SP #13: Hoop Dreams and Sports Movies

Today, athletes in America are constantly being put on a pedestal.  No matter your age, sports are important to to parents, teachers, friends, coaches and family, but even more so when you have a special talent.  Many movies in todays society that carry a sports theme are portrayed in a manner that is very different from real life.  Basketball movies especially seem to portray certain types of people in a different light.  Movies such as Coach Carter, Remember the Titans, White Men Can't Jump, and  Jerry Mcguire are all movies that take real life scenarios and turn them into movies.  The movie Hoop Dreams, although, is an exception to this.  Hoop Dreams was originally conceived to be a 30 minute documentary about two inner-city chicago African Americans who had dreams of making it big in the NBA.  The difference between Hoop Dreams and the rest of the movies I listed, is that Hoop Dreams is completely fabrication free.  Movies like Coach Carter, White Men Can't Jump, and Remember the Titans are all the same.  They depict a group of athletes, mostly African Americans, who dream to play their sports with great success, end up struggling to the point of almost hitting rock bottom, and then pull themselves together, work harder than ever before, and end up winning the championship and celebrating into the night.  Hoop Dreams follows the same athletes, but shows their real struggles.  It shows one of the boys getting kicked out of his high school because he was falling behind in class.  Even though they brought him to the mostly white school to play basketball, they allowed him to fail and then kicked him out.  Hoop Dreams shows the real struggle of dealing with family in hard times.  Hoop Dreams follows the two stars of the movie from their beginning to their end.  The two players do not end up reaching their dreams of being NBA stars, but they do both end up succeeding, which i almost think is a better message to kids then letting them watch the movies in which the protagonists always reach the 'final game' or 'make it big'.  Arthur Agee from Hoop Dreams ended up launching a foundation promoting high education in the inner city where he was born, and also started a clothing line called "Hoop Dreams'.  The older of the two, William Gates, played college basketball and helped Michael Jordan train at one point, but overall, did not make it big in the NBA.  He instead received his Bible Degree from Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.