Untold

Plot

Untold's first volume is five standalone documentaries, each about one story. They share a method rather than a plot: the central figure sits for a long, candid interview, key players and antagonists fill in the edges, and archival footage, much of it never seen publicly before, carries the drama.²⁶

"Malice at the Palace" (August 10, 2021)

Auburn Hills, Michigan, November 19, 2004. The Indiana Pacers, a title-contending team led by Ron Artest, Jermaine O'Neal, and Stephen Jackson, are closing out a win against the Detroit Pistons at the Palace when Artest's slap on Ben Wallace's head during a layup and Wallace's shove of Artest ignite bad blood between the two. Artest lies down on the scorer's table to cool off, and then a fan throws a cup of beer at his chest. Artest goes into the stands. Jackson follows. O'Neal swings at another heckler on the court. The brawl that follows, players versus fans in a shower of popcorn and punches, is the ugliest scene in NBA history.

The fight itself, reconstructed frame by frame from arena security footage that no one had ever requested before, is the episode's centerpiece, and one of the most gripping sequences in the whole series. Director Floyd Russ obtained the Auburn Hills Police Department's evidence through a Freedom of Information Act request: security camera tapes, police reports, and photographs that had sat in boxes untouched since 2004.²⁷ Cut against dimly lit interviews with the three suspended Pacers, plus an unsuspended Reggie Miller and one of the fans who charged Artest, the footage shows the melee unfold in real time and then again from new angles, including the moment Artest, having climbed into the crowd, decides the fan who threw the beer is not the one he is grabbing and punches the wrong man. The aftermath lands hard: commissioner David Stern hands down the longest suspensions in NBA history, the entire season for Artest, 30 games for Jackson, 25 for O'Neal, and a Pacers championship window closes forever.²⁸ The episode ends with Artest, now Metta World Peace, reflecting on the night that broke his Indiana career and, eventually, on the mental health work that reshaped his life.

"Caitlyn" (August 17, 2021)

Crystal Moselle's film tells the story of Bruce Jenner, the 1976 Olympic decathlon champion, and the decades-long journey to becoming Caitlyn Jenner. Built around Jenner's own narration, it revisits the grueling two-day decathlon in Montreal, where Jenner won gold and set a world record, and pairs it with footage the Olympic Committee shot at the time: roughly 30 cans of 16-millimeter film that had never been processed or transferred before the filmmakers got their hands on them.²⁷ The film moves between the athlete chasing the title of world's greatest and the private struggle with gender identity that ran beneath the fame, the marriage, and the Keeping Up With the Kardashians years, ending with Jenner's public transition and reflection on the person inside the gold medal.

"Deal With the Devil" (August 17, 2021)

Laura Brownson's episode follows Christy Martin, the coal miner's daughter from West Virginia who became the face of women's boxing. After a blood-soaked undercard win at the Mike Tyson versus Frank Bruno card in 1996, Martin broke pay-per-view records and landed on the cover of Sports Illustrated, promoted hard by promoter Don King and managed by her husband, Jim Martin.⁹ The film traces her rise and then her fall: substance abuse, a marriage that curdled into control and violence, and finally a 2010 attack in which Jim stabbed and shot her, leaving her for dead. Martin survived, testified, and rebuilt her life, and the episode's most startling element is that Jim Martin, the convicted attempted murderer, speaks on camera for the first time since his imprisonment, with Mike Tyson and Laila Ali among the interviewees.⁹

"Breaking Point" (August 24, 2021)

The Ways' second film follows Mardy Fish, the American tennis player who climbed to the top of the US game and to a career-high world ranking, only to be undone by severe anxiety. The film shows the 2015 US Open, where Fish, in the grip of panic attacks and a heart condition he feared as much as his opponents, withdrew before facing Roger Federer, and then steps back through the years of medication, insomnia, and dread behind that moment. Fish became one of the first professional athletes to go on the record about mental health struggles while still active, a story the Ways had followed since 2015.²⁷ Released while Simone Biles was withdrawing from the Tokyo Olympics to protect her mental health, the episode landed as part of a live national conversation.²⁹

"Crime & Penalties" (September 7, 2021)

The volume's strangest and funniest film is about the Danbury Trashers, a minor-league hockey team bought in 2004 by trash-hauling magnate Jimmy Galante, who named his 17-year-old son A.J. president and general manager.³⁰ A.J., a foul-mouthed teenager with a taste for goons, assembled the most penalized team in the United Hockey League, signing enforcers whose job was to fight, and ran the club like a mob front, which was fitting given his father's alleged Genovese crime family ties. A.J. handed the filmmakers his home video archives, and the episode plays like a teen fever dream: a kid living out every hockey fan's fantasy with his father's money.²⁷ The dream ends with a federal indictment: Jimmy Galante was charged with extortion, racketeering, tax evasion, and wire fraud, the last stemming from no-show jobs used to circumvent the league's $275,000 salary cap through about 30 fraudulent reports. He pled guilty and was sentenced to 87 months in federal prison, released in 2014, and to this day has never admitted organized-crime involvement.³⁰

Characters

• Ron Artest, now Metta Sandiford-Artest, is the central figure of "Malice at the Palace," the Pacers forward whose beer-soaked reaction triggered the brawl and whose season-long suspension ended Indiana's championship era. His later openness about mental health gives the episode its coda.
• Jermaine O'Neal and Stephen Jackson, Artest's suspended teammates, are his co-narrators in the brawl episode, each reliving the seconds that changed their careers.
• Reggie Miller, the Pacers legend who retired that season, provides the counterweight of a man who watched his last championship chance dissolve in a beer cup's arc.
• Caitlyn Jenner narrates her own film, moving between the 1976 decathlete and the woman who spent decades hiding behind him.
• Christy Martin is the survivor at the heart of "Deal With the Devil," a champion whose hardest fight happened outside the ring, against her own husband.
• Mardy Fish is the anxious overachiever of "Breaking Point," the American No. 1 whose body and mind gave out at the peak of his powers.
• A.J. Galante is the teenage president and general manager of the Danbury Trashers, the profane, magnetic antihero of "Crime & Penalties," with his father Jimmy Galante the indicted power behind the operation.

Interpretations and controversies

"Malice at the Palace" drew attention for the voices it could not get: the late commissioner David Stern, coach Rick Carlisle, and Pacers president Larry Bird all declined interviews, leaving the Pacers' side of the story to carry the film.³¹ "Crime & Penalties" prompted fact-checking over how much of the Trashers' story is mob lore versus verified record; the documented crimes were fraud and salary-cap circumvention, and the organized-crime angle rests on allegation and atmosphere, with Jimmy Galante never admitting any mob ties.³⁰

Sequels, spin-offs, and adaptations

Untold is an anthology that kept going. Later volumes returned to the format with new subjects, including "The Race of the Century," about the 1983 America's Cup, in which Australia II dethroned the New York Yacht Club and broke its 132-year win streak in sailing's most prestigious competition.³²