Word: hoops
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...that's not quite right. The really slick city game is played by college and high school coaches, sports agents, shoe manufacturers, sportswriters and TV producers. It involves conning kids -- mostly poor black kids -- into believing that they can grow up to play professional basketball. The fine documentary film Hoop Dreams shows how the game is played with high school basketballers in Chicago, and now Darcy Frey's thoughtful, sharply observed book, The Last Shot (Houghton Mifflin; 230 pages; $19.95), spells out its consequences for students at Abraham Lincoln High School in the bleak Coney Island section of Brooklyn...
...most recent column, Samuel J. Rascoff makes an excellent point about the cyclical nature of inner-city poverty and the way it is documented in the documentary "Hoop Dreams" ("Losing Life's Game," Opinion, Nov. 18, 1994). Unfortunately, I must take exception to his implications that the three film-makers, Steve James, Frederick Marx and Peter Gilbert, exploited the two players, Arthur Agee and William Gates...
James, Marx and Gilbert have faced many moral issues since their film was released to critical acclaim, as well as good box-office revenues. One such issue is whether Agee and Getes should be allowed to cash in on the financial success of "Hoop Dreams...
...fathers. There is no indication that they have come to terms with the problems of their childhood and will choose to make things different in their own homes. On the contrary, it is easy to see how the sons will become the fathers in the next generation's hoop dreams. The tragic cycle of inner-city life will be repeated once again...
...Hoop Dreams" is the story of viscious "hopes" of cultural pathology and unrequited "dreams" of evanescent fame. There are moments of extraordinary grace along the way, some intimations of hope and the occasional tremendous jam. But these moments are fleeting. As long as these cycles keep on spinning and these misguided dreams are dreamt, there can be little hope for William Gates and Arthur Agee--of, for that matter...