The Basketball Diaries plot
"The true story of the death of innocence and the birth of an artist."
Jim Carroll (DiCaprio) is a member of the basketball team at a Catholic school in New York. Jim and his friends, however, hardly behave like devout youths. The basketball team manager steals from the opponents' lockers and the boys' favorite pastime is experimenting with pills. Jim's life soon spirals into a downward spiral of pills, cough drops, booze and breakneck feats. Together with his best friend Mickey, he is thrown out of the team, temporarily removed from school and thrown out of the house by his mother. The boys go down the criminal path to get money and even assault an old woman. Then Jim comes into contact with heroin.