Tennis Hall of Famer Stan Smith on his new documentary

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — Some think he’s merely a shoe. Others think he’s dead and buried underneath the iconic Wimbledon courts.

But in reality, Tennis Hall of Famer Stan Smith is living to tell the tale that is his multifaceted career — which has seen him as a World No. 1 athlete, fashion icon and humanitarian.

With the tennis film “Challengers” dominating the box office last weekend and the famed “Top Spin” video-game franchise recently rebooted for a “2K25” edition, it seems the sport of tennis isn’t exactly decreasing in popularity.

This week, the documentary “Who Is Stan Smith?” will be released in Los Angeles, and Smith recently spoke to Spectrum News alongside director Danny Lee to share about the project, which also features colorful interviews with tennis icon John McEnroe and Run-DMC founding member Darryl McDaniels. After all, Run-DMC once released the hit song “My Adidas,” and Smith has an ongoing shoe partnership with the Adidas brand, making for a unique connection between the two celebrities. Many sneaker-wearers out there might even have a pair of the Stan Smith-brand tennis shoes in their closet.

“It’s very strange,” Smith said while reflecting on participating in the documentary. “It actually reminds me that I never thought the shoe would be around today. It was 50 years ago that I developed this relationship with Adidas, and they wanted to put my picture on the shoe, which is one of their big mistakes. But they did that, and the shoe really has not changed, almost at all, since I played in the ’70s.”

It was also around that time in the 1970s when a Wimbledon tennis boycott was underway, which Smith was instrumental in spearheading.

“Imagine winning Wimbledon and, the next year, turning around, giving them the bird and saying, ‘I’m boycotting you’? It was pretty gutsy,” Lee said. “It was important to highlight and all these different things and events, and Stan’s life became abundantly clear that Stan is so much more than a human. Stan is so much more than his tennis champion, so much more than a fashion icon. He’s this humanitarian who just did good sort of organically from the goodness of his heart.”

And given that Smith had his hand in so many different realms throughout his career, particularly in pop culture, it’s fitting for a director like Lee to take on the documentary.

“As a filmmaker, I think I tend to gravitate towards things that are passions of mine, which usually are in the world of culture,” Lee said. “I kind of grew up in LA, and sports, graffiti, hip-hop, skateboarding, all these things in Stan’s story encompass so many different intersecting subcultures. So it was an amazing experience.”

On the topic of Los Angeles, Smith himself also grew up in Southern California, having been born in Pasadena.

“I have come back a few times. In fact, I took my sons back there a long time ago when they were like 8 and 10. And I went up to the house that we lived in,” he said. “SoCal was my life. We lived in the poor side of Pasadena, and then I went to USC. And I got to know guys like Arthur Ashe and Charlie Pasarell, who made the mistake of going to UCLA, and that was one of our conflicts that we had in our lives.”

Plus, in true LA fashion, Lakers star LeBron James served as an executive producer on “Who Is Stan Smith?” alongside sports-marketing businessman Maverick Carter.

“LeBron’s got a robust business,” Lee said. “They were great partners on this. They very much understood the vision, and they supported it.”

The vision that is “Who Is Stan Smith” doesn’t shy away from the importance of its title and how many fans out there may not even know who Smith is beyond the Adidas line.

“A lot of people obviously didn’t know that I was alive,” Smith said. “They knew the name, and they knew they knew the shoe, but there are some funny stories. My favorite one is, someone said, ‘Gee, are you still alive? I heard you are buried in the center court at Wimbledon.’ Not yet, but that’s a fun idea down the line.”

“Who Is Stan Smith?” will premiere in LA on Friday, followed by a premiere in New York City a week later. The film will then get a theatrical run spanning 50 cities across the U.S., including Washington, Atlanta, San Francisco, Denver and Dallas.