Books

Summer Reading: Top 10 Basketball Books

Jon Teitel — Thu, 29 May 2008 12:51:20 -0400

Jon Teitel’s summer reding list of the 10 best basketball books..

1. A Season on the Brink, by John Feinstein (member of the U.S. Basketball Writers Hall of Fame)

WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT: Feinstein follows Bob Knight and his Hoosiers through the 1985 86 season. The inside access allows the reader to see how Knight, one of the most fascinating coaches in college basketball history, works his magic both at practice and during a game.

2. The Breaks of the Game, by David Halberstam (Pulitzer Prize winner)

WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT: Halberstam follows the Portland Trail Blazers through the 1978-79 season. The inside access allows the reader to see the interactions between the front office, players, coaches, and the entire city of Portland (brimming with issues about race, money, and even hippies).

3. Life on the Run, by Bill Bradley (former U.S. Senator and current member of the Basketball Hall of Fame)

WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT: Bradley’s Ivy League education is clearly evident in his erudite look at his life in professional sports. Unlike Feinstein and Halberstam, Bradley’s dual roles as author/player allow an even more intimate look at life on and off the court, complete with ups (how it feels to win a championship and work as a team) and downs (the physical haul of an entire season and dealing with the fans on the road).

4. Loose Balls: the Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association, by Terry Pluto (2-time Pulitzer Prize nominee)

WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT: The ABA is largely unknown by most people born after 1980, but Pluto reminds the reader about the origins of the Slam Dunk contest, the three point basket, and some of the most colorful characters in professional basketball history. Combining the marketing efforts of a Single-A baseball team and the star power of Julius Erving, it eventually helped the NBA become the global entertainment machine it is today.

5. Heaven Is a Playground, by Rick Telander (a 4-time contributor to The Best American Sports Writing anthology)

WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT: The transformation from a focus on playground legend Fly Williams to an overview of inner city basketball in Brooklyn and its role in the lives of the people who play there was a good choice by Telander. The reader also gets in on the ground floor of the career of Albert King (brother of Bernard), who went from a then-14-year-old to ACC player of the year at Maryland to a 9-year NBA career.

6. The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams, by Darcy Frey (National Magazine Award winner for the story upon which this book is based)

WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT: With the current controversy about how long high school basketball players should have to wait until entering the NBA draft, Frey follows around the Abraham Lincoln High School basketball team, which happens to include a young phenom named Stephon Marbury. Like Albert King, Marbury honed his game on the city streets, but he is surrounded by a number of people who care about him (his teammates and family) and his talent (agents and recruiters).

7. Foul! The Connie Hawkins Story, by David Wolf

WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT: Like King and Marbury, Hawkins was a New York playground legend who later played in the NBA, but only after being banned from the NBA after falling prey to unsavory college recruiters and allegations of corruption. His naivete and poverty contributed to his fall from grace, but the ABA came to rescue and allowed him to show his high-flying skills before later gaining entry into the NBA.

8. The City Game: Basketball from the Garden to the Playgrounds, by Pete Axthelm (former Newsweek editor and ESPN commentator)

WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT: Axthelm’s focus on the 1969 70 championship season of the New York Knicks is matched shot for shot by the action on the playgrounds of New York City. Walt Frazier and Earl Monroe shine in front of the cameras, but it is Earl "The Goat" Manigault and Herman "the Helicopter" Knowings who jump higher and cause jaws to drop lower due to their amazing athleticism.

9. They Call Me Coach, by John Wooden (member of the Basketball Hall of Fame) with Jack Tobin

WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT: Wooden won more championships than anyone else in college basketball history, but Tobin’s spotlight on his philosophy of life shows that Wooden is a champion person as well as a champion coach. From the “pyramid for success” to the love of his life (wife Nell) to his thoughts on Bill Walton and Lew Alcindor, Wooden has a lot to be thankful for, and a lot to share with others.

10. Big Game, Small World, by Alexander Wolff (member of the U.S. Basketball Writers Hall of Fame)

WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT: Rather than focus on a narrow segment of basketball like many of the above authors, Wolff expands outward to discover how basketball is viewed/played/lived across the country and around the globe. It takes a second place to soccer in many nations, but his awareness of basketball as a worldwide phenomenon seems to have foreshadowed the recent NBA success of foreigners like Steve Nash/Dirk Nowitzki/Tony Parker.

