Fathers and father figures are a critical theme in Hoops. The novel opens on Lonnie reflecting on his father’s absence; he is both confused and sad but doesn’t know how to move forward. Much of how Lonnie processes his emotions is through basketball. Rather than acknowledging or working through his thoughts he allows them to be on pause until he figures them out. Thus, Cal’s entrance into Lonnie’s life is especially important: Cal becomes the father figure that Lonnie was missing.

As a young Black man growing up in New York, Lonnie is repeatedly put in situations where he needs guidance. The “edge” (2) in his relationship with his father causes him pain that he tries to push down. This traumatic loss impacts some of the ways that Lonnie reacts to other relationships: When he feels emotional tension, he either attempts to ignore it or resolve his feelings through violence. Later in the novel, when Lonnie witnesses Cal refusing to mend his own relationship with his father, Lonnie reflects: “What was bugging Cal was not that his father had done him wrong, but that his father had done wrong to a kid that had later become Cal, and the man couldn’t forgive his father for what he had done to that kid” (152).