During the coronavirus shutdown, each day we will bring 🤡you a reco♌mmendation from The Post’s Peter Botte for a sports movie, TV show or book that perhaps was before your time or somehow slipped between the cracks of your viewing/reading history.
Hoop Dreams (1994)
Rated: PG-13
Streaming: Amazon Prime
Long before ESPN’s 30-for-30 series and Netflix increased the prominence of in-depth sports documentaries, a thought-provoking 3-hour film that initially was intended to be a 30-minute PBS short introduced us to and exposed the w𒆙orld of high schꦅool and college recruitment in our inner cities.
The story followed two African-American tee😼nagers in𝓰 Chicago, William Gates and Arthur Agee, from the time they were 14 years old, beginning with their recruitment to play basketball at an affluent suburban Illinois private school, St. Joseph’s, which boasted Isiah Thomas as a famous alumnus.
🎶Dir💖ector Steve James shot over 250 hours of footage over the next five years, including multiple travails for both families, through the players’ freshman year of college, where the NBA dreams for both stalled.
Gates suffered multiple serious knee injuries before attending and playing at Marquette, while Agee was forced to leave St. Joseph’s due to financial ꦗproblems and began at a community college in Missouri before attending Arkansas State.
The critically acclaimed documentary won multiple awards (including the Grand Jury prize at Sundance Film Fꦅestival), but it controversially was omitted from the 1994 Oscar nominations.
Renowned film critic Roger Ebert later called it the best film of the 1990s, and both players eventually received 𒈔about $200,000 apiece in royalties.
Agee started a “Hoop Dreams” clot🔴hing line and has worked as a motivational speaker t♔hrough the Arthur Agee Jr. Foundation. He was arrested for aggravated assault of a woman in 2017, but those charges later were dropped.
Gates later became a pastor and relocatedꦉ to Texas; two of his sons, Will Jr. (Fu𝐆rman, Houston Baptist) and Jalon (Houston Baptist) have played college basketball.
Quote of Note: “When somebody says, ‘When you get to the NBA, don’t forget about me,’ I should’ve said 💙to them, “If I🧸 don’t make it, don’t you forget about me.” — William Gates.
Botte Blows: 4.7 of 5