Review - Across the Line: Profiles in Basketball Courage

Jeff Fox — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 11:51:14 -0500

Across the Line

Profiles in Basketball Courage: Tales of the First Black Players in the ACC and SEC

Barry Jacobs

The Lyons Press

$24.95 ($29.95 in Canada)

With February being Black History Month, now is the perfect time to check out Barry Jacobs’ Across the Line. Jacobs’ tome is a fitting tribute to the brave black basketball players who first suited up for ACC and SEC teams in the mid-1960s to early 1970s. The fact that none of these players will be known my most college basketball fans (with the probable exception of UNC’s Charles Scott) is a true crime.

Across the Line is an educational, yet very entertaining read. Each school’s first black player(s) is given his own chapter, allowing Jacobs to go into quite descriptive detail into the player’s background, the history of the school and the political and social climate in the southern states at this point in history. The hostile environment that these players were thrust into is truly shocking and sad and makes their lives all the more heroic. You truly shake your head in disbelief when reading about the racist mindsets of people at this point in time, many of them people in power positions of law enforcement, government and university leadership.

The world we live in today is far from perfect, as there are plenty of bigoted small minded people still around today (look no further than Tim Hardaway’s comments on homosexuals, a golf announcer joking that Tiger Woods should get lynched, or Don Imus). However, after you read this book and then consider that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both have fighting chances to be the next president of the United States, you see we are in a much better place today. Across the Line should be a required read for all college basketball players enjoying the freedoms that the books’ players helped make possible.

3.5 out of 5 stars

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Shawn Siegel — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 00:29:47 -0500

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Book Review: The Wages of Wins

Jeff Fox — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 09:01:59 -0500

The Wages of Wins

Taking Measures of the Many Myths in Modern Sport

David J. Berri, Martin B. Schmidt & Stacey L. Brooks

Stanford Business Books

$29.95 ($19.95 paperback) ($34.95/$23.50 Canada)

Numbers don’t lie. So when the authors of The Wages of Wins write that Dean Garrett was the most productive NBA rookie in 1996/97, and not Allen Iverson, they have the numbers to back it up. Same thing when they state that you can’t buy a championship in any sport, that NFL quarterbacks are like mutual funds or that Shaq was more productive than Kobe before the Lakers shipped Diesel to Miami.

It is one thing when an obnoxious fan or sports talk show blowhard spouts off about who is the best player or why a certain team doesn’t win games. It is quite another thing when three economics professors, which the authors of this book are, who love sports give you proof to back up their arguments. Not many casual basketball fans would agree that Allen Iverson isn’t a very productive player, but the authors have the data to show otherwise. It is hard to argue when the cold hard facts are in front of your face.

Readers of CHN will be delighted to know that an extensive part of the book deals with the NBA. While stats analysis and baseball go hand-in-hand, there isn’t enough of this type of mainstream study in the field of basketball. This book fills that need. Baseball and football, and to a lesser extent hockey, also get the stats makeover.

A word of caution to the readers out there that considers comic books heavy reading – this book does contain numbers and economic teachings. While it is still quite entertaining, there are sections where some basic understanding of numbers and economics do help (especially the couple of parts where there is a typo and the wrong number is written). However, the authors go easy on the tough number crunching and leave the real heavy lifting to the endnotes (which there are lots of, which causes the reader to do a lot of page flipping back-and-forth).

The Wages of Wins is a very important book in the field of sports economics and a very enjoyable and thought provoking read. It leaves you wanting a sequel to it (which, luckily, the writers hint at).

4 out of 5 stars

Book Review: Players and Pretenders

Jeff Fox — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 12:51:38 -0500

Players and Pretenders

The Basketball Team That Couldn’t Shoot Straight

by Charley Rosen

University of Nebraska Press

$18.95

It is not whether you win or lose but how you play the game. Yes, a very tired cliché and not very fitting in today’s modern sports world, especially on the college basketball level. Yet for the 1979-80 Running Red Devils of Bard College, it proved to be very fitting indeed.

Players and Pretenders, originally released in 1981 but re-released this year with a new afterword from its author, chronicles the Bard College (located about 90 miles north of New York City) hoops squad as they struggle through a one-win season. Their coach just happened to be the author of the book, Charley Rosen, who has gone on to author numerous tomes to hoops and is foxsports.com’s current NBA analyst.

So why should anyone care about a small time college basketball team (where some of the players hadn’t even played organized ball before) that was really bad and played almost two decades ago? Anyone who loves hoops and loves a good read, that’s who. Rosen is a fantastic writer who makes larger-than-life characters out of the players (rather pretenders) featured in the book and adds in dream sequences and flashbacks to mix things up. The fact that it was written years ago only adds to the charm, as some of the phrasing and expressions used transports the reader back to another time.

