REGGIE REYNOLDS is a black high-school senior who, like most other kids in his Brooklyn neighborhood, imagines ultimate success to be a college basketball scholarship followed by a career in the NBA. Unfortunately, he stinks at basketball; his real talents, which no one but an unpopular math teacher seems to appreciate, are intellectual. After he acquires a pair of mysterious second-hand sneakers that give him astonishing basketball skills such that even Michael Jordan would envy, his dreams seem on the way to becoming true - until reality catches up with him, with a vengeance.