This movie had all of the right ingredients for a powerful message, but failed to stick together in time for the final product.
This kid had severe Dyscalculia, where he depends on blocks in incrementing sizes to correlate numbers with it's context. Even worse, he is at the level where he needs someone to interpret the scoreboard for him. There are references to athletes like Kobe or Lebron who made it to the pros without focusing on academics. Those two players did not make it to the top as dumb jocks. They have athleticism AND intelligence.
So this 8th grade kid comes out of nowhere and attends a school with competitive sports program, and even makes his way into a starting spot within a day of joining. Somehow this team improves because of him and they are in the spotlight, and even receive upgrades to their equipment.
Then there is his father whose hopes of being a professional athlete got derailed and suffers long term affects of a concussion. The kid is somehow convinced his dreams to be a professional athlete will come true, and that his father was destined to suffer his own fate. If this was not delusional, the father pushes his child to enter this student-athlete system and out smart it.
While all of this is happening, this kid got a look under the hood of this student-athlete process, records a conversation and posts it on social media, and that's the end of his journey. After all that, the moral of the story is, schools use student-athletes, and these said students get nothing in return.
There is no development of character! If a boy wants to be a professional basketball player, wouldn't it be helpful to at the very least be able to read the scoreboard? This movie implies it's okay to ignore academics if it is considered acceptable.
It is sad how kids get baited into becoming a student-athlete, but this case has a living example of what it's like to be one and not succeed. How can they now learn from this?
This kid had severe Dyscalculia, where he depends on blocks in incrementing sizes to correlate numbers with it's context. Even worse, he is at the level where he needs someone to interpret the scoreboard for him. There are references to athletes like Kobe or Lebron who made it to the pros without focusing on academics. Those two players did not make it to the top as dumb jocks. They have athleticism AND intelligence.
So this 8th grade kid comes out of nowhere and attends a school with competitive sports program, and even makes his way into a starting spot within a day of joining. Somehow this team improves because of him and they are in the spotlight, and even receive upgrades to their equipment.
Then there is his father whose hopes of being a professional athlete got derailed and suffers long term affects of a concussion. The kid is somehow convinced his dreams to be a professional athlete will come true, and that his father was destined to suffer his own fate. If this was not delusional, the father pushes his child to enter this student-athlete system and out smart it.
While all of this is happening, this kid got a look under the hood of this student-athlete process, records a conversation and posts it on social media, and that's the end of his journey. After all that, the moral of the story is, schools use student-athletes, and these said students get nothing in return.
There is no development of character! If a boy wants to be a professional basketball player, wouldn't it be helpful to at the very least be able to read the scoreboard? This movie implies it's okay to ignore academics if it is considered acceptable.
It is sad how kids get baited into becoming a student-athlete, but this case has a living example of what it's like to be one and not succeed. How can they now learn from this?