Toronto- and New York-based prodco Cineflix Productions  has partnered with NBA Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and his longtime business partner, Deborah Morales, for a basketball docuseries.

Cineflix Productions will produce the four-part series The Pioneers, which is currently in development, according to a news release. Abdul-Jabbar and Morales, founder and CEO of Iconomy Multi-Media and Entertainment, are executive producers on the project.

Also serving as executive producers are Cineflix’s J.C. Mills as well as Robin Keats and Michael Harris, the duo who brought the project to Cineflix, said the release.

The Pioneers will put a lens on the racial segregation, integration and evolution of the NBA and its trailblazing Black players from the 1950s, including Chuck Cooper, Earl Lloyd and Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton.

Harris has a close connection to the material through his father, Chris, who was a close friend and teammate of Cooper’s on the St. Louis Hawks, said the release.

The production team plans to mine material from the Chuck Cooper Foundation and its archives for the series. Interviewees will include Abdul-Jabbar and basketball’s leading figures.

“When we first looked at the stories of Cooper, Lloyd and Clifton, it struck us how little we all knew about these three incredible trailblazers, and we weren’t alone,” said J.C. Mills, president and head of content, Cineflix Productions, in a statement. “The Pioneers will pay homage to these game changers and their successors, who, against all odds, have braved racism while propelling themselves to stardom.”

Said Abdul-Jabbar: “Isaac Newton wrote, ‘If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.’ Cooper, Lloyd, and Clifton are some of the giants whose shoulders I stood on to be able to have the career and life I have had. I pay grateful homage to them every time I fight for social justice for others.”

Cineflix Productions’ slate also includes the docuseries Summer Qamp, which profiles Ontario’s Camp fYrefly, an arts-based retreat for LGBTQIA2S+ youth in the Canadian Rockies, and the Nancy Buirski-directed Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy.

The company’s other partnerships include one announced with Grammy Award-winning singer and producer Gladys Knight last November for a miniseries based on her life.

Photos courtesy Cineflix Media; pictured (L-R): Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Deborah Morales, J.C. Mills.