All the Dreams We've Dreamed: A Story of Hoops and Handguns on Chicago's West Side

Marshall High School coach Shawn Harrington was about to turn his team's struggling record around with the help of promising point guard Tim Triplett. But it all came crashing to a halt when he was caught in a drive-by shooting in a case of mistaken identity. Using his body to shield his daughter from gunfire, Harrington is struck and paralyzed. All the Dreams We've Dreamed is a heartrending story about gun violence on Chicago's West Side. Within a year, as Harrington contends with his paralysis, two young men dear to him are killed: first, Ontario Brown Jr., his best friend's son, and next, Triplett. Harrington is forced to reexamine his own mother's murder in 2003. Author Rus Bradburd, who has an intimate forty-year relationship to Chicago basketball, shows readers how Shawn Harrington's story reveals the intertwined tragedies of senseless gun violence, health care failure, racial assumptions, union apathy, gender inequality, and corruption in big-time basketball. It is also, however, a story of the nature of friendship, of communities, and of hope.