Doc 'Amongst the Trees' follows Copper Mountain College basketball team in Joshua Tree

One late night about five years ago, Jack Jensen, a Los Angeles-based filmmaker who, to that point, worked primarily on commercials, went down one of those internet wormholes as he was searching for, all of things, basketball courts in Joshua Tree.

That random beginning ended up being the jump ball for what is now a feature-length documentary film about the community college basketball team at tiny Copper Mountain College in the desert town of Joshua Tree, California. Directed by Jensen and fellow filmmaker/basketball fan Trent Ubben, the film "Amongst the Trees" made its debut at the Palm Springs International Film Festival.

"We were on the hunt for interesting ideas and we've both been mesmerized by the desert," Jensen said. "It's only two hours away but it feels like a world away. So I kind of serendipitously found Copper Mountain and saw what they were building there and this was right after their first season. We're both former high school basketball players and grew up in cities away from the national spotlight, and we liked the idea of a team working and grinding on their dream out in the middle of nowhere. I reached out on a whim and the coaches and administration were receptive and it all kind of clicked."

So, Jensen and Ubben went out to the desert to film some stuff with the players. They didn't go into it with the notion of making a full-length documentary, but really to just get some footage, see what was going on up there and, according to Jensen, "capture the vibe."

They did have one visual shot in mind, however: to have the team in nice uniforms shooting hoops on a portable basket they dragged into the middle of the desert surrounded by the signature Joshua Trees. That jumping-off point is showcased in the film and their instinct was correct, it was a beautiful and captivating image.

"The players and coaches were incredible, we really didn't have any sort of strong clue of what we were going to find when we went out there," Ubben said. "We did some research, of course, but after a few initial convos we just sort of showed up and started recording and it just kind of took us on a journey and we followed that. Eventually, it shaped into a story that was kind of just about this short period of time with these particular people in that particular place and it all just happened organically."

The end product, as Ubben said, is a slice of time near the end of the school's second year of basketball, culminating with the drama of a pivotal game as the Copper Mountain Fighting Cacti (yes, they do have a cute dancing cactus mascot) battled to make the playoffs.

There was dramatic action on the court to be sure, but really the film is about the personalities and lives of this mismatched collection of coaches and players from as far away as Mississippi and Alabama to local stars from Rancho Mirage and Twentynine Palms.

At the heart of the documentary are the two coaches, Walter Parham and Britain (BK) Kelly, who have taken on the task of getting these young men on the right path in life while also trying to win basketball games. It's about the heart behind the hoops.

And let's just say this is not an athletic program overflowing with money and amenities. The coaches were also the team's trainers. Parham used to work at Enterprise Rent-a-car and so for road games, he would rent whatever size van or bus they could afford. If they could only fit nine guys in the van, then only nine guys would be available for that road game.

The players lived in small apartments. All these tall young guys, sort of crammed together in small spaces with not a lot to do in the town. It helped them create a bond that was more family than team.

One of those players was Zack Kroker, who played high school basketball locally at Rancho Mirage High School. Kroker said the experience of having cameras follow them around was surreal, but also kind of fun.

"It was such an experience, obviously you feel like a movie star or really famous in a sense. But it was mostly just fun," Kroker said. "One thing I'll say is that people's characters didn't change. Sometimes the cameras come out and people act differently. I can't say that about my team. We all stayed true to our character, which was exciting to see. It was fun to be a part of."

You can see Kroker periodically throughout the film, and he was happy that his beloved Crocs got some screen time. There's a scene where some of the players are showing their basketball shoe collections, and Kroker takes some ribbing as he rolls in with his big old Crocs on.

"Those came in clutch on that day we went out to the desert and shot around," Kroker remembered. "Some of the guys didn't think ahead and wore their actual basketball shoes and they sort of got ruined in the sand and desert but I had my Crocs so I was OK."

While Jensen and Ubben are basketball-aholics in their own right — Jensen playing high school hoops just outside of Denver and Ubben was a star in tiny Rose Hill, Kansas — this film also has the backing of someone who plays basketball on a much bigger stage: Los Angeles Clippers star Paul George.

George and his sister Teiosha have started The Pack Productions, a film and TV production company that just began operating, and their first move was to give their backing to this film. George and his sister, who grew up in Palmdale, are executive producers on "Amongst the Trees."

George, who is currently averaging 23.2 points per game for the fourth-place Clippers, told Deadline.com, “When Teiosha and I decided to launch The Pack we knew we wanted to start with a story that was close to home. Joshua Tree is just 125 miles from where we grew up in Palmdale, but the hoops story that Trent and Jack tell is universal.”

"Amongst the Trees" — which has the double meaning of being a basketball term for a short guy in the paint among a bunch of tall guys, and a way to describe the setting of the film amid the Joshua Trees — made its debut on Saturday with a screening at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. Jensen, Ubben, the coaches and some of the players — including local Kroker — were on hand.

The film screens again this Saturday at 8 p.m. at Mary Pickford is D'Place theater in Cathedral City. Jensen and Ubben will be there for a Q&A afterward.

"This is our first feature documentary. We've done mostly commercial work for our company The Rec League. We work a lot in sports and brands in that space," Ubben said. "We have a strong passion for sports, specifically for basketball. We love the sport, and we gravitate to stories like that. This just fell into place. We didn't know what it was going to become when we started gathering footage, and we had a certain window of time there, but we're just really happy that it came together."

If you go

What: The world premiere of the film "Amongst the Trees," a documentary about the basketball team at Copper Mountain College in Joshua Tree (75 minutes long)

When and where: 8 p.m. Saturday at Mary Pickford is D'Place, 36-850 Pickfair St., Cathedral City

Cost: $15

More info: www.psfilmfest.org

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Doc 'Amongst the Trees' follows college basketball team in Joshua Tree