It is often forgotten that basketball is a game, and like all games, it should be about having fun. This fact was not lost on the Bard College players, thanks to their caring and wise coaches, Disco Dodds and Rosen. Anyone who has forgotten this fact ought to grab a copy of Players and Pretenders.

3.5 out of 5 stars

Book Review: Can I Keep My Jersey?

Jeff Fox — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 11:59:52 -0400

Can I Keep My Jersey?
Paul Shirley
Villard Books
$23.95 ($29.95 Canada)

The subtitle of the book sums it all up – 11 Teams, 5 Countries and 4 Years in My Life as a Basketball Vagabond. NBA diehards and/or Iowa State fans will know the name Paul Shirley from the basketball court – the rest of the world is getting to know him from his very popular blogs on ESPN.com and from this very good book.

The book is pretty much a long, very entertaining blog. Rather than another boring autobiography from a superstar player, Can I Keep My Jersey? flips the script and deals with the life of the journeyman. Anyone who has read Shirley’s writings for ESPN.com or the Phoenix Suns’ website know what to expect – funny, sarcastic, jaded, non-PC rants on the state of the world – on the court and off. The non-PC part could be a big one for readers in this ever watered down, censored world we live in – Shirley pulls no punches, with religion, stupid basketball players and people from other countries with odor issues taking the brunt of his rage.

Shirley’s journey through the book takes him to various NBA teams, but most of his life is spent in the CBA, the ABA or in various outposts in Europe. The book also contains the requisite suppository and catheter segments that all good books possess. What makes the book really unique is that it is as if a fan has written it – it just so happens that the fan is 6’10” and plays in some of the world’s best basketball leagues.

If you want an uncensored, unbiased insider view on life in the NBA, the U.S. minor leagues and European basketball, this book is for you. It is often hilarious, always interesting, and makes you realize at least one pro basketball player actually “gets it”. A very entertaining must read.

5 out of 5 stars

Book Review - Tip Off: How the 1984 Draft Changed Basketball

Jeff Fox — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 10:58:51 -0400

Tip Off – How The 1984 NBA Draft Changed Basketball Forever
Filip Bondy
Da Capo Press
$25.00 ($30.00 Canada)

New York Daily News columnist Filip Bondy’s Tip Off is out just in time to put this year’s NBA draft in perspective. While Greg Oden and Kevin Durant appear destined for greatness, there isn’t any other “superstar” apparent in the mix. On the other hand, four of the greatest players of all-time were picked in the 1984 draft – Hakeem Olajuwon, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley and John Stockton.

To think that heading into the draft Olajuwon was the only prospect of the “big four” considered a sure-fire superstar is mind-boggling. The league’s mindset on drafting players at the time (bigger is better) is analyzed and many basketball bigwigs come clean and admit that they messed up. Why Portland picked Sam Bowie over Jordan is dissected, along with the concerns over Barkley’s attitude and Stockton’s strength and skill set. While it is very interesting reading the in depth material on the four superstars listed above, it is also fascinating hearing Bowie’s and Sam Perkins’ back stories and thoughts on what went down draft day.

Where the book really excels is the behind the scenes glimpses it gives its reader. Bondy tells how Barkley tried to eat himself out of the Sixers’ draft plans in a desperate attempt to not be picked by them, how Bobby Knight reduced Jordan to tears at the 1984 Olympic team practices and Bowie’s feelings on being selected ahead of arguably the greatest player to ever lace them up.

Overall, Tip Off is a must read. While there are a couple of errors this eagle eye reviewer found (mention of Jordan’s phantom senior season in college, referring to the Virginia Cavaliers as Cleveland), this book is meticulously researched and a breeze to read. It is a must read for all CHN readers.

4.5 out of 5 stars

Book Review - Basketball Warfare: Life in the Big East

Raphielle Johnson — Fri, 04 May 2007 13:29:10 -0400

Basketball Warfare: Life in the Big East Conference
By Kevin McNamara
McNamara Publishing

$20.00 ($24.50 after shipping & handling) - www.bigeastbook.com

The Big East Conference and its development have been an important fabric in what makes up Eastern basketball ever since its inception in 1979. From the vision of Dave Gavitt spawned a league that would immediately make its presence felt on a national level, but there was always the hovering cloud of major college football over a conference created with basketball in mind. One would believe that this all came to a head with the conference shifts of 2003, but as Kevin McNamara points out in his book, the signs had been there for years.

