William Gates - Hoop Dreams star on celebrating 30 year anniversary of acclaimed sports documentary

Sports Spectrum Podcast

Sports Spectrum

Sports

5 • 661 Ratings

🗓️ 17 January 2024

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

William Gates is a former college basketball player who was featured in the Oscar-nominated documentary “Hoop Dreams” back in October 1994.

Gates was a member of St. Joseph High School in Chicago, where he played on the varsity team all four years under legendary coach Gene Pingatore. After being highly recruited by many of the top colleges in the country, Gates chose to play for Marquette and appeared in 80 games during his career with the Golden Eagles.

A few years later, Gates entered Moody Bible Institute and began training to become a pastor. Today, he runs a Hoop Dreams clothing line and recently released his new book "Hoop Dreams Fifth Quarter" in October 2023.

Today on the podcast, we welcome back William Gates to the podcast to celebrate 30 years of the release of Hoop Dreams, whether or not Hoop Dreams would work as a movie in 2024, high school recruiting and the evolution of sports documentaries.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Coming up today on Sports Spectrum, guys, you're going to love this conversation with William Gates.
0:04.7	He was the star, along with Arthur A.G, of the 1994 documentary Hoop Dreams.
0:11.8	Now, we had William on the show a couple years ago back in, gosh, it was February of 2021, so three years ago, almost.
0:19.5	And now it's 1994 plus 30 to 2024, and it's the 30 year anniversary
0:26.9	of Hoop Dreams coming out. Will has written a book called Hoop Dreams 5th Quarter. Dreams
0:33.4	Don't Die. It released back in October of 2023, and it's kind of a prelude into this 30th anniversary
0:39.9	celebration of the documentary Hoop Dreams. If you haven't seen Hoop Dreams, I think it's on
0:45.4	Peacock right now that you can watch it. It's been on HBO. It's been a bunch of places. I'm sure
0:50.0	you can purchase it too on Amazon. But Hoop Dreams was one of the first documentaries that I can
0:55.0	ever remember watching about basketball, about sports. Now obviously we have the 30 for 30s on ESPN and
1:02.0	HBO has some amazing documentaries as well. But Hoop Dreams was in the movie theater and I went and saw it as a
1:09.1	21 year old kid and me and my friend Ednie
1:12.4	Evans went and saw it and I still remember being kind of blown away by how real it was,
1:17.7	by how awesome it was to see kind of a behind the scenes look at a kid trying to achieve
1:22.5	his dreams of playing basketball collegiantly and then eventually professionally in the NBA.
1:28.6	So this conversation with William Gates is that kind of rehashing the 30th anniversary
1:33.1	of hoop dreams.
1:34.1	We share some great stories.
1:35.7	He shares some great stories on the 30th anniversary.
1:39.5	And his book is really an interesting timing, I guess, for him to write kind of a little bit of a
1:45.3	memoir, but also talking about his life post-hoop dreams. He became a pastor, and he loves
1:51.8	Jesus, and that's what we talk a lot about as well here on the show today. It's William Gates,
	...

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