More Than Basketball

This has to be one of the best documentaries ever made. "Hoop Dreams" reminds me of another of my favorite documentaries, or rather series of them, the "Up" films, of which there've been nine to date--following a group of Englanders from age seven to, thus far, 63, and it manages to succeed in a way that Michael Apted's experiment failed (at least as far as I've seen--I've got some years to catch up on). Both expanded from originally more limited TV programs into something much more significant, but even that rather acknowledges that the "Up" series gave up on its original premise of social class determining children's futures. "Hoop Dreams," on the other hand, promises two African-American youths escaping poverty, but ironically does a better job to demonstrate significant class barriers preventing such an ascension. We begin by watching naive 14-years-olds singularly obsessed with becoming NBA stars like Isiah Thomas or, later, Michael Jordan, and after nearly three hours we leave them young men, richer in experience both in basketball and life in general, departing for college with ambitions beyond childish wishes. Whatever else the film says about the game, recruitment, school, family, crime or society--and there's a lot there, don't get me wrong--"Hoop Dreams" may be best because that representation of the passage of life is so fundamentally moving in its assemblage here.

Regardless of the controversy over it not receiving a Best Documentary Oscar nomination, there's a reason "Hoop Dreams" was only the second doc to receive a Best Editing one (and should've beat that overrated inanity it lost to, but I digress). Steve James and company were following their subjects through the years to be composed into a single feature a decade before Richard Linklater began his fictionalized "Boyhood" (2014). Just to cut down some 250 hours of elliptical footage to under three hours is no easy task, but to, then, transform that grainy video into a gripping narrative where nary a moment seems wasted, that's genuinely engaging and where one may still be surprised and care deeply about the outcomes of the subjects, that's an outstanding accomplishment.

Even the highlights from high-school basketball games are edited and narrated in a way of the stakes being raised and to create drama that puts other, by comparison, lousy basketball movies to shame. I'll take watching William Gates struggling to recover from knee injuries at a competitive Catholic institution, or Arthur Agee leading his public-school team on an improbable run in the high-school state tournament, over the best Hollywood has to offer of dramatizing Cinderella court stories--no matter how impressive those true stories were--from the likes of "Hoosiers" (1986) to "Glory Road" (2006).

Such is the investment earned from the spectator here. It's not just a play on the "Up" series proverb, to the effect of something such as: give me a teenager until he's 18, and I'll show you the faults of the systems. And, there is much lamenting over this or that "system" that nobody seems to admit to having any control over, with the sole, redeeming exception of the recruiter who admits to "second thoughts" regarding his scouting kids 12 and up for high-school basketball scholarships, particularly Agee who only seems to recover from his falling out with that same Catholic school in his senior year. Certainly, that St. Joseph High School and its coach Gene Pingatore don't come off well here, including withholding Agee's school transcripts for ransom and mismanaging Gates's health and well being--seemingly even rather ruining his love of the game. That "bad boy" Isiah Thomas is the most famous athlete to come out of that institution, given his reputation (or, heck, just from watching some Pistons games), doesn't seem surprising.

The college coaches and scouts that refer to McDonald's All-American tryouts as a "meat market"--seriously, several of them say just that--are definitely no better, either. It should be obvious by now that the NCAA is a racket, though, including not allowing Agee and Gates to profit from this documentary, lest they forfeit their "amateur" status propping up millionaire sports coaches and university administrators. I mean, for crying out loud, these All-Americans are sponsored by a fast-food burger chain.

Yet, these scholarships and opportunities of being recruited to make others rich, or at least paid, with the ever-more-apparently slim shot at NBA bucks in their futures, still seems a lifeline from impoverished public schools, slight job prospects, drug and crime-infested urban streets and domestic abuse and teen parenthood at home. Various follow-ups in the years after "Hoop Dreams" have demonstrated these continued perils, and that's even with the documentary seeming to have been another such lifeline for them. A more profound inquiry unfolding from a game of putting a ball through a hoop may never be made.