69 pages • 2 hours read
Walter Dean MyersHoops
Fiction | Book | Middle Grade | Published in 1981A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary
Lonnie and the team begin practicing, under Cal’s supervision, at a new, fancier gym. Cal has Lonnie stay to work with him one-on-one. After some scrimmaging and drills, Cal coaches Lonnie on how to “use [his] talent” (43). Later that day, Lonnie stops by to see Paul, but Paul is busy with some new friends.
The team starts the Tournament of Champions that week by playing a team with only one star player. When the game starts “sloppy” (48), Lonnie loses his cool. Cal yells at the team. After they lose the game, Cal lectures the team: “We got young black men here who choose to lose instead of winning” (52). The tension eases after the teammates start relaxing post-game. They have a few drinks and then Lonnie walks Cal home.
Lonnie tells Cal that one of the basketball scouts offered him a college opportunity. Cal chides Lonnie, explaining that he should expect to get scammed. That evening, Cal tells Lonnie about his romantic past and about his history as a basketball player who was almost successful but lost it all by intentionally altering the outcome of a game for gambling purposes. Lonnie listens to the sad story and doesn’t “know what to think about” (61).
Chapter 4 Summary
Chapter 4 opens on Lonnie seeing Paul in passing; Lonnie is surprised when Paul has enough money to bring his friends to a basketball game. Still thinking over Cal’s story from the night before, Lonnie goes over to Mary-Ann’s house, where they have a flirtatious conversation about their relationship. Lonnie feels apprehensive about getting closer to Mary-Ann. The couple head over to the gym and Mary-Ann meets Cal.
The next day, Cal invites Lonnie to meet Aggie, his “old lady” (69). As they ride the train, Cal explains that Aggie was good enough to be a professional singer, but like many Black people, she wasn’t able to “make it” (70). Lonnie watches Cal and Aggie’s conversation with interest, admiring Aggie’s talents when she sings a song.
A little later, Lonnie meets back up with Mary-Ann, whose face is “bruised and swollen” (79) after getting in an argument with Tyrone, her boss at a club, and Paul, who hit her. The conflict started when Tyrone had asked to see Paul; when Mary-Ann tried to ask Paul what it was about, he slapped her. Lonnie is worried and brings his gun with them to the club late that night. At the club, they discover some gambling debts and IOUs, as well as a set of envelopes with people’s checks in them that Mary-Ann figures out are stolen. Lonnie and Mary-Ann take the money, noting the address where the checks were taken from.
Chapters 3-4 Analysis
Masculinity continues to be a central element of Lonnie’s development and identity. In Chapters 3 and 4, he reflects more on how gender impacts romantic relationships and how he approaches relationships with other men. Through interactions with Mary-Ann, Cal, and Aggie, Lonnie clarifies his ideas about masculinity. When Lonnie has a more heated emotional exchange with Mary-Ann about his feelings, he playfully reflects that “maybe [Mary-Ann] was as dangerous as she said she was” (66). Lonnie’s impression that Mary-Ann, as a woman and potential partner, is “dangerous” when she gets closer to him is intimately tied to his own feelings about masculinity. This is explored further when Lonnie thinks about meeting Cal’s “woman” (72), Aggie. Lonnie reflects, “If you want to know a guy, you’ve got to check him out with his woman” (72). For Lonnie, a man’s masculinity and personality are intricately linked to how that man behaves with women. Although Lonnie hasn’t yet figured out what his relationship with Mary-Ann means to him or what it says about him, he is actively engaged in investigating masculinity and how he understands it.
With the start of the basketball tournament comes a distinctive shift in Lonnie’s understanding of how he fits into a larger community. Lonnie is forced to negotiate his relationship to his coach, his team, and to his own self and needs. As Lonnie struggles with participating productively with his teammates, he reflects on whether accepting help is a healthy part of one’s identity. This is an important choice on Myers’ part as an author: Lonnie’s struggle to figure out how he, as an individual, fits into a larger network of people is a classic conflict for adolescents and young adults. Even though Lonnie is able to listen to his coach describe that winning means having “a team effort” (46), he still feels that he “mostly” (69) doesn’t need help from people. This budding tension is a part of the larger arc of the novel’s plot. If Lonnie cannot figure out how to accept help and, in turn, support his teammates, then neither he nor his team will be successful.
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