The acclaimed 1994 documentary Hoop Dreams intimately followed the high school years of William Gates and Arthur Agee, two Chicago basketball stars who set their sights on following in the NBA footsteps of hometown products Isiah Thomas and Mark Aguirre.
However, they didn’t reach the NBA or even star in college. Gates’s basketball career was sidetracked by knee injuries he suffered in high school. Almost twenty years later, Gates experienced a personal conversion connected to the game that he has so loved, one that has affected the next generation of hoop dreamers in his family. His epiphany took place 1,200 miles south of the Chicago neighborhood where he grew up, while he sat high in the stands at Samuel Clemens High in the San Antonio suburb of Schertz.
William Gates and his wife, Catherine, were watching William Jr.—the second of their four children and oldest of three sons—playing for the Clemens Buffaloes. Will, a senior guard, was good enough to receive Division I scholarship offers, but some recruiters struggled to locate him after the family moved to Texas days before the 2012–13 school year began.
During a timeout, Catherine had some harsh words for her husband. She said he was too hard on their son, stewing over his every mistake, while often celebrating what other players did. “When he looks in the stands and he doesn’t see that his dad is happy to be there,” she said, “how would that make you feel?”
Gates’s reply: “You’re absolutely right.” The two have known each other since grade school in Chicago. For those who have seen the movie, yes, this is Catherine, who gave birth to their daughter, Alicia, when William was a high school junior.
“That changed my whole philosophy with him,” Gates said in a recent interview with Texas Monthly. “It has helped him become such a solid young man.”
Will played as a college freshman for Furman in South Carolina, then transferred to what was Houston Baptist and is now Houston Christian. That began the parade of Gates brothers who played for the small private university west of Bellaire. Jalen followed, his final season with the Huskies in 2019–20. Marques is currently a junior guard there, with his father usually watching his games from up in a far corner of HCU’s tiny Sharp Gym, which seats a thousand and contains just eight rows of bleachers.
“He never pushed it [basketball] on any of us,” Marques said. “We have Hoop Dreams, but now we have our own hoop dreams. When times get hard, we’re not really worried about the pressure that’s coming on the court. That’s really what he wanted for us.”
“[Will] felt like he needed not to disappoint me,” Gates said. “Jalen always wanted to impress me, and Marques hovers in between.”
Catherine Gates was ready to move someplace warm a dozen years ago. William said they focused on three states: Arizona, Florida, and Texas. Conveniently, he had contacts in each from his time playing basketball at Marquette. In Texas, that connection was former teammate Ben Peavy in San Antonio.
“She fell in love with the place,” Gates said of his wife’s reaction to Alamo City. And her opinion was paramount, he said, given how many family decisions they’d already made to follow his basketball career. When they decided to move to the San Antonio area, he somewhat “jumped the gun” and chose Clemens High because the school reminded him of many back in Chicago.
Will was a senior, Jalen a freshman, and Marques a fourth grader. Gates said of his youngest: “He’s Chicago-born but Texas-raised.”
His daughter’s high school basketball experience in Chicago is worth noting. When Alicia was a freshman, Gates accompanied her to meet-the-teacher night, and his presence turned heads throughout the school. The next day, the girls’ basketball coach asked Alicia if her father was William Gates. After she confirmed, little Alicia—“She’s maybe five three,” Gates said—was invited to join the freshman team. A day later, he said, she was placed on the junior varsity. A day later, she was handed a varsity uniform.
At Alicia’s first game, one of the officials asked Gates why he was there. When he said that his daughter was playing, the official told him that he’d take care of her. “He was giving her all these bogus calls,” Gates said with a laugh. “Basketball was not her thing. She played volleyball.”
As a high school freshman, Gates had to deal with being proclaimed “the next Isiah Thomas” on Chicago television. Toward the end of Hoop Dreams, William tells the filmmakers that playing basketball became “more of a job.” He accepted a scholarship offer from Marquette before his senior season began. Coaches at Kansas, Indiana, and N.C. State opted to wait and see how he played as a senior, after he recovered from two arthroscopic surgeries on his right knee.
Gates started most of Marquette’s games as a freshman and came off the bench in later seasons, still hampered by knee problems. He said Coach Kevin O’Neill told him, “You’re so intelligent, I have to have you on the court. Give me what you’ve got!”
Gates then went into ministry in Chicago, where he found fulfillment but also pain. “In a span of maybe three months, I literally buried over sixty people,” Gates said. “And maybe only five were over forty.”
Like Catherine, he yearned for some distance from their hometown. “I wanted my kids to have a life,” he said. “They’d always been driven by what Dad was doing. My wife—we’ve been together for thirty-one years—she put her life on hold. She’s thriving down here in Texas. She works for Methodist Hospital as facilities coordinator. She’s really found her footing.”
Gates got involved with basketball once again after the move to Texas. He coached an Amateur Athletic Union team, did some one-on-one training with young players, created a Hoop Dreams apparel line, and published a book called Hoop Dreams Fifth Quarter: Dreams Don’t Die. He even reunited with Agee, the other young athlete featured in Hoop Dreams, for a regular podcast. Agee played two seasons at Mineral Area College in Missouri and two at Arkansas State. This fall, Gates returned to the Windy City to join Agee and the makers of the documentary for a “Hoop Dreams at 30” panel discussion as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival.
Gates said he has watched Hoop Dreams five times—once with his family at the film’s New York premiere, once during a visit to historically Black colleges and universities, and once with each of his sons.
“Will Jr., I think, understands it the most,” Gates said. “Alicia grew up in it, but I don’t think it had the same impact. Jalen has a lot of my wife’s tendencies; he’s an in-the-moment guy. He could miss five shots, [but] in his mind, number six is going in. Marques was too young; he’s getting some of that experience now.”
“I think it’s great,” Marques said. “Yeah, they didn’t make it to the NBA, but they were able to provide for their families afterward, and that’s what everybody wants. Success is being able to provide and to be happy with where you are in life, and I think my dad has done a great job of showing that to all of us.”
Gates left Marquette in 1995 with a degree in communications. One of his proudest moments as a parent came in November 2016, when Marquette’s basketball team played a home game against then–Houston Baptist—with Will Jr. and Jalen on the roster. “They [formally] recognized me at the game,” Gates said. “Jalen and Will, both on the court at the same time. It was over-the-top amazing.”
What’s ahead for Gates? He will turn 53 later this month, and he has a sixth grandchild on the way. Alicia lives in Las Vegas, Will Jr. in San Antonio, and Jalen in Southern California. “I want to teach in the school system,” he said. “Just waiting for the right opportunity. I think I still have a lot to offer.”
Gates said he had two opportunities in his mid-twenties to make an NBA roster, even after his injury setbacks. The first was in the early 2000s, when he helped Michael Jordan prepare to return from retirement for the second time. Jordan’s Washington Wizards offered Gates a chance to make the team, but he fractured an ankle two weeks before training camp and the opportunity fizzled. Later, when the Chicago Bulls offered to give him a look, he woke up just before the tryout with a severe back injury and a 102-degree fever. “I knew at that point playing basketball professionally was going to be over,” Gates said. “I asked God to let me know if I was good enough. I should have prayed to actually play in the NBA.
“That’s the closest I came to realizing the ultimate hoop dream.”
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