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Miller’s new screen-role play

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He’s still as thin as a swizzle stick, still shaves his head and he claims he can still hit the jumper. But there are parts of him you might not recognize, starting with the name on the screen in the credits of “Beautiful Ohio” -- Reginald Miller.

Reginald?

“I’m distancing myself,” the man we know as Reggie Miller said. “Reggie, that was on the court. Reginald is the executive.”

In this case, executive producer, as he unveils his first movie to the public. It premiered Friday night at the American Film Institute’s FilmFest, and despite the presence of the film’s top-billed actress, Rita Wilson, and her husband, Hollywood heavyweight Tom Hanks, the first bit of hallway buzz I heard afterward concerned Miller.

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“Reggie Miller was one of the producers -- the basketball player,” a man said breathlessly. “And he was there!”

There at the ArcLight theaters, instead of an NBA court on a night 20 teams -- including his Indiana Pacers -- were in action. This is Miller’s life now in his second year out of the NBA, his career record for three-pointers still capped at 2,560 and holding.

He remains connected to the game by working as an analyst for TNT once a week. He still exercises fanatically and even gets in some scrimmages with the Pepperdine hoops squad. But he’d had enough of the travel and the competitive level of the NBA after 18 years.

“I’m moving on,” Miller said.

People kept approaching him, sharing their favorite Miller moments, and he had a standard response: “That was a long time ago.”

When they used a gymnasium to shoot a scene for “Beautiful Ohio” last year, Brett Davern, who plays the movie’s teenage central character, made an unsuccessful attempt to bait Miller into playing.

“He was scared,” Davern said.

Miller responded to that claim with a skeptical look.

“Come on, man,” Miller said. “I would’ve beat all those kids left-handed. I’m trying to move into a different genre, a different direction. I don’t want to beat up my cast and crew, because it looks bad.”

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His expression of confidence in his basketball skills was the only time the Miller of old resurfaced. For the rest of the night he was humble, a word that takes as much getting used to with Miller as the name Reginald.

This is the man I remember standing in the middle of the old Chicago Stadium, taking bows at half court after making a big shot. But when Miller was introduced in the theater before the screening of the film Friday he didn’t even bother to get out of his seat. Just a quick wave.

“When you’re young and arrogant and cocky and feel you’re invincible, you say a lot of mean things to a lot of people because you think you’re better, you don’t need to deal with people,” said Miller, now 41.

“Now being on this side, it’s a totally different picture. It teaches you to be a people person, which I’m growing into. I’ve always been shy, but I’m growing into doing it. But I’m having a ball.”

One of the first things that hits athletes in the real world is the loss of control. They’re far more comfortable in situations that would make the rest of us melt, such as digging into the batter’s box in the bottom of the ninth or standing over a 12-foot putt with the Masters on the line.

Miller loved having Spike Lee and the other 19,762 fans at Madison Square Garden screaming nasty things at him.

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“I want that,” Miller said. “I encourage that. I don’t encourage this. It’s so subjective. If one person doesn’t like your film, if he’s powerful, your film will never see the light of day.”

Still, the movie biz is becoming home court to more and more NBA players. Baron Davis and Elton Brand also have produced films in the last couple of years.

“I think it’s the lure of being in that field,” Brand said. “If you can tell a good story, that’s what you want to do.”

Miller’s interest in independent cinema started when he was at UCLA and would go toWestside art houses such as the Nuart.

“You’d go in there and there’d be five people in there,” he said. “But just the visions, the stories.”

So when he and longtime business partner Gail D’Agostino formed Boom Baby Productions (named for Slick Leonard’s radio call whenever Miller made a three-pointer), they initially considered action movies or special-effects-heavy displays. They didn’t want to take the obvious route of making a sports story. So they decided to go with what he liked, the character-driven plots that attract serious, hungry actors.

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“Beautiful Ohio” landed names such as Wilson and William Hurt, but asks the younger actors such as Davern, Michelle Trachtenberg and David Call to carry most of the movie. It’s centered around a family in Cleveland in 1973, with a math genius son and a younger brother living in his shadow.

And yes, coming up after Cheryl Miller, Reggie could relate.

“I wasn’t highly publicized, highly recruited,” he said. “My sister was, but I wasn’t. I was always in the shadows. Someone gave me a shot and it worked out. That’s what I wanted to do. That’s what independent filmmaking does. It gives the underdog a voice, a shot.”

And we all know what Miller can do when he takes a shot.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read more by Adande go to latimes.com/adandeblog.

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