Throughout the Native American reservations scattered around the Black Hills of western South Dakota, the locals' love of basketball borders on obsession, offering a nightly escape from days flush with hopelessness and indescribable poverty.

No matter how brightly the community's young hardwood stars shine on the court, though, many seem destined to follow the paths of those who support them from the stands. Unemployment, alcohol and drug abuse have tightened their grip on the Lakota people, and the reservation has become a place where suicides quadruple the national average and funerals fail to discriminate between young and old.