It was a surreal feeling to see part of my life played out on celluloid in the 2005 motion picture Coach Carter. The feelings from those years came rushing back, like water over a breached levee. With every scene, a sense of pride and accomplishment covered my body.

The apex of the movie, in particular, brought me right back to the emotions of that time and place: I locked out my Richmond High basketball team from the gymnasium, causing much upheaval. We just so happened to be the top-ranked team in 1999 in California at the time, making my decision all the more dramatic.

The reason I went to such an extreme measure? Not all the players were maintaining a 2.3 grade point average.

As a former athlete, I knew how much they lived for game day. It was everything. But I locked them out because, as their leader, I had to make them understand that what they did in the classroom was more important than on the basketball court.

I had given them a contract that called for them to maintain a 2.3 GPA, to attend all their classes, to sit in the front of the classroom, and to wear a white shirt and tie to school on every game day, among other edicts. They signed it, meaning they were bound by it.

My academic challenge was significant in this way: To get into college with a 2.0 GPA, the students would have been required to score 850 on the SAT. With a 2.3, the requirement on the SAT was about one hundred points less. And because scoring more on the SAT is harder than raising your GPA in school, it made sense to me to make that a contractual goal for the players.

But some of the players basked too brightly in our 13–0 record,...