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.
Chapter 7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary
In Chapter 7, Lonnie and Cal go to see Mr. O’Donnel, a wealthy white man who is helping to coordinate the sponsorship of the tournament. From the moment they enter the office, Lonnie feels that Mr. O’Donnel is intentionally making them “remember where [their] place was” (110). O’Donnel wants Cal and the team not to cause any bad press, referencing a person named Rashid who called to tell O’Donnel about Cal’s reputation for causing trouble in the past.
Lonnie affirms that Cal should coach, heading to the practice facility to tell the rest of the team. When he gets there, they all head inside to find the facility has been trashed. Worst, Ox’s parakeet has been killed. When Paul supposes that a drug addict was responsible, Lonnie pushes back: “[W]hoever was here… wanted to hurt us” (117). The team members start cleaning up a little.
The team has a winning streak, and Lonnie is happy that Mary-Ann is coming to his games. When he tells Mary-Ann about the person named Rashid, she explains that it’s probably Juno Rashid, though they don’t know how Juno would know Cal. At practice the next day, Lonnie fills Cal in on the information. Practice closes with Cal explaining that no one on the team should be talking to scouts at the game the next day.
The big game is against a team with some white players, including a star named Sweet Jesus who dunks on Lonnie in his first play. Lonnie’s team wins, but it’s a hard game; he feels that “it brought [them] back to earth” (124). After the game, Lonnie sees Cal argue with two men and then go into a car with them.
That night, Mary-Ann talks to Lonnie about why they’ve never had sex. He explains that he wants it to be “different” (127) with her; after some banter back and forth, Lonnie finally says “I love you” (129) to Mary-Ann. They have intercourse, and Lonnie reflects afterwards that he loves “her more than anything that [he] had ever loved before” (129).
When Cal doesn’t reappear, Lonnie gets worried. The team loses a game. Lonnie visits Aggie, who tells him more about Cal’s past. Then Aggie takes Lonnie to Cal’s apartment, where she cries.
The team’s next game is an important one: It’s going to be on television versus a team with several white players again, including one star named Tomkins. Since Cal still isn’t there, the team votes for Lonnie to coach. As soon as play starts, it is clear that both Tomkins and the refs are there to make sure the whiter team wins. After several bad calls, Lonnie loses his cool and gets a technical foul. It only takes a few more minutes for Lonnie to get a second technical foul, which means he has to leave the court. The team loses.
The chapter closes as Lonnie finds out from Aggie that Cal is in jail. Lonnie bails him out with Mary-Ann, who has stolen some more checks and cashed them to cover the cost. Cal looks “old and mad” (150) and reacts poorly when his father also arrives. Cal goes into a frustrated tirade about being treated like “one big dumb JOKE!” (153) and tells Lonnie he isn’t coaching anymore.
Chapter 7 Analysis
A critical underlying theme of Hoops is father-son relationships, or those that mirror a father-son dynamic, like the one between Lonnie and Cal. Lonnie’s back-and-forth relationship with Cal, where he must figure out how to accept this older man in his life, is an aspect of the plot that constantly develops as the book nears its climax. Lonnie’s tension with Cal is reflected in Cal’s eventual confrontation with his own father, which Lonnie witnesses in Chapter 7. Myers’s choice to include these two relationships in the novel is intentional; Hoops becomes a text that can cause readers to reflect on their own family relationships.
Father-son relationships are brought to the forefront at the conclusion of Chapter 7, when Lonnie listens to Cal’s rant after being released from prison. When Cal sarcastically responds to his own father, Lonnie reflects that “in a way [he] understood about the hurting going on between Cal and his father” (151). To Lonnie, the hurt is caused by experiencing trauma in the relationship at a young age and not being able to “forgive [the] father for what he had done to that kid” (152). This new understanding on Lonnie’s part is an important character development, since the novel opens on Lonnie feeling an unnamable anger towards his own father. By watching Cal’s inability to forgive, Lonnie experiences a shift in his capacity for empathy, though some of his anger towards his father is transferred to Cal instead.
Much of Lonnie’s idealistic perspective about basketball is challenged as the tournament progresses and Lonnie is forced to realize that money and profit are major factors in the basketball world. After their meeting with O’Donnel, Lonnie listens as Cal explains that “O’Donnel is what basketball is all about” (114). Although Lonnie doesn’t always accept Cal’s more jaded perspective, in this case the interaction with O’Donnel shifts Lonnie’s ideas about what basketball is and should be about. Lonnie thinks to himself, “I didn’t dig O’Donnel telling us what to do and playing his little game” (114). Lonnie’s internal resistance to playing basketball for a white man’s profit is a vital aspect of his developing adult self.
Another critical character development in Chapter 7 is Lonnie’s ability to express love to Mary-Ann. Scenes with Mary-Ann are the primary moments when Lonnie can express fragility and vulnerability, which he generally resists. Mary-Ann functions as an external expression of Lonnie’s conscience; she constantly challenges him to do what is right for him. Before they finally have sex, Mary-Ann pushes Lonnie by telling him, “The only way it’s going to be different is if you make a commitment to me” (128). To Mary-Ann—and, to some extent, to Lonnie’s subconscious—commitment is the antidote to many of the problems Lonnie faces in the outside world. Through expressing love and tenderness with Mary-Ann, Lonnie can move towards a turning point where he can express less anger and have his needs met more fully.
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