Hoop Dreams Page #2

I'm trying to let him know right now

you gonna get hit, get knocked down...

you gonna get banged around,

so you better get used to it now.

Stop it. One-hand hook.

All these basketball dreams I had,

they gone.

All I see -All my dreams in him now.

I want him to make it so bad,

I don't know what to do.

They want to play basketball

and stuff, that was always okay.

But I was gonna make sure all of 'em

got through high school.

A high school diploma

was very important to me.

My mother,

she was like mother and father to me.

She don't want me really

hanging around over here that much...

'cause of the gangs.

I feel if I go to St. Joseph...

I'll at least get a good chance

to go to a good college.

That would be good for me.

That was my first son.

I said, "That's Daddy's man, '"

so we just started calling him "Man. '"

Get around it!

I could have been a good college player.

Most likely

I would have made it to the pros.

But, you know, once I had my son...

I knew then something good

was gonna come out of it.

I think the talent gonna be passed on.

He told me, "I'm so scared of growing up."

I said, "Why?"

he said a grown-up has so many problems.

"I got so many things on my mind."

I just want Arthur to have more...

you know,

have a better life than what I had.

I don't want him experiencing

bad things that I went through in life.

Austin Boulevard

will be the next stop. Austin is next.

Like Isiah Thomas before them...

both Arthur and William make

a three-hour round trip each day...

between the city and St. Joseph's.

That was strange for me

going out to a far-out school.

I saw a rug, flowers, clean hallways...

things that I didn't see

in an ordinary school.

Gotta move! Gotta move!

Come on.

- Three, four, five or 10?

- Ten.

You got it. Three, four, five?

Arthur wins the starting

point-guard position on the freshmen team.

Agee, I want you to find

in that warm-up number two.

Brown, number three.

Ettmeyer, four.

Hey, Arthur, you know

if you miss free throws...

they count 'em up,

and you have to pay 15 cents.

Then if you don't pay

it, they gonna make you

run 50 laps, and still

you have to pay the money.

- You still gotta pay the money?

- That's way out.

When Arthur first started at St.

Joseph's...

he was a good kid,

from what we saw...

but he was very immature.

He might have been a little more

disruptive, speaking out...

getting into childish things.

He wasn't used to the discipline

and the control.

He reverted back to, maybe,

his environment, where he came from.

I just never been around

a lot of white people and...

it was different, because at a black school

I could associate with the people.

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