Unlike the chronicle of the 1988-89 season done by fellow Providence Journal-Bulletin writer Bill Reynolds (“Big Hoops”) some years ago, “Basketball Warfare” uses the early chapters to set the scene for the departure of Miami, Boston College and Virginia Tech, going all the way back to important events such as the formation of the CFA (College Football Association) and subsequent suit filed by this organization and the universities of Oklahoma and Georgia against the NCAA. This suit changed the way Americans watched college sports, doing away with the idea that everyone has to be on television at least two times a season.

Along with this is another early Big East: Joe Paterno (at the time the AD at Penn State as well as the football coach) wanted to either form his own league with football being the cash cow (taking schools such as Syracuse, Pitt and BC along), or he wanted the Big East to invite the Nittany Lions. From here begins the tenuous dance between the league and major college football, leading to today’s current alignment.

After the early history lesson, McNamara writes about some of the league’s important games, players and coaches, giving readers a perspective that you don’t get to see on a daily basis. And while the chronicles of the 2005-06 season are well-done, the most important aspect of this book is the focus on the “information”, some true and some false, spread around athletics in the spring and summer months of 2003, when ACC expansion was imminent and the Big East had to come with a response. Instead of the “death sentence” many had given the league, Commissioner Mike Tranghese and his colleagues made moves that would make the Big East a viable force for years to come. There are some minor errors (the “Westchester Dog Show”), but that doesn’t take away from the quality of this work. I urge you to purchase this book.

My rating: 4 stars out of 5.

Review: Tales from MSU Basketball

Jeff Fox — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 15:42:13 -0500

Gregory Kelser’s Tales from Michigan State Basketball

This book should be named “The Life and Times of Gregory Kelser” because it is basically an autobiography. Then again it probably wouldn’t sell as many copies with that title since Kelser isn’t a household name. This despite the fact that he is one of the greatest players in Michigan State history and helped, along with some guy named Magic, lead the team to its first NCAA basketball championship in 1979.

Tales from Michigan State Basketball is a very interesting and easy read. Each chapter is broken down even further into subchapters that last about half a page or so, which keeps the book moving at a quick pace and maintains the reader’s interest. Kelser touches on all phases of his life in the book, but the most interesting parts involve that 1979 championship squad. It is also insightful to hear from a key participant in one of college basketball’s most famous games – the 1979 NCAA final where the Spartans knocked off Larry Bird’s Indiana State squad.

The only real problem with the book is in several parts Kelser goes to great lengths to let the reader know what a great player he was and how under appreciated he is. While both of those statements are probably true, it is a little off-putting to have the writer remind you of it (quite similar to Al Bundy bragging about his high school football career!).

Tales from Michigan State Basketball should be an enjoyable read for all college basketball fans, whether they are a Spartan fan or not.

3 out of 5 stars

Gregory Kelser’s Tales from Michigan State Basketball
Gregory Kelser with Steve Grinczel
Sports Publishing L.L.C.
$19.95 ($24.95 Canada)

Uncaged: Book Review

Jeff Fox — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 13:07:51 -0500

The subtitle of Uncaged is “The Rise of Greg Oden, Mike Conley and the National Champion Lawrence North Wildcats”. That pretty much sums up what the book is about, going into great detail chronicling Oden and Conley’s high school career in Indiana. The book also does a good job of introducing the Wildcats legendary coach, Jack Keefer, to the wider basketball world.

The book offers a brief glimpse into the lives of Oden, Conley and their coach, such as Oden’s mother buying him fish sticks if he scored in a game as a youngster (could a Captain Highliner endorsement deal be in his future?!). Or how embarrassed Oden would get in the early days when autograph seekers would wait for him after games. Uncaged also is refreshing because its chief subjects – Oden and Conley – come off as truly humble, down-to-earth people.

However, considering one of the authors of the book was an assistant coach on the team and the writers had behind the scenes access, the book doesn’t contain enough off court info. You do get some background info on Oden and Conley but you don’t really feel like you get to know them or what makes them tick. It tends to read like a newspaper recount of a game – you get a recap of pretty much all of the games the Wildcats play and it gets a bit redundant. More quotes from Oden and Conley would have been welcomed to get their thoughts and feelings on the circus that surely was going on around them. Also more in depth profiles on some of the dynamic duos teammates would have been nice.

Uncaged is sure to be of interest in the future when Oden (and probably Conley) are dominating the NBA. While there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the book and is a fairly interesting read, it didn’t suck in this reviewer like other recent high school hoops books did (The Jump, The Miracle of St. Anthony).

- 2.5 out of 5 stars -

Uncaged
Dave Krider, J.R. Shelt and Scott Freeman
Sports Publishing L.L.C.
$22.95 ($28.95 Canada)