After about 18 years, I finally watched the entirety of Above the Rim on YouTube. In this one, Shep (Leon) has nightmares of the time his buddy Nutso (Matthew Guletz) was killed when they played basketball on the roof of an apartment. Several years later, he becomes a guard for various high school basketball games in which one Kyle Lee Watson (Duane Martin) is the star player who's in danger of becoming too arrogant for his own good to the chagrin of his coach Rollins (David Bailey) and his mother Mailika (Tonya Pinkins). In addition, he and his friend Bugaloo (Marlon Wayans) are hangin' with a drug dealer named Birdie (Tupac Shakur) who we find out is Shep's brother. Other somewhat important characters include a bum named Flip (Bernie Mac) and an associate of Bridie's named Motaw (Wood Harris). I'll stop there and just say this was quite a compelling drama with some humorous scenes involving both Mac and Marlon, not to mention Iris Little Thomas as a waitress who tries to come on to Shep. And unlike some other films that I watched recently that dealt with ghetto life, this one seems to lean toward a more hopeful ending for some of the more deserving characters. So in summary, I quite enjoyed Above the Rim. P.S. Both Ms. Pinkins and Harris are natives of my birthtown of Chicago, Ill.