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

Marshall High School coach Shawn Harrington was hired a decade after appearing in the iconic basketball documentary film Hoop Dreams. In January of 2014, he was planning to turn the team’s struggling record around with the help of some promising players. But it all came to a halt while he was driving his daughter to school. In a case of mistaken identity, two young men fired on them. Heroically using his body to shield his daughter, Harrington was struck and paralyzed.

The shooting was followed by a series of events that had a devastating impact on Harrington and on Marshall’s basketball family. Over the next three years, as a shocking number of players were murdered, it became obvious that the dream of the game providing a better life had nearly dissolved.

All the Dreams We’ve Dreamed is a true story of courage, endurance and friendship in one of America’s most violent neighborhoods. Author Rus Bradburd, who has an intimate forty-year relationship to Chicago basketball, tells Shawn’s story with empathy and care, exploring the intertwined tragedies of gun violence, health care failure, racial assumptions, union apathy and corruption in big-time basketball—and the hope that can survive them all.