Hoop Dreams Die: When Young Basketball Players Don't Make It Into the NBA

A seventeen year-old kid, full of promise. Loves to play basketball. Has plenty of talent. Plays every chance he gets. He shoots before sunrise, or more likely after dark, sometimes over the sound of nearby gunfire. Even in late autumn and early spring, when it's warm enough, you can see him on the blacktop, juking imaginary opponents, sinking the last second shot in the NBA Finals. Winning the championship. Getting MVP.

He stars on his high school team, gets some local press, wins some trophies playing on club teams in summer. He wants to go to college. Play D-I ball. North Carolina. Georgetown. Kentucky. He wants to be the next Jordan. Kobe. Shaq.

What will become of him when his hoop dreams die?

There are millions of them, all over the nation. They watch TV in every inner city. It's the only thing they can see themselves do. Investment banker? Doctor? Network Manager? No way. I'm going to the NBA. Straight outta high school.

Far too many of them end up like Paye Daye. A seventeen year-old kid, full of promise. Hanging with some knuckleheads whose hoop dreams died years ago. Now serving twelve years in prison for carjacking in New Jersey instead of helping the New Dorp Centrals vie for the championship in the Staten Island High School Tournament. By the time he's released from prison, his will be the story of what might have been. A whimsical moment destroys a life.

He may not have made it to the NBA. He may not have played D-I ball. But maybe he would have gone on to college. Maybe he could have gotten a free education, a degree. Maybe he could have had a life.

I knew this child. I coached him one summer in a basketball clinic in Park Hill, right next to a private housing project owned by a slumlord. It's full of the violence and drugs and poverty that keep us down. It's not unlike many other places in the city. In the nation.

He was a soft-spoken child, never gave any trouble. It's hard to picture him forcing a woman out of her vehicle just to take a joyride. But I knew him before he became a high school star. Before the hoop dreams.

There are 400 or so jobs in the NBA. A few more in the CBA and overseas, and those are far less glamorous. There are over 500,000 high school basketball players. What will become of them when their hoop dreams die?

Far too many become ancestors before their time, like Michael Stewart. A fourteen year-old young man from Brooklyn, full of promise. He played and won a youth basketball game at a local community center. Not too long afterwards he was dead, at the hands of thugs whose hoop dreams died years ago.

It never should have happened, we cry. He was a good child. It isn't fair. But aside from lament the unfilled promise, what can we do?

I am thankful for basketball. Because by the time I played my last high school game, I was a better person. Basketball taught me leadership, sportsmanship, discipline. Teamwork. It gave me character. Work ethic. I was fortunate. Basketball was fun, but I never saw it as a potential pay day (forgive the pun).

Where is the leadership development associated with high school and recreational programs? Why are so many of our high school stars disappearing from school? Why are they not getting into college? Who is helping them to learn?

Why are we allowing our children to be used by self-serving coaches who don't really care about them?

The children of today need values. And if it's basketball that they love, then we must use their love to teach them what's important, and it's not the millions that Kobe or Kevin Garnett received straight outta high school. If that were true, we might as well just give them a dollar and tell them to play lotto. The odds are just the same. And lotto's a lot cheaper than a pair of Air Jordans.

What's truly important is that they begin to build a future for themselves as soon as possible. What's important is leadership. Discipline. Work ethic. These valuable life skills are the things that our children need to learn from basketball. Not shooting or dribbling, but working. Not winning or losing, but trying.

We must not further the illusion that they can be the next Jordan or the next Kobe. If we do, then they will continue to become bitter and unprepared. Like the knuckleheads who convinced Paye Daye to take a joy ride. Like the thugs who killed Michael Stewart.

We must find a way to use basketball to prepare and develop our children. If not, then they will continue to go from the blacktops of inner cities straight into the cells and coffins this society has prepared for them. Unless they're one in a million, their hoop dreams will die. But that doesn't mean they have to.