School Night.(The Talk of the Town)(Lance Stephenson, 'Gunnin' for That #1 Spot')

Lance Stephenson, the best high school basketball player in New York City, was in midtown one recent Monday night to watch an early cut of a new documentary in which he stars. The film, "Gunnin' for That #1 Spot," was directed by Adam (MCA) Yauch, of the Beastie Boys, and it chronicles an exhibition game that Stephenson played in, at Rucker Park, in the summer of 2006. The movie, which comes out this week, the day after the N.B.A. draft, includes quickie portraits of eight young basketball players who participated in the game, several of whom--Michael Beasley (Kansas State), Jerryd Bayless (Arizona), Kevin Love (U.C.L.A.)--are expected to be top picks. Stephenson is the youngest of them--he is just about to finish his junior year of high school--and was the only one who showed up at the screening.

Half an hour before the film began, Stephenson sat on a bench outside the screening room, typing into his Sidekick. His phone had run out of juice during the school day, and so he had taken a seat near an electrical outlet. His entourage milled around nearby: dad, Lance, Sr. (Stretch); mom, Bernadette; two-year-old brother, Tookie; an aunt; a teacher. His uncle, Lawrence Britt, who is only a few months older than Stephenson, sat beside him, typing on his own Sidekick. Britt had a curly figure, like a misshapen paper clip, shaved into his hair, and someone asked him when he'd had it done.

"I dunno," he said, reaching up to trace the pattern with his fingers. "A few days ago maybe?"

"What, are you kidding?" Stephenson said, looking up from his Sidekick. "You did that yesterday. You don't remember?"

"Oh, yeah," Britt said. The boys laughed, and then went back to typing.

Stephenson plays for Abraham Lincoln High School, the public school in Coney Island that produced Sebastian Telfair and the Knicks' enigmatic star Stephon Marbury. In their youth, Bassy and Steph were already viable celebrities--talkative, full of smiles. Stephenson, by contrast, can be remote, almost sullen, but, by most people's reckoning, he is the superior athlete. That afternoon, Lincoln had played a scrimmage against St. Anthony's, a Catholic school in Jersey City that is ranked first in the ...