Last Dance

by John Feinstein

Exploring what it means to be a school, a coach, and a player in college basketball's Final Four, Feinstein exposes the driving forces behind one of the most revered events in American sports. Readers will also find dramatic stories from the officials and referees to the scouts and ticket-scalpers.

Genres: Sports, Basketball, Nonfiction, History, Audiobook, Adult

401 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

John Feinstein was an American sportswriter, author, and sports commentator.

Reviews

[Mara · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was neither John Feinstein's best work, nor the best writing on the world of college hoops. However, though I'm terribly behind on reviewing bigger and better books, with less than two weeks left before this year's Last Dance, I wanted to give this a whirl before the window of relevance closes.

This glimpse “Behind the Scenes at the Final Four” is not for new fans. Although I do love me some “bracketology,” I felt out of my league for some of the reminiscing among Feinstein and his various interviewees. Mike Krzyzewski (aka Coach K) sets the scene perfectly in his introduction.

“To get to [the Final Four], you have to have a number of ingredients. You have to have been able to recruit very good players, you have to have a very patient family, you need excellent assistants, and you need luck. You need to keep key players healthy and, most of the time, you need to win at least one game that you probably deserved to lose.”

That's right folks, even among the best of the best, from Bobby Knight, to Dean Smith, and, of course, the legendary John Wooden, the coaches know that you can give it your best, earn your place, and even deserve to win, but that doesn't mean you'll go home a champion. In this spirit, coaches are able to take the undesirable title of BCNTHWTNC (that's Best Coach Never to Have Won the National Championship) at least somewhat in stride.

So why the madness over March Madness? Well, it hasn't always been that way. It wasn't until 1973, with Magic/Bird headliner, that the tournament was even televised. There are the cinderella stories, the heartbreakers—the cast is made up of: coaches, players, refs, announcers, and even “The Committee.”

But, why am I telling you about these stories when we could all be sitting in front of our televisions watching new history unfold before our eyes?!? There are a boatload of amazing visuals out there, but (due to my laziness) I'll just direct you toward the bevy of March Madness Infographics and, heck, I'll even throw in a cheat sheet (by ClassesandCareers) for the uninitiated among us!

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

As NBA announcer Mark Jackson would say, "John Feinstein, you're better than this!". I've read about 10 of Feinstein's books, starting with Season on the Brink re Bob Knight, and they're mostly terrific, especially when he chooses less well-covered territory (e.g. Patriot League basketball or long-term aftermath of Kermit Washington punch of Rudy T. or Army-Navy football game, rather than ACC basketball or Final Four). But this one is kind of phoned in. A couple good, non-obvious chapters giving inside perspectives of people on the tournament selection committee and refs, buried in hundreds of pages of fawning over well-known coaches (if you are not already sick of Roy Williams and Coach K, this book should do the trick).

Two main stylistic complaints:

1. Where's the filter? JF needs a strong editor with the throw weight to tell a best-selling veteran author that some stuff he knows is not worth including. My first candidate for the ax is the riveting anecdote about Jim Nantz adjusting Billy Packer's tie before they start announcing the finals for CBS, which fed into a pointless comment from John Thompson about how he never used to wear fancy clothes like contemporary coaches do.

2. Repetition is good for perfecting your free throws, but bad for your writing. For .000001% of his royalties he could hire [even if the publisher won't] a college basketball fan to spend a saturday reading the near-final manuscript straight through and marking the repeat stories. Yes, I realize Bill Bradley broke the record for points in a single game in the Final Four. You mentioned that 30 pages ago and 100 pages ago and........I even remember Chris Webber's ill-fated timeout call from real life and from 25 pages ago and........ The whole thing reads as though he dictated it and had someone else type it up and then never read it straight through.

Carping aside, there are few sports events as exciting as the final four, so even a hastily assembled book about it contains some reminders of great moments. I can still feel the ice-cold floor in the rundown apartment in Somerville, MA where I was living the night Lorenzo Charles dunked the followup of Derek Whittenburg's (from DeMatha Catholic HS in Hyattsville MD) airball just before the buzzer to give NC State the huge upset win over Houston (the Phi Slamma Jamma team) to win the title, and.......[don't get me started; this could go on as long as a Feinstein book......]

[Betsy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have had this book on my shelf for a few years. I decided to pull it out and read it during March Madness. Parts of it I really enjoyed; reading about players and coaches and announcers and games from long ago brought back some great memories! Other parts became somewhat boring. The other thing that brought my rating down was Feinstein seemed to be continually jumping around. He was often going back and forth between various years, talking about certain teams or situations, which made it somewhat of a challenge to keep everything he was saying straight. I believe it was that was because of the way his chapters were, but it just didn’t always flow well.

