HOOP DREAMS (1994)
A tale of two aspiring basketball players from Chicago's inner city.

A tale of two aspiring basketball players from Chicago's inner city.
On the street basketball courts of Chicago in 1987, NBA hopefuls shared their dreams of making it far away from the poverty and crime that defined their lives. For some of them, it was their only real hope of making a better life for themselves. With each dunk, each dribble, and each new personal best, the dream came ever closer to being a reality. But as Steve James’ epic documentary reveals, dreams often come apart when placed in the real world.
Arthur Agee and William Gates both showed great promise as future NBA talents. They had an unwavering dedication to the sport: with little thought given to academics, they ate, slept, and breathed basketball. As young teenagers, the boys were recruited by talent scouts to go to the predominantly white St. Joseph’s High School so they could play in their esteemed basketball programme.
With more than a 90-minute commute each way, these inner-city boys attended the school in the hopes that their attendance would boost their chances to play college basketball, bringing them one step closer to the professional leagues. However, complications arose which were outside of the boys’ control, and this stirring film captures how they responded to the challenges that presented themselves.
Hoop Dreams is a modern odyssey documenting many of the issues that plague contemporary America. In a story about two children trying to become the best athletes they could be, poverty, classism, and race all became contributing factors to their success. Additionally, the crime and drug epidemic in Chicago presented itself as a serious issue, threatening the stability of Arthur’s life. As an unflinching look at the failings of the modern-day education system, Hoop Dreams lays bare the lies inherent in the American dream.
Of course, you won’t hear anyone say that—quite the opposite. Almost everyone in the narrative demonstrates a fervent belief in this national ethos, clutching to it as the only hope of salvation from penury. In watching a basketball game, one commentator remarks: “My mother, God bless her, she’s always said in America you can make something of your life.” It’s something that these young children are desperately trying to do: the boys don’t simply want to support their families—they want to change their lives.
Arthur dreams of buying his mother a house once he becomes a professional. William is more than aware of the sacrifices his mother has made for him to achieve in sports. The knowledge becomes a pressure for him to succeed: “I give my mother $50 out of my checks. You know, all that she’s done for me, I don’t think that there’ll ever be enough that I can give to pay her back. Unless I make the pros—then I’m pretty sure I can pay her back.” He grins at the prospect; receiving his first cheque as an NBA starter would solve his current problems.
Unfortunately, it’s painfully clear that both children are facing uphill battles. Arthur, who is invited to attend St. Joseph’s based on his basketball prowess, immediately faces difficulties in socialising: “I never been to a school way out before, and I will be going to a school with different kids, different races.” He remarks to our filmmakers that it’s a massive change, and it all feels rather scary: “I’ve never been around white people…”
As though this weren’t enough, he also has to travel for more than three hours each day; how is anyone to expect a young child to excel both at professional sport and academia? Or think that the pressure to succeed at both won’t break them? This is without even considering Arthur’s home environment, where his single mother was cut off from welfare for missing an appointment: “We was cut off completely with no income. So, therefore, do you know what happened? Our lights were cut off. Our gas were cut off. And we was sitting in the dark.” As William solemnly remarks: “Basketball is my ticket out of the ghetto.”
Due to Arthur’s desperate financial situation, his mother falls behind on tuition fees, and he is forced to leave St. Joseph’s High School. However, as his next basketball coach points out, it’s not because the Agee family were behind on payments—it was because the coach realised Arthur wasn’t the calibre of player he had expected him to be. Dismayed and filled with self-doubt, Arthur reveals to the camera: “He kept asking me: ‘When are you going to grow?’” The 15-year-old Arthur’s academic stability is sent into a tailspin, merely because he’s not tenacious enough on the court.
This, unsurprisingly, damages the young boy’s confidence in his ability: if he had simply played better, he might still be going to a good school, his parents wouldn’t have to worry about payments, and he would be one step closer to securing financial stability. That’s an awful lot for a child to process. It’s evident that none care about the feelings of these young athletes; coaches, trainers, and talent scouts all talk about these children as though they were cattle, a commodity which they can acquire to enhance their team.
That sports is an exploitative industry should come as no surprise, but it’s how these predominantly white scouts go about their business that nauseates. They don’t care about the boys—just about how well they can play. Talent scout Bob Gibbons playfully remarks: “It’s already a meat market, but I’ve got to go ahead and do my job: serve professional meat.”
When he attends a Nike basketball camp in the summer, acclaimed filmmaker Spike Lee makes an appearance at a seminar. Speaking to a hall filled with young African-American boys, he imparts a much-needed dose of wisdom: “You have to realise something: nobody cares about you. You’re Black. You’re a young male. All you’re supposed to do is deal drugs and mug women. The only reason why you’re here? You can make their team win. If their team wins, these schools get a lot of money. This whole thing revolves around money.”
It’s frightening to think that boys this young are groomed for professional success, without giving them the chance to consider other avenues in life. It’s clear—both to William and his coach—that there won’t be any opportunities for him if he doesn’t succeed at basketball. When William asks his coach how he should balance his sports career and his new family life (during the film, he has a daughter with his girlfriend), the St. Joseph’s High School coach merely instructs him: “Write them off.”
