Basketball star's goal: '3 Points'

McGrady's journey was both personal and emotional. To visit the barren camps, he had to forsake any number of usual niceties. That included McGrady's having to sleep in a tent for the first time. His trying to get along without air conditioning. Eating food that wasn't prepared in a four-star restaurant. As McGrady's wife, CleRenda Harris, notes in the film, "Tracy is definitely stepping out of his comfort zone."

But it wasn't all such trivial concerns. He had to worry about land mines. Listen to stories of rape, murder, torture. And his eyes were quickly opened.

Precisely because he is not an expert in Sudanese politics, the 29-year-old McGrady can serve as a conduit for the audience. He may be supreme on the court, but he's like almost everyone else when it comes to the outside world: He's unsure of what's going on.

"People are really hesitant about expressing that they don't know something -- but what's the big deal?" McGrady says in an interview to discuss the film. "I'm not ashamed about that at all. And my going out and saying, 'I don't know a lot about this' will make people feel OK that they don't know about it, either."

Adds his longtime manager and assistant, Elissa Grabow, who accompanied McGrady on his Africa trip: "This is not to market his brand. It's not about that, but about what I don't know, and that I am not afraid to say that I don't know."

"By the end of my trip," McGrady says, "I started to realize what they really needed -- and that's schools." When he returned to the United States, McGrady decided to try to help build them.

Others in the game

So this week, McGrady is taking his film to -- and asking for more donations from -- players in the National Basketball Assn., which is helping to show "3 Points" to teams. (In addition to the long-range field goal, the movie's title refers to three strategies to fight genocide: peace, protection and punishment.) The goal is to raise awareness and money; players who, like McGrady, contribute $75,000 can build a new school in a camp, train teachers and purchase educational supplies.

McGrady has enlisted his Florida high school as a sister school to a new school in Chad, the first of which is to be built later this year. So far, Grabow says, six NBA players have made donations, including Derek Fisher and Jermaine O'Neal.

"Some of the players need to be educated," McGrady says. "But some of them are caring guys, know that something has to be done and are willing to help."

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john.horn@latimes.com