[Betsy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since March Madness is my favorite time of year, I knew I would enjoy this book. It has many details of the history of the NCAA tourney. The final chapters are all about the 2005 U of I vs UNC championship game. Unfortunately U of I lost, but it was a season to remember.

[Christy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the best Feinstein I’ve ever read, but I enjoyed the stories of the Final Four.

[Kathy]

Seeing as how the tournament is fast approaching, and the Pac-10 gave me very little to pay attention to this year, I picked this book up again this weekend. And will be putting it back down. John Feinstein is terrific on NPR, but this book makes me feel like I'm hanging out with Leslie Knope on "Parks and Recreation". She's very excited about name dropping for all the Pawnee movers and shakers, but we have no idea who they are so we are more bemused rather than interested. I'm sure the stories in this book are a lot more interesting to those who have followed college basketball for years and already have opinions about many of the coaches, but I don't think the stories are very interesting for those of us who have lived outside that sphere.

[Brad · Rating 2 out of 5]

This might be the nail in the Feinstein coffin for me. For a guy who gets so much great information, he never knows when to end a passage, let alone how to transition them coherently. And if he would take all the cliches out of this book (and his others I have read) it would have been half as long and frustrating. As a college basketball fan, I could not have felt more patronized by someone who obviously has a lot of inside knowledge, but no idea how to share it with the world in an exciting way.

[Jordan Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the book, Last Dance: Behind the scenes at the Final Four, it talks about the journey of coaches and what it takes to win a championship in basketball at the college level. The author talks about Coach Mike Krzyzewski's journey to success in college basketball. For years now Coach Krzyzewski has been one of the most successful college basketball coaches of all time. He is so good that he has been coaching the USA men's national team and has led them to multiple gold medals in the Olympics. But before of all of this fame and stardom as a college basketball coach, he was hated by most Duke fans.

In the beginning of the book it talked about how he was the assistant coach at Army college. He was very successful at this time of his life. He was at the high point of his life when he was the assistant coach at Army college. Since he was so good his name started to be recognized by other schools. He had a lot of offers to choose from. Then in the middle of the book, he finally made his choice of what he wanted to do. He narrowed it down to either taking over the head coaching job at Army, or take his talents to Duke University. He ended up choosing Duke, so he could start fresh in the program. The job wasn't as easy as he thought it would be. He led Duke to their first losing season in fifteen years. This did not settle well with the fans and were wanting him fired right away. Then at the end of the book, it talked about how he finally found his grove at Duke, by finally making the NCAA tournament in his third year as head coach. Then a few seasons later they made the final four and then went on to win the NCAA tournament. The fans instantly started to love him, and he has been their head coach ever since. In each moment of the book, you can tell what his mood is during these times. It is very detailed in that you can always feel their emotions through the authors words and the actions that are being described. As he went on in life, he had ups and downs. I think that the down times really helped shape who he is today as a coach. He took his bad times and turned them into learning experiences and motivation. They way they relate is that they always connect to what happens next in his life. He takes his past experiences to help him with what happens next in his journey. The theme that I see in the book is that no matter what he just keeps on giving everything his best, day in and day out. He tries to not let what other people think of him get him down. He just tries to be the best he can be everyday.

[Darien Koons · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great Insider Info, a Bit Disorganized

As a dedicated college basketball fan, I had to pick up this book as soon as I saw it. The Tournament in March is one of the highlights of my year. So, if I could learn more about this great event and maybe get a little bit of an inside look, it could be incredibly entertaining for me.

With this goal in mind, I was not disappointed. This is a must-read book for any die-hard college basketball fan. It has interviews and quotes from coaches that you won't get anywhere else. Stories from Final Fours past and present, as well as observations from those attending since it started. Most interestingly, it takes a close look at the 2005 Final Four in St. Louis, which it covers in fantastic detail (this book was published shortly after).

Now... the reason that this book gets a 3-star review despite my love for the content... the book was difficult to follow. It often cut quickly between different Final Fours in different decades. It weaves into, out of, and back into many of the stories at different points in the book. Because of this, you're not always exactly sure what is being discussed. The book can be very repetitive by having to regurgitate details already shared to get you mentally reinvested in the story being told. The book is relatively short and lacks a clear focus. The last, and biggest, the problem is that I found at least two details that were just inaccurate.