This near-inhuman method to success mirrors the absurdly ambitious approach Mr Burns in The Simpsons: “Family, religion, friendship—these are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business.” Yet, how the coach speaks to his students reveals it’s not a joke: he considers basketball to be the priority of their stint at St. Joseph’s, especially for the likes of William. It’s for this reason that the terror of injury looms so large in William’s life; if he can’t get back onto the basketball court, he might be ejected from St. Joseph’s, just like Arthur.
Dreams are a heavy burden to bear. Everyone around these two youngsters treats them differently—they have high expectations for them. Adults live vicariously through their children. Arthur’s father Bo recalls how he could have gone professional if he hadn’t had his son: “I could have been a good college player. I, mostly likely, I would’ve made it to the pros, you know.” Now, he wants Arthur to succeed more than ever. He doesn’t want him to make the same mistakes that he did: “I just want Arthur to have more, you know, have a better life than what I had. I don’t want him to experience the bad things that I went through in life.”
As Bo and Arthur watch television, he pats his son on the shoulder: “We’re just focused on him making it.” Much like William shrewdly identified, Bo sees it as the family’s chance to rise from out of the ghetto. William’s mother thinks similarly; after her first child, Curtis Gates, failed to make it to the professional leagues, she just wants William to succeed where Curtis faltered: “Curtis didn’t make it—I just wanted this one to make it.”
Curtis lives vicariously through his brother, too. Once a promising student-athlete, Curtis garnered a reputation for being disagreeable with his coaches. His argumentative demeanour led to scouts labelling him as “uncoachable,” meaning his basketball career died at college. He’s no longer a talented player—that part of his life has passed him by. Now, as William is being eyed by college scouts, Curtis lays the weight of his unfulfilled aspirations on his brother’s back: “All these basketball dreams I had have gone. All I see, all my dreams is in him now. I want him to make it so bad, I don’t know what to do.”
William struggles with all of the expectations. It’s clear that everyone only cares for him because he might one day become a basketball sensation. As he struggles with the dreams that everyone wants him to achieve, the story becomes deeply moving. He fears that, much like his brother, he will become irrelevant to everyone who loves him if he doesn’t go all the way: “That’s why when somebody says: ‘When you get to the NBA, don’t forget about me,’ and that stuff. Well, I should have said to them: ‘If I don’t make it, don’t you forget about me.’”
Hoop Dreams is a profoundly intimate portrayal of the struggle that’s required to reach the pinnacle of one’s field. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that Hoop Dreams is a documentary; as a stirring portrait of young boys trying to make dreams a reality, it takes on the air of a drama. James doesn’t employ a fly-on-the-wall documentarian style. He resolves to get up close with his subjects, requesting they log their thoughts and feelings on their long road to potential greatness.
Perhaps more than anything else, Hoop Dreams captures the thrill and agony of sports exquisitely. At a pivotal moment, William misses two free throws in the final seconds of the fourth quarter. If he’d scored, they’d have won the game, putting St. Joseph’s through to the next round. He crumples in despair, horrified that he cost his team a victory.
Conversely, watching Arthur (who had been dismissed as a subpar athlete) do far better than anyone had expected, is enough to give you goosebumps. Raised high on the shoulders of his team after seizing victory from the jaws of defeat, Arthur releases a primal scream, crying tears of joy. It’s almost spiritual. It leaves you wondering: why do we play these games? Why do we find such meaning in them? Perhaps it’s because, in those moments, we can discover something inside of ourselves that no one else can see, something impossible to express in words.
Towards the end of the film, Arthur is robbed at gunpoint when walking home, his assailant completely unhinged on drugs. He remarks that he simply can’t wait to leave this place, to escape the poverty that’s defined his life. A little after the film was released, his older half-brother, DeAntonio, was shot to death. 10 years after that, Arthur’s father Bo was murdered. At the 15th anniversary screening of Hoop Dreams, Arthur revealed to the audience that 10 of his friends had died since the film’s release.
He wasn’t the only one to experience profound loss in that time. As William was preparing for a basketball comeback with his brother’s help, Curtis was killed in a carjacking. After breaking his foot, yet another injury to plague the young man’s career, William retired from basketball. His hoop dreams remained only that—dreams. It’s why your heart breaks when you watch his mother say goodbye to him at college, still holding out hope that he can become professional: “I think he’s gonna make it… I hope so, anyway…”
We don’t all start from the same positions in life. The American Dream is shown to be a hoax; though William and Arthur work about as hard—if not harder—than everyone around them, they don’t possess the same opportunities as the more fortunate, even with their athletic gifts. They have the same lofty goals, but not the means to achieve them.
As a documentary that captures the vicissitudes of life, intimately chronicling the experiences of everyday families struggling to get by in America, Hoop Dreams soars. However, there is more to this film than that. It’s also an introspective piece that deals with the value of pursuing dreams for your own happiness—what is it you truly want? As William reveals to the camera: “Everybody’s throwing their dreams into you—but you got to throw your own dreams into yourself.” 30 years later, spoken down the lens by a young man embarking on a new journey, it’s a thought that still has the power to give goosebumps.
USA | 1994 | 171 MINUTES | 1.33:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH
director: Steve James.
writers: Steve James & Frederick Marx.
starring: William Gates, Arthur Agee, Curtis Gates & Bo Agee.