"Hoop Dreams" plus 15

The basketball documentary Hoop Dreams, which was released in 1994, is this year celebrating its 15th anniversary. A couple of new essays available online recognize the milestone, and discuss the film's legacy, including the fact that it is about so much more than just basketball.

Roger Ebert, in his amazingly insightful "Roger Ebert's Journal" (which is often about so much more than just movies), discusses his and the late Gene Siskel's early involvement with the film as cheerleaders who helped the documentary gain first distribution and then an appreciative audience. Ebert recounts the recent Chicago event in which the film's two subjects, William Gates and Arthur Agee, sat on a panel discussion with the filmmakers to talk about the film's impact on their lives.

Ebert provides a link to an older but still incisive essay on the Criterion Collection website by John Edgar Wideman. Wideman, writing from the perspective of an African-American man who fostered some of the same dreams as Gates and Agee, drills just as deeply into the idea that Hoop Dreams is about so much more than basketball, and about how dreams of basketball stardom were about so much more than sports and glory for young people like himself and the stars of this incredible documentary film.

Appreciations of Sportscaster Jim McKay (1921-2008)

ABC Sports met its death a couple of years ago (as the MediaLog remarked upon at the time). Now, the man who personified ABC Sports more than any other, Jim McKay, has also met his death at age 86.

For a couple of generations of viewers, McKay was the voice and face of ABC's pioneering Olympics coverage. The high point of McKay's Olympic hosting career (even if it was a low point for the Olympic movement itself) was the tragic massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Games in Munich, where McKay uttered the immortal words "They're all gone." He was probably equally well-known as the host of ABC's "Wide World of Sports" from its inception in 1961 until its end in 1998--his was the voice that intoned about "the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat." He was instrumental (second in importance only to Roone Arledge probably) in the longtime success of ABC Sports.

Appreciations of McKay and his contributions to TV sports that have appeared in the past few days include a blog post by Time Magazine TV critic James Poniewozik in which he comments upon having fond memories of watching McKay's Olympic coverage as a child--sentiments I share; USA Today sports television columnist Michael Hiestand trying to explain to today's kids why McKay was so important to TV sports; and on-air tributes from ESPN by fellow sportscasters Keith Jackson, Brent Musberger, and Don Ohlmeyer.

More meaty material on the career and legacy of McKay include an oral history interview with McKay at the Archive of American Television, a wonderful resource for anyone interested in any aspect of television history; the entry for McKay at the Museum of Broadcast Communication's online Encyclopedia of Television; and the Wikipedia entry on McKay. For a little more information on the history and demise of ABC Sports, see this earlier MediaLog post.