Matty

**Matty** is a character in the television series *Hoops* voiced by A.D. Miles. He is a high school student and a member of the Lenwood High School basketball team, the Lenwood Colts.

## Appearance

Matty is a 7 foot 16 year old with a lanky appearance. He has medium length brown hair and is often seen wearing dark clothes and an overcoat when not in uniform.

## Character

Matty is a "16 -year-old 7-footer whose father abandoned him when he was young. Matty struggles with his body off the court and has a hard time making friends." Matty is not very bright academically and struggles with his GPA. Despite having been abandoned by his father, he does not hate him for it at first, as most of his memories with him were fun. However, upon thinking about just how his dad treated him, he realizes that he does hate him. Matty is also very naive, believing Coach Hopkins's ruse of talking about someone called "Natty," when he is actually talking about him. He has trouble being around large groups of people, admitting to feeling much more comfortable in school when it is nearly empty.

## Plot summary

### Joining the team

Matty has always resolutely refused to join the Lenwood Colts basketball team, having absolutely no interest in the sport. When Coach Hopkins comes over to try to convince him for he says is the millionth time, he is not persuaded, as Hopkins's appeal is vulgar and more focused on himself. Hopkins tries bribing Matty with a free iPad, albeit a cracked one. When this still doesn't work, he promises to get Matty laid. He hires a hooker named Connie to aid in this task, but the both of them are arrested before Connie even makes it through the front door of Matty's home. After Hopkins is bailed out of jail, however, he gets to the school and finds that Matty has joined the team. Matty explains that he did so because what Hopkins did for him was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for him in his life, that it showed that he wanted him. Though the team loses the game by 16 points, it is enough to save Hopkins's career and Matty tells Hopkins that he didn't hate it as much as he thought he would.

Matty continues playing, but struggles to bond with the team. Hopkins tells the rest of the team that he can replace them with robots if need be, ordering them to try to bond with Matty. Unfortunately, the initial attempt is a disaster, as the way that the other team-members goof off isn't his idea of fun and they all believe that he thinks he's better than them. He gives them some useful advice before leaving their home. The group tries again, this time visiting Matty's home. This goes better, as they end up being impressed by his basement, which was set up by his absent father to resemble a casino. They all get drunk and smoke weed until they pass out.

### GPA issues

Following a review of the rules for staying on the Colts basketball team, Matty comes to Coach Hopkins and reveals that his GPA is in danger of falling below the minimum 2.0 required to remain on the team. Worse, it will definitely fall below 2.0 if he fails his upcoming ethics class midterm, and his ethics teacher is Lonnie Seymour, who is notorious for his upright standards. Hopkins goes to Seymour in the hopes of bribing him, only to find that he is night unbribable. Hopkins gets together the team, insulting Matty's intelligence in front of them, but realizing that Matty is there, says that he's talking about "Natty," a ruse that Matty somehow buys.

Hopkins decides to try a new strategy, making Seymour an offer he can't refuse by placing a horse's head in his bed. He has Matty try to saw the horse's head off, but when it doesn't work, they just place the entire horse in Seymour's bed. The next morning, Hopkins finds the horse's head in his own bed and the remainder of the horse in his bathtub. Hopkins, desperate, comes up with yet another plan in which the team will try to frame Seymour for child abduction. Matty, however, declares that this going too far, and upon hearing this, Lonnie Seymour reveals that he has passed his ethics exam. Matty proved he was ethical by not going along with Hopkins's plan, though the fact that it took him so long means that he still only gets a "D."

### A big win

When Barry Hopkins Steakhouse is made a sponsor for the Lenwood Colts, Ben Hopkins's father Barry Hopkins declares that everyone in town can get a free steak at his restaurant if the Colts win. Infuriated, though not surprised that his own father would bet against the team, Coach Hopkins channels his daddy issues and those of the team to bring the game within striking distance of a win for the Colts. For the big final shot, he tries to call upon Matty, but Matty claims that he actually likes his dad. However, upon reviewing his father's past actions that ultimately led up to leaving him, he realizes that he actually hates his father a lot. He dunks the winning basket, making it so that Barry Hopkins has to cough up steaks for everyone.

### The girlfriend

Hopkins is shocked to discover that Matty has a new girlfriend named Wendy. He's convinced that she'll be a distraction to his star player and that "women weaken legs." He therefore goes to Wendy's mother and spins a story of Matty having punched an old woman's teeth out. The mother tells Wendy this, who promptly breaks up with Matty, thinking him a monster. Although Hopkins is convinced that the breakup will put Matty "in the zone," but instead, Matty breaks down in tears, barely able to play basketball at all.

