VEN (HOLLYWOOD) — In a controversial Made-For-TV movie patterned after the Frank Capra Christmas classic It’s A Wonderful Life, low-IQ,  barely-graduated-from-high-school basketball phenom Calvin Peoples, passes out while huffing jenkem with friends after wining the NBA Championship and envisions his life as a “much smaller man.”

“We see this as a cautionary tale for inner-city youth to inspire them to get an education and stay away from violence and  drugs,” Lifetime executive Lamar Sanford told VEN‘s Senior Diversity Affairs Reporter Esther Anderson Friday, “there’s nothing at all ‘racist’ going on here.”

In the Lifetime movie entitled Yo, What If?  the short, 5’8″ Mr Peoples runs with the wrong crowd, does not apply himself in school, and instead of putting a basketball through a hoop for billions of dollars, struggles to put groceries in a paper bag at Safeway for minimum wage.

“No, it does not end well for the short Mr Peoples — he becomes addicted to heroin and crack cocaine,  is in and out of jail, can’t hold a job, fathers 8 children with 6 different women, and then dies in a shootout with police after being stopped for a minor traffic violation.

“However, the tall Mr Peoples is resuscitated, recovers from his jenkem overdose, and becomes a new man — he stops using drugs, starts reading Thomas Sowell,  creates a series of Don’t Be A Fool, Go To School PSAs, and after his basketball career is over he works to eliminate crime and despondency in his hometown of Baltimore,  until finally he runs for Congress as a Republican and wins in a landslide!

“We think it’s a great, uplifting story!”

But not everyone agrees.

Maxine Waters (D-CA)  denounced Lifetime as a pro-Trump, Russian-controlled racist studio, and  called on her supporters to firebomb their TV sets to protest the film.

Developing . . . .