`Dreams Make Life Great’ Basketball Player Featured In Hit Documentary Has No Regrets

If William Gates were in a Hollywood movie, his story would have a heart-tugging, feel-good ending: He’d be racing down a basketball court, finally living his dream of making it to the NBA.

But “Hoop Dreams,” the documentary of his quest, was a slice of real life, and now that his college basketball career is ending, Gates knows there will be no fairytale finale, no seven-figure contract and, likely, no bids from the pros.

Still, he says, that shouldn’t stop inner-city kids from chasing that same fantasy.

“They need to have that dream - that’s what makes life so great, especially growing up in Cabrini Green,” Gates says of the decaying Chicago housing project where he was raised. “Sometimes, that’s the only thing you have to live for, your dream. For me, basketball was my sole guidance to get out of Cabrini. I may not make it to the NBA, but I still got out.”

“Hoop Dreams” follows the divergent paths of two Chicago basketball prodigies - Gates and Arthur Agee - from the asphalt playgrounds to the high-pressure and often ruthless world of prep sports, glib college recruiters and big (think dollar signs) promises.

The film also is a parable of life in the inner-city, replete with triumphs and tragedies to rival any reel-world plot: a brother’s own dashed basketball dreams, a father’s struggles with cocaine, a mother’s unbridled joy just because her son reaches his 18th birthday without being killed.

The 4-1/2-year film odyssey of Agee and Gates starts with their recruitment into St. Joseph’s High School in suburban Chicago, where the coach dreams, too, of winning a state championship and discovering another Isiah Thomas, the former Detroit Pistons star who almost took the school there.

While Gates had a financial sponsor, Agee had to transfer to a Chicago public school when his family couldn’t pay the tuition. The movie hints that St. Joseph’s, which recently settled a suit against the filmmakers after claiming it had been misrepresented, wasn’t as eager to help Agee because he didn’t seem as talented on the court.

Agee, a senior playing basketball at Arkansas State, has declined interviews for the remainder of the season.

Gates, meanwhile, has been living “Hoop Dreams”: The Epilogue, conducting newspaper and TV interviews, including “Oprah,” and popping up at Michael Jordan’s 32nd birthday bash (where he did - what else? - five interviews).

Two network crews also trailed him the day before the Academy Award nominations were announced and “Hoop Dreams” was snubbed in the documentary category.

Gates and Agee, who also met with director Spike Lee last year to discuss a made-for-TV fictional movie, stay in touch and got together at Christmas.

“The chemistry is so strong,” Gates says. “We’re just so happy to see each other. It’s not like we’re the best of friends, but when we’re together, you can’t tell we’re not.”

At 23, Gates still has the shy smile and soft-spoken manner captured on film, but the Marquette senior with a wife, a daughter and a son due in April - he’ll be named Will Jr. - has a scaled-down vision of his future.

“If you’ve got a good head on your shoulders and you do the right things to be successful, you don’t have to throw all your eggs in one basket,” he says, dangling a leg scarred from two knee operations over a table outside the Marquette gym. “I’m in such a fortunate situation. My life has been documented. It’s been put on the big screen.”

“NBA money is good,” he adds understatedly, his face lighting up with a toothy grin, “but there are other ways to make it.”

Gates expects to graduate with a communications degree in December, but will wrap up his up-and-down basketball career in March. This season, the 6-foot reserve guard-forward averaged just 11 minutes a game.

He took last year off from basketball, partly to spend time with his daughter, Alicia, who turns 6 in March.

“I realized I needed to be part of her life, especially since I didn’t have a male figure in my life,” says Gates, who saw his father only occasionally growing up. “I wanted to be everything to her that I didn’t have.”

Bo Ellis, the Marquette assistant coach who played for the Denver Nuggets, says Gates will be relieved when the season is over, knowing everyone has been watching and pulling for him.

“A kid is given a chance, and it seems like the doors will stay open forever,” says Ellis, a former Chicago prep star himself. “It just doesn’t work like that.”

But Gates, he adds, has the right priorities.

“The most important thing Will has learned is that basketball has given him an opportunity to get a degree that will not desert him,” Ellis says.

Gates has no regrets about the direction he took, the dream he aspired to, the love he had - and still has - for the game.

“I still want to be part of basketball,” he says. “I may not be able to make money, but it’s OK. I’m fine with it. I look at what basketball has done for me. One of the guys on the team came up to me and said, `Will, you’re the only person I know who’s famous for just being yourself.’ I wouldn’t have it any other way.”