Legendary Chicago-area HS coach, ‘Hoop Dreams’ star dies at 83

Legendary Chicago-area high school basketball coach Gene Pingatore, who had a starring role in the iconic documentary "Hoop Dreams," died Wednesday, the Chicago Sun-Times reported, citing multiple sources. He was 83.

As coach at St. Joseph High School, a private Catholic school in Westchester, west of the city, Pingatore became the winningest coach in Illinois high school history, going 1,103-383 in 50 years and, along the way, coaching future Basketball Hall of Famer Isiah Thomas and Wooden Award winner and NBA player Evan Turner.

Thomas and Turner were among those in the basketball community who paid tribute to Pingatore.

"I always told you, you saved my life," Thomas said, in part, in a tweet early Thursday.

Rest In Peace Mr.Pingatore you loved us and taught us life lessons through #basketball #StJoseph #Family #Coach #Champions I always told you, meeting you saved my life. Profound #sadness in my #heart a deep #hurt pic.twitter.com/rzMBUeYHtE

— Isiah Thomas (@IsiahThomas) June 27, 2019

"Still in shock," Turner posted on Instagram, "I truly believe(d) coach would be around for 30 more years. … We lost a legend, but his memories and spirit will live on thru everyone he’s touched over the years."

As recently as this past weekend, Pingatore was coaching at a high school basketball event that showcased Chicagoland's top players to hundreds of Division I coaches and, according to the Sun-Times, was planning to start his 51st season at the helm of the Chargers program.

Pingatore recorded his 1,000th career victory in 2017, triggering a massive celebration at St. Joseph. To mark the milestone, the school distributed bobblehead dolls of its beloved coach.

Under Pingatore, the Chargers won two state championships (1999 and 2015), advanced to the state final six times and won 13 sectionals. He coached three McDonald's All-Americans: Thomas, Daryl Thomas and Daryl Cunningham.

Yet as successful and well-known as Pingatore was in Chicago, it was as a central character in "Hoop Dreams," the critically acclaimed 1994 documentary, that made him famous nationally in his role at St. Joseph.

The nearly three-hour film followed high school athletes William Gates and Arthur Agee as they chased their dreams of being NBA players, while also dealing with the difficulties of a daily 90-minute commute from inner-city Chicago to a predominantly white school in the western suburbs and navigating, with varying success, accompanying socio-economic struggles.

"It was fun at first. You appreciated getting publicity," Pingatore told The Dissolve in an oral history of the film in 2014. "But as they got into making the movie, it became a pain in the neck. Every time you turned around there was a camera. It became an intrusion in what you’re doing."

Still, the documentary won multiple awards, and in 2007, the International Documentary Association named "Hoop Dreams" as its choice for the greatest documentary of all time.