If you are a college basketball die-hard, don't miss this book. If you aren't... I would pass.

[William Lowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to this book thanks to the Libby App. I also own hardcover copy of the book. I enjoyed the topic of this book. It’s part report and part history using the 2005 NCAA Basketball championship as the focal point. This jogged a lot of memories for me. I was in high school at the time and was a big NCAA basketball fan. In fact, that year I ran one of my schools bracket pools. John did an excellent job making the reader understand the weight of what it took to make it to the championship game and what it took to win. This didn’t focus on one specific person but gave attention to different people involved in the tournament, very entertaining for me to read (listen). One thing I will note is, I don’t think the audio book includes all that is included in the actual hardcover book. I noticed that the audio book at one point skipped 4 paragraphs when I was using the book to follow along.

[Matt Pacenza · Rating 1 out of 5]

When Feinstein passed recently, I decided to look for one of his books and read this one. I'm sorry to say (RIP, John) how much I disliked this. It was so, so thin. A collection of dozens of anecdotes, most of which are quite well known to anyone following sports in the 80s and 90s, and nearly all of which serve to lionize college coaches. One of the most tedious elements of college sports is that the celebrities are rarely the players (the best players are only there for a single season) but the coaches. I'm sure some of these are wonderful men, but basketball is beautiful because of its athleticism and improvisation, and none of that seems to interest Feinstein, so much more focused on the stories coaches tell of the Good Ol Days. One final note that bugged me so much: Feinstein managing to make the book in large part about how much harder and worse his job has gotten. No one cares, John.

[John Matney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Feinstein may know more about ACC basketball than anyone else so read his book.

I make it a point to read just about anything Feinstein gets published. Beginning with Season on the Brink, his great book about the Indiana Hoosiers and through this one, he does an outstanding job of showing the reader the human side of the coaches, players and officials, but provides an excellent critical examination of the many flaws of the blue blazers in the NCAA whose greed and arrogance are almost unmatched.

[Robert James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book about the Final Four and March Madness. Great book to read during the tournament. Obviously a little outdated but still an entertaining look at the history of the Final Four and some of the characters that have made college basketball and the tournament an event like no other outside of the Super Bowl.

[Chris Workman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the best book I've ever read and also not the worst. Feinstein shares some interesting stories about players, coaches, referred, and NCAA officials. He also provided a behind the scenes look at the tournament. A fun, quick read, but not Feinstein's best work by far.

[Brian Bowsher · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disappointing. Book seemingly written for people who are not fans of college basketball. The same anecdotes are repeated multiple times, oddly.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

book on tape in one drive! really fun to hear @ the NCAA - especially since it really focused a lot on the ACC games... and the run to the" Last Dance" on the courts!!

[Joe Budzelek · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my favorite sports writers, Feinstein's humanity rich stories helped fill the void of missing March Madness.

[Michael Chen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read on March Madness and the Final Four

[Elisha Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Always a sucker for a basketball book. Feinstein is great- he knows how to bring out the stories behind sport that make it intriguing.

[Tom Corridon · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was like sitting in a bar watching someone drone on about 30 years of final four stories. Not Feinstein best work.

[Spencer Dempewolf · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.85 stars. Outdated read in 2025 but fantastic synopsis of the major figures of CBB history. RIP Feinstein.

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good behind the scenes and inside look at everything that encompasses March Madness and The Final Four spanning the course of several decades. Coaches. Players. Fans. Referees. NCAA. The committee. Etc.
Good stories.

[Jamie Lahman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everything and everything regarding the Final Four can be found in this book. Mr. Feinstein covers every single aspect of the weekend. He starts quite chronologically, matching the events that take place in earliest in the weekend, earliest in the book, or at least for the most part. Some chapters feel awkward in the placement. For instance, the chapter entitled "Partying" describes the events the NCAA uses to keep people occupied until the next basketball game is played. This chapter beginnings on page 128, while the chapter that goes over the selection processes of the tournament, called "The Committee," starts on page 210.
Mr. Feinstein has compiled some very interesting stories into his book. Some stories not be too interesting to a person who doesn't enjoy basketball, but to read about Vermont beating Syracuse, even if in the first round, just fills one with a sense awe. Other stories like Mr. Wojcik from Navy's or Mr. Howard from Louisville's are things that have been kept alive by books like Mr. Feinstein, while have been forgotten by the majority.
I really enjoyed Mr. Feinstein's mixture of forgotten stories while also including unforgettable stories. Whether it was about a coach, a player, or a team, Mr. Feinstein included any story