The moral of this story is that even in the midst of a community who lives in fear of gangsters, characters who have grown up rough can overcome their weaknesses and become better people.

In this book, we see Lonnie transform from a selfish, streetwise kid who eats, sleeps and breathes basketball to a young man who understands the consequences of his actions and understands the importance of maintaining high moral values.

Lonnie lives in a really terrible environment, in which your coach can be stabbed for putting the best player on the court and your girlfriend can get injected with heroin because she happens to inadvertently learn something about how a basketball tournament has been fixed. In spite of all this, he is ultimately able to overcome the odds and become a respectable young man.

We can see the transformation in Lonnie if we look at his actions towards the beginning of the book and compare them to some of his actions later in the story. Early on, he takes advantage of a robbery to grab a case of scotch that he does not pay for. Later, Lonnie is able to look up to Cal, a semi-homeless alcoholic, while simultaneously realizing that he does not want to turn out like him.