All is fair in love & hoops

Aside from a love for hoops, it would seem that Lucas (Chad Michael Murray, "Dawson's Creek," "Gilmore Girls") and Nathan (James Lafferty, "Emeril") are two young men with little in common, when they are in fact bound by a dark secret: they share the same father.

Arrogant and assured, Nathan is the star of the high school basketball team and hails from a wealthy family. Lucas, on the other hand, is the only child of a single working mom, who is quiet, driven and also the town's legendary playground basketball player. The boys grow up with separate lives on opposite sides of the tracks in the same small town of Tree Hill, North Carolina, until suddenly, their lives collide in a twist of fate that puts Lucas on Nathan's high school basketball team.

Love triangles abound when the boys compete for the heart of Nathan's beautiful girlfriend Peyton Sawyer (Hilarie Burton, "MTV's TRL"). Peyton, an intensely private sensitive and artistic girl, feels a connection to Lucas. To complicate matters, Nathan becomes intrigued with Lucas' best friend, Haley (Bethany Joie Lenz, Charmed).

Meanwhile, the adults in Tree Hill are dealing with their own dramas. Nathan's father Dan (Paul Johansson, "John Q") and Lucas' mother Karen (Moira Kelly, "The West Wing") were high school sweethearts, but when Karen became pregnant during their senior year, Dan decided to put his own life and career first. He went off to college on a basketball scholarship, while Karen was left behind to raise their son Lucas alone.

When Dan's dream of a basketball career didn't work out, he returned to town with the wife he met in college and his new son, Nathan. Now a wealthy businessman and one of the biggest fish in the small pond of Tree Hill, Dan lives his basketball dreams through Nathan.

While Karen struggled to raise Lucas without a father, she remained friends with Dan's older brother Keith (Craig Sheffer, "A River Runs Through It"). Keith is Lucas' biological uncle and has served as his surrogate father over the years. His connection to Lucas is complicated by his attraction to Karen, and he is haunted by the possibility that he and Karen might have ended up together - and the hope that they still could.

Lucas and Nathan's new rivalry on and off the court has even brought back old emotions for the grizzled basketball coach, Whitey Durham (Barry Corbin, "Northern Exposure"). Whitey coached Nathan's father, Dan, when he was the school's star player, and now he is coaching both of Dan's sons. He knows he is partly responsible for Dan's decision to not give up his scholarship when Karen became pregnant, and he has to juggle conflicting responsibilities and loyalties toward the two boys.

One Tree Hill is from show creator Mark Schwahn ("The Perfect Score"), executive producers Mike Tollin, Brian Robbins, Joe Davola ("Smallville") and Ann Hamilton ("Thirtysomething," "Party of Five") for Tollin/Robbins Productions and Warner Bros. Television Production Inc.

© 2007 The CW Television Network

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