Essay on Basketball and Hoop Dreams

Submitted By BabyJay123
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Pages: 5
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Hoop Dreams is a story about two young men who want to become basketball players in the NBA. Arthur Agee and William Gates are the names of the two boys who were followed from eighth grade to twelve grades to do the movie. Arthur Agee was in the playgrounds of Chicago when St Joseph recruiters saw him. In this part of the movie Arthur seems excited as he may be getting closer to reaching his goal of becoming a NBA basketball player.
Arthur was playing against guy's three years older than he was and he was still the best in the neighbourhood. Arthur's parents Bo and Sheila Agee were very poor people who were on cocaine and could not support their family. So Arthur was most likely depending on his career to go well as his parents weren’t as fortunate as others. Big Earl, the guy who recruited Arthur told his family that St. Joe's would be able to pay Arthur's tuition if he played basketball for them. Arthur went to St. Joe's and met William Gates. They had become friends in grade school but had never really done anything together. Eventually William turned out to be the better player and all the attention and money was focused on him. Therefore, Arthur was booted out of St. Joe's in the middle of the school year. At this point of the movie Arthur may have felt annoyed because he is no longer the better player he may also feel jealous at the fact that suddenly all the attention is put on William.
He was forced to enrol at Marshall, the area public school. As a result, Arthur could see his dreams of the NBA were slipping away. Along with that, he couldn't keep his grades up enough to attend a Division I school. At this part of the movie Arthur looked quite stressed as things weren’t going well for him he began to regret going to Marshall as this just made things worse rather than better.
He and the Marshall Commandos ended up going downstate Arthur’s senior year. They finished third in the state overall. Arthur ended up going to a junior college named Mineral Area in Flat River Mississippi. After his two years in Mississippi, Arthur received a scholarship to Arkansas State. He finished his degree in communications and he graduated. Arthur never did reach his dream of going to the NBA. Arthur May have seemed relaxed as he has a scholarship so his parents won’t need to struggle to pay for him to go to university however he didn’t become a NBA player at this point Arthur may have felt disappointed and confused as he breathed and lived basketball and now he may have to think of a new career.
William Gates was also 14 when he was recruited to go to St. Joseph. William impressed the coaches and he was moved up to varsity when he was a freshman. This disappointed Arthur because he wasn't used to seeing people better than he was.
After a while William began to start and all of Arthur's scholarship was being used for William. William felt very bad about this but he knew that he couldn't let this stop him if he was going to make it in the pros. Eventually Arthur left the team and being one of the few blacks in a Christian school made William feel even more out in space. William kept improving and he was getting letters from major colleges all over the country. However he wasn't able to get an SAT score of 18 so he wasn't going to be eligible to play his freshman year. In this part of the movie William may have felt irritated as he has the basketball skills however his scores are not fulfilling the appropriate mark.
Additionally, he ripped cartilage in his knee and some schools were wondering if he could ever play again. At this part of the movie William may have felt distraught as this may affect his career as a basketball player and this could narrow his path to the NBA.
This narrowed down William’s choices and he picked Marquette University. He ended up graduating and he hired an agent and they tried to get him into the NBA but they failed. William ended up marrying Catherine, which he already had
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