmmaking industry, and Sunday, he hopes to hear his name called when the 97th Academy Awards announces the winner for Best Adapted Screenplay for “Nickel Boys.” He co-wrote the screenplay and directed the film, which is also a Best Picture nominee.
To Ross, there are similarities in basketball and filmmaking, similarities that work to his advantage. He has led a team on the court, and he has led a group of actors through a variety of scenes. Both scenarios have produced championship vibes and big-game impact.
The storyline of “Nickel Boys,” which has already won numerous awards, is personal and intimate. The film features two Black students sent to Nickel Academy, a segregated Florida reform school notorious for its abused behaviors during the Jim Crow era in 1962. It’s shot entirely in a first-person perspective, which gives the audience a feeling of being characters throughout the scenes.
More than a decade ago, filmmaking was simply a notion for Ross. After graduating from Georgetown with English and sociology degrees in 2005, Ross went overseas to play professional basketball, signing in 2006 with Star of the Sea (now known as Belfast Star), a Super League team in Northern Ireland. He was an Eurobasket.com All-Irish Super League Awards honorable mention selection for the 2006-07 season.
While in Northern Ireland, Ross split his time working as a program director for PeacePlayers International (formerly known as Playing for Peace), which uses basketball to help bridge the social divide and focuses on education and leadership development for youth in communities affected by conflict.
Ross always had a fascination with photography — he took a class in his final year at Georgetown and purchased his first camera, birthing a passion — but also became interested in directing and video editing while in the country.
After his pro career, Ross moved to Greensboro, Ala., in 2009, where he lived full-time until 2012. He became a basketball coach and a photography teacher. He began taking photos of the community, the foundation for filming his directorial debut, “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” a 2018 documentary about Black life in rural Alabama. That film earned him a Peabody Award, as well as his first Academy Award nomination: Best Documentary Feature Film.
In 2014, Ross earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design. He added filmmaking to his growing visual arts résumé, and in 2015, he was named among the “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker Magazine.
Fast forward 10 years, and Ross is still building a fairy-tale career. Just not the one he originally expected. This career is artistically led, not athletically.
While attending Lake Braddock Secondary School in Virginia, Ross was invited to an Adidas summer camp for the top 250 high school basketball players nationwide. Before his junior year, Ross attended a camp for the top 90 players in the country. Mark Martino, who coached Ross at Lake Braddock, called him “an anomaly,” as he was listed at 6 feet 6 but played the guard position, which wasn’t as common during the late 1990s as it is now.
Ross was born in Frankfurt, Germany, and is the product of a military family. Before living in Virginia, he spent time in Chicago. He played basketball casually in the fifth and sixth grades when Michael Jordan dominated everything basketball-related. Ross remembers watching Jordan highlights, as well as VHS tapes of the 1992 Dream Team.
It wasn’t until high school, his family then in Fairfax, Va., that he began taking basketball seriously. Ross remembers his father — who never forced him to work out or play — filming him while he worked out, practiced, and played in games. Together, they would spend hours reviewing film. And whenever Ross felt lazy, he said his father motivated him with incentives.
The most memorable was a promise that if Ross got a full scholarship to college, he would receive the car of his choice.
“He bought me a Ford Explorer, Eddie Bauer edition,” Ross said, laughing. “I had the leather seats; he got me some rims. I was like, ‘What else do I need in life?’”
Left shoulder surgery, however, forced Ross to sit out his senior year of high school. It began a pattern of injuries that followed Ross throughout his college career. In four seasons, he played only 47 games. Martino believes Ross could have been one of the top college players in the country had it not been for his injuries.
As the dream of making the NBA became unrealistic with each day, Ross questioned all the hours spent playing basketball. He needed to pivot.
“It was the biggest roadblock ever,” Ross said. “I needed to exchange that time I would be practicing for something else. Or else, corrosion would’ve started happening on the inside.”
That pivot was a life-changing move — one that could reach a new pinnacle by Sunday evening.
Tim Robbins won an Oscar in 1989 for his performance in “Steel Magnolias.” Now, Ross is on the cusp of doing the same.
“Hale County This Morning, This Evening” was Ross’ first film. His second film, “Easter Snap,” was a 2019 short featuring five men preparing a hog for a ritualistic butchering. “Nickel Boys,” film No. 3 for Ross, will be his second opportunity to take home an Oscar.
As award season concludes Sunday at the Oscars, Ross said he’s excited about returning to his normal routine. He is an adjunct professor in visual arts at Brown University. He still enjoys photography. Of course, preparing for a fourth movie is an idea.
As for basketball, Ross said he doesn’t play much anymore. He’ll take shots when the opportunity arises. But Ross said he wouldn’t be the filmmaker he is today without seeing the beauty of the sport up close. To Ross, there’s a meditative mood from filmmaking that serves as a balanced contrast with the motion and energy of playing basketball in front of large crowds.
It’s natural, like an Iverson crossover or a Curry 3-pointer. And if Ross has his way, the end result with every project, Sunday included, will be a victory.
“I want to take the game-winning shot every single time,” he said.
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