After he is cut from his travel basketball team--the very same team that his father once led to national prominence--twelve-year-old Danny Walker forms his own team of cast-offs that might have a shot at victory.

Best friends Isaac and Marco face various challenges in sixth grade, such as Isaac getting better grades, Marco winning a spot on the basketball team, and both seeing their efforts make a change in their respective family lives. They hope their friendship and support for one another will be enough to help them from falling short.

A series of poems describes all the baffling changes at home and at school in twelve-year-old Joylin's transition from tomboy basketball player to not-quite-girly girl.

"These days, Tre Brun is happiest when he is playing basketball on the Red Lake Reservation high school team -- even though he can't help but be constantly gut-punched with memories of his big brother, Jaxon, who died in an accident. When Jaxon's former teammates on the varsity team offer to take Tre under their wing, he sees this as his shot to represent his Ojibwe rez all the way to their first state championship. This is the first step toward his...

A basketball coach visiting Bailey Elementary is short and has a treasure. Could he be a leprechaun?

In 1974, after Julie's parents divorce, she moves to a new San Francisco neighborhood where the school does not have a girls' basketball team, so she fights for the right to play on the boys' team.