Realizing that he must reunite Matty with his girlfriend in order to get him in "the zone" again, he takes him to the home of Shannon, his estranged wife. There, he shows him a video that he once made for Shannon when he was on sleeping pills, in which he performed a romantic song for her. He hopes that the video will inspire Matty, but Matty tells him he doesn't have those kind of moves. Hopkins tells him that it was all "Pill Ben" and Matty asks for Pill Ben's help. That evening, Hopkins takes a load of sleeping pills, but the result is that "Pill Ben" breaks into Wendy's home and vandalizes the wall with Matty's name before urinating underneath it. Hopkins is thrown in jail, but Matty manages to get Wendy's mother to drop the charges by going to Wendy and performing his own inspiring version of the song created by Hopkins. Hopkins, thrilled to be out of jail and have Matty back tells Matty and Wendy that they can do whatever they want, so long as Matty remains in the zone.

### The gay mafia

Matty stands up to a group called the "gay mafia" that insults the Colts, telling them there's nothing wrong with being straight. He later joins the team when they go to fight the group on behalf of Scott, a gay member of the team that they've been teasing. He warns the team that the gay mafia won't fight like them, that there's going to be a lot of singing and dancing, only for the team to get thrashed. Later, Matty tells Coach Hopkins about Scott's "gay mafia" problem, hoping that he'll intervene, but Hopkins is in a zen state following therapy sessions with an unconventional anger management counselor and spiritual advisor known as the DAWA. However, the gay mafia's taunts snap him out of it and he finally stands up for Scott.

### Wandering the school

Coach Hopkins faces off against Damian Chapman, an old rival with which he has an ongoing bet regarding the yearly game between the Colts and Chapman's team, Bridgeport High. Hopkins believes Matty to be his secret weapon that will allow him to finally notch a win against Chapman and Bridgeport High, only to learn that Chapman has two seven-foot players in the form of the "Chin twins." Panicking, he stirs up the Lenwood High School faculty to strike in the hopes that the game will be canceled.

With the school closed, Matty and the other members of the team take to roaming the school's empty halls, goofing around. While doing so, Matty encounters Principal Opal, who believes that the school is haunted by "the ghost of Lenwood High." She asks what he's doing there and he tells her that it turns out he *likes* school, he just hates it when it's filled with people. He takes her around the school, helping her to see that what she thought was a ghost was just him and his classmates. In the process, he also rescues Bryan, who was trapped in a locker. Hopkins ends the school strike after learning that the Chin twins have been hospitalized in an accident and tells Matty that it's their time to shine. Chapman then shows up, revealing that the newspaper story about the Chin twins' hospitalization was a ruse planted by him, then his team proceeds to crush the Colts.

### The counselor and going on the road

Matty and the other Colts teammates attend a wake for Coach Singleton, another coach at Lenwood High who passed away unexpectedly. During the wake, a delivery driver named Kyle G. is killed in a fiery accident and a grief counselor named Dr. Brooks is brought in to counsel the students. Matty attends a session with her along with fellow players DJ and Timebomb, but three of them leave when the bell rings for the end of the day, Matty admitting to her that they're only there because they wanted to miss the last period. Dr. Brooks is later killed by another delivery driver bringing food for Coach Hopkins and Matty admits that he seriously does need therapy.

Not long after this incident, the Colts receive a surprise invitation to attend a prestigious invitational in Cincinnati, OH. On the ride there, Matty is excited about the trip, saying that he loves an overnighter. The trip, however, ends up being a bit of a disaster when the team hatches a plan to meet girls by cleaning up a pool using industrial-grade chemicals. They and the players and cheerleaders on the other teams all suffer severe chemical burns, forcing the invitational to be canceled entirely.

### Henderson Prep

Matty hears from a garbageman that Coach Hopkins had sex with his wife Shannon. He later reports this back when Hopkins boasts of it to the team. Not long after this, Hopkins shocked and brought back down to Earth when a scout named Coach Lamonte shows up at Lenwood High, telling him that he wants to recruit Matty to come and play at Henderson Prep. Worried over the prospect of losing his star player, he reports the news to Matty, who is just as troubled by it as he is. He doesn't want to leave Lenwood High, but knows that it his mother would jump at the opportunity to have him go there. He and Hopkins therefore hatch a plan in which Hopkins's hooker friend Connie poses as Matty's mother during a meeting at Matty's home with Lamonte. Unfortunately, Connie fails at the job, somehow allowing herself to be talked into letting her "son" transfer to Henderson Prep.

Desperate, Hopkins goes to Lamonte begging him not to take his star player, but Lamonte tells him that if he allows Matty to go, there could be an assistant coaching job in for him. Hearing this, Hopkins does a complete 180. He agrees to these terms, then goes to Matty's mother himself and convinces her to let Matty go to Henderson Prep, but tells her not to tell Matty that they talked. He then reports to Matty that his mother is making him go, telling him that he'll come with him so he won't be alone. The two then go on the road together, though Hopkins's plans for a big, dramatic exit are stymied by a flat tire.

## Quotes

* "*It just showed that you really wanted me here. You know, no one in my entire life has ever wanted me anywhere. You know, my dad left when I was...*" - Matty to Coach Hopkins on why he joined the Colts, "The Pilot"

## References

1. ↑ *Deadline*: ‘Hoops’: Premiere Date & Teaser For Netflix’s Adult Toon Series; Rob Riggle & Others Join Cast by Erik Pederson. July 20, 2020.