The Basketball Diaries (1995)

Teenager Jim Carroll is a drug-addicted high school basketball player who regularly gets into mischief with his friends Pedro, Mickey and Neutron on the streets of New York City and at school. Outside of basketball, he shows an artistic interest in writing, keeping his work in his journal, expressing his thoughts and creating poetry. Jim’s best friend, Bobby, is dying of leukemia; Jim frequently visits him in the hospital. Later, after a trip to a strip show cut short by an annoyed Bobby, Bobby dies, and Jim and his friends attend his funeral. Following the funeral, Jim and his friends go to the basketball court and reminisce about Bobby’s life. Depressed over Bobby’s death, Jim begins to use heroin.

At basketball practice, Jim’s coach Swifty sees Jim in the bathroom showers when he takes a short break to get high, where he then gropes him, and offers to pay him for sex. Jim refuses and pushes Swifty headfirst into a wall. As Jim’s frustrations with school and life grow over time, he imagines shooting his classmates. The next day, before a game, Jim, Pedro, and Mickey take pills from Pedro’s hat, hoping they are uppers. Neutron refuses the pills and confronts Jim about his growing habit. The pills are downers, and they cause the boys to perform disastrously during the game. A teacher who notices the boys engaging in drug use tells Jim and Mickey that they are suspended for a week, and Swifty tells Jim that he is now banned from playing basketball for his school again. Jim and Mickey, in response, resign from the team and drop out of school, while Neutron stays.