Aretha Franklin offered free hotel rooms and meals to Flint residents, Mark Wahlberg and Sean Combs sent a million water bottles and Snoop Dogg parlayed with Flint’s mayor while wearing a “Flint Lives Matter” T-shirt. Every day brings a new celebrity. Not all the attention helps. As if Flint hasn’t already suffered enough -- what with water so bad, GM stopped using it because it corroded their auto parts -- the industrial town an hour northwest of Detroit has become a national flashpoint of political discourse.

Imagine what happens when the Democratic candidates show up next month to debate.

Just the same, no matter how strongly the lead-poisoning crisis resonates with Hillary and Bernie and Beyonce, it means more to JaVale McGee. Because Flint means home.

And home means it’s personal.

“I’m not really a political person,” McGee said. “But I think it was definitely a crime to change the water supply.

“Basically killing people, to tell the truth.”

Before we get into what happened in Flint, and McGee’s personal efforts to help, let’s consider his history: The Mavs’ 28-year-old back-up center is a native. Spent most of his childhood there, like his mother before him. Pamela McGee was an All-American at USC and member of Team USA’s ‘84 Olympic gold basketball team who also played and coached in the WNBA.

As for JaVale, he left Flint to go to high school at Detroit Country Day, which also produced Chris Webber and Shawn Battier, then finished at Chicago’s Hales Franciscan High. Probably worth noting here that McGee’s family is from Flint Township, where residents haven’t seemed to suffer the same consequences as their neighbors immediately to the east. None of JaVale’s relatives has been affected, as far as he knows. “Thank God,” he added.

For that matter, JaVale, a Los Angeles resident, hasn’t lived in Flint since he was a teenager. But when he first heard the news, it still hit home.

“It hurt,” he said. “It was tragic. It’s still my city. That’s where I’m from.”

What happened in Flint is that, in the spring of 2014, in what has been called a temporary cost-cutting measure, a state-appointed emergency management team changed the water supply from Lake Huron, one of the world’s largest fresh-water bodies, to the Flint River. And that was the first clue to residents that had something had gone terribly wrong.

“The Flint River is disgusting,” McGee said. “No one even swims in the Flint River.”

The brown, foul water flowing from their taps was full of iron and Lord knows what else. The minerals leached lead from old pipes, contaminating the city’s water supply. Even though the city switched back last fall, the damage was done.

The results: Last fall, the number of Flint children with above-average levels of lead in their bloodstream had doubled. The Washington Post reported last month that Virginia Tech researchers discovered the amount of lead in tap water in some areas of Flint met the EPA's definition of toxic waste. Even the average readings found reportedly could lead to high blood pressure and kidney damage as well as memory and neurological problems.

An official from the Centers for Disease Control has also called for an investigation into whether the water’s the reason for a spike in Legionnaire’s disease, and the subsequent 10 fatalities.

And then there’s the impact on life in general.

“It’s crazy to think that people can’t take showers, can’t brush their teeth, can’t make a cup of coffee,” McGee said. “And they’re still charging them for their water bills.

“Crazy.”

Yes. Crazy.

You should know McGee isn’t just venting. After doing a little research of his own, his “team,” as he calls his group of representatives, has been in contact with Flint officials. He’d like to do more than just send water bottles, as helpful as that is. Water filters apparently aren’t the answer, either. They’re not rated to handle the amount of lead in some areas.

McGee is seeking longer-term answers, and within a month he hopes to be able to say exactly what his contribution will be. Listening to him, it’s not hard to guess. He compares what’s happened in his hometown to the disaster in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

When I asked him what the best-case scenario is for Flint, McGee said, “It’s not really a best-case scenario, because it’s my city. But, basically, they move everybody out.”

That’s his best-case scenario. Evacuating a city of 100,000.

Until someone comes up with an answer more reasonable, they’ll just keep handing out water bottles. No gesture is ever too small, as McGee has demonstrated already. Every Thanksgiving, he donates 500 turkeys in his hometown. Does the same in Texas and Southern California.

His other charity, Jug Life, which he started in 2014, built a couple of water wells in Uganda. His concern for clean drinking water actually came before he knew what had happened back home.

Kinda ironic, huh?

"Very ironic."