Hoop Dreams

One of last year's most acclaimed films, the documentary "Hoop Dreams," gets its first broadcast showing tonight, on PBS. Also, a number of guest stars make appearances tonight on regular series.* "Hoop Dreams" & "Hoop Dreams Reunion" (8 p.m.-11 p.m. & 11 p.m.-11:30 p.m., MPT, Channels 22, 67) -- Director Steve James' moving film about two young men chasing dreams of basketball fame gets its first broadcast screening. It's followed by a program with new footage of its subjects, William Gates and Arthur Agee, and their families.

Though it's nearly freezing outside, fresh arugula, kale and more greens are flourishing in Hoop Village. That's the name given to Baltimore's newest urban farming venture - a trio of plastic-skinned hoop greenhouses on the historic Lake Clifton schools campus. The structures, finished in October, are already yielding harvests that will provide wholesome snacks to some city elementary students this winter. And students at the three Lake Clifton schools are helping to raise the food they'll be eating.

Great American movies are, these days especially, few and far between, so let's everybody take a deep breath and mark the moment: "Hoop Dreams," all three hours' worth, is a great American movie. It's got the sting of drama and the ache of truth; it's even got the sting of truth and the ache of drama.It's a story of American boys and what they are capable of. For Arthur Agee and William Gates, on the brink of manhood at the age of 14 in the cruel inner city of Chicago, the field of dreams is a patch of gritty asphalt, bounded at either end by a rusty gallows-like construction from which is suspended, 10 feet above the surface of the Earth, a metal circle known in the colloquial as a basketball hoop.

The point guard makes a low, controlled dribble, buying time as two defenders move in tight with their hands. Then Rogers Barnes, a former Morgan State star, jerks upright, lobs a pass to the far edge of the backboard, and watches as a 6-foot-7 teammate, Curtis Massey, takes the red-white-and-blue basketball on his fingertips, drops it through the net and circles back to the floor, clapping. It's just a moment during practice for the Maryland Marvels, the newest pro basketball team in the state, but for owner James Agbai - whose newly minted squad plays its first-ever game at the Severn School in Severna Park tonight - things seem to be coming together like a well-timed play in the paint.

BALTIMORE's "Tamir craze" was short-lived -- a little over a year, with crowds cramming gymnasiums to watch 17-year-old basketball sensation Tamir Goodman perform for the Talmudical Academy. Now he is off to the Washington suburbs and a much larger arena at the Takoma Academy.Tamir will be close to an even bigger arena at the University of Maryland, College Park, where a four-year scholarship awaits in the fall of 2000. His stopover in Takoma Park lets him him hone his talent against more skilled teams.

FEW TEEN-AGED MOTHERS are as lucky as 17-year-old Rene Hines. The senior at Howard County's Hammond High gave birth 16 months ago, but is bound for Georgia State University this fall on a full basketball scholarship. A story about her in The Sun last week included the fact that she maintains a 3.0 grade-point average while performing some of the duties of motherhood.It is apparent from the story that Ms. Hines is a bright young woman. She is also an outstanding basketball player. Hammond's all-time leading scorer, she made first-team All-Metro last year and led her team to an appearance in the Class 2A state finals.

Bounce, bounce, set, swish, bounce, bounce, bounce. Give a boy a ball and a net, and he can do this this for hours, for years, forever. The bounce bounce bounce is already drumming hypnotically through the air when William Gates arrives in the gym at Proviso West High School.The week between Christmas and New Year's is holiday tournament time in Chicago where high school basketball burns brightly during endless gray winters. It's what football is to Texas in the fall and lacrosse to Baltimore in the spring.

"Hoop" got stuffed.That's the consensus among critics and industry observers. "Hoop Dreams," the three-hour documentary from Steve James, Frederick Marx and Peter Gilbert that lighted up critics' top 10 and best-of-year lists and was even rumored to be on the verge of becoming the first documentary to get a best picture nomination, didn't even get a nomination in the Best nTC Documentary category last Tuesday when the nominations were announced.The film chronicles the life and hard times of two Chicago-area basketball standouts, William Gates and Arthur Agee.

The critically acclaimed documentary "Hoop Dreams" tells the story of two young black basketball players from Chicago's South Side who dream of one day starring in the National Basketball Association.The movie introduces us to William Gates and Arthur Agee as talented eighth graders playing pickup games on inner city courts. We follow them through high school as they struggle against sports injuries, family problems and the dangerous lure of inner city crime. The movie ends as the two young men enter college for their freshmen year, no longer touted as future superstars but still clinging to their dreams.

Here's today's little-known fact: Bryant Gumbel was nearly an employee of this newspaper's sports section.That's right, the ultra-cool host of NBC's "Today" show, which visited Charm City yesterday, was nearly an ink-stained wretch on these very pages.It seems that former Sun sports editor Bob Maisel offered the young Gumbel a job here in 1972. But while Gumbel was mulling over the offer, his father died. In the succeeding period, Gumbel, who had been writing sports in his native Chicago, got a broadcast audition.

I eat, sleep and dream basketball. -Sam Cassell, assistant coach, Washington Wizards He's not kidding. As a kid growing up in the 1980s, Cassell would shoot hoops all day with his pals on East Baltimore's playgrounds, then grab a bite "and brag about what we'd just done to each other." At night, Cassell would curl up in his room on North Montford Street, a ball alongside his bed. Oh, the dreams that lad had. "I was always the point guard for either the Philadelphia 76ers or the New York Knicks," he said.

Basketball was a big part of Greg Skipper's life while in school, and it has continued that way since he graduated from college. Skipper played junior varsity and varsity basketball at Glen Burnie High School. After graduating from college, the 27-year old, who works in online advertising, began playing in the Anne Arundel County Recreation and Parks' adult basketball league. He just began his fourth year. Skipper's team, called the Pork Chop Express - the name comes from a truck in the Kurt Russell movie Big Trouble in Little China - split its first four games this winter.

In recent weeks, Baltimore has seen a harsh light shine on the gaping void in its sports landscape. Beloved ballpark, state-of-the-art football stadium, but nothing even remotely resembling a top-notch basketball facility. Plans are in the works to change that. Not anytime soon, but by the start of 2007 - thanks to a $100,000 study on the feasibility of a new downtown arena - we'll know if Camden Yards and M&T Bank Stadium should expect to get a sibling. Not to disparage 1st Mariner Arena, one-time home of the Bullets and current home of indoor soccer's champion Blast.

When John'a Poole started playing basketball with her big sister Jamie in front of their Middle River home, it was love at first sight. "When I was little, it was everything - basketball, basketball, basketball," said the Eastern Tech senior, who turns 18 today. Not much has changed. Poole, whose first named is pronounced "Ja-NAY," got serious about basketball when she was 12 and has been aiming for the WNBA ever since. While many young girls say they want to make it to the WNBA, Poole expects it. "I plan on making it, not maybe," said Poole, a 5-foot-8 forward-guard who, at 16, got a tattoo on her lower back - a silhouette of Michael Jordan in action.

Once in a while, the Criterion Collection, which has built a reputation for classy, well-researched digital editions of vintage American movies and documentaries and international art house fare, offers a contemporary film. This week brings the latest of U.S. director Wes Anderson's films, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou ($33). The two-disc set of the quirky comedy starring Bill Murray as a self-observed Jacques Cousteau-esque documentarian suffering from midlife and career crises is a nearly flawless complement to the movie.

Think you know college hoops? Maybe. But if you hoped to predict the winners in this year's pool for the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, the world's mathematicians have some news for you. Your chances of predicting the outcome of every game is one in 18,446,744,073,709,551,616. (That's about one in 18 quintillion!) Why so hard? There are 64 games in the single-elimination tournament, which began yesterday, so the identities of teams reaching the second, third and fourth rounds depend on the outcomes of the earlier rounds.

It was the morning after in Hollywood."You have reached the mournful, baleful and generally sad Bill Haugse . . .," intoned a phone message recorded by one of the three editors of "Hoop Dreams" -- the critically acclaimed story of two high school basketball players, which having been snubbed as a best documentary nominee, failed last week in its bid for an editing Oscar."

Stop us if you've heard this before, but absent a major change in philosophy at either ESPN's Bristol, Conn., headquarters, or at TCI, the city's cable carrier, Sunday's Canadian Football League Grey Cup, involving the Baltimore Stallions, will not be available to city residents.That's because the game will air live on ESPN2, which is not available on the lineup offered by TCI, the city's cable carrier.The two sides were able to reach a compromise last year that allowed TCI to take the feeds of the Eastern Division semifinal and the Grey Cup to a public access channel, but ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz said that won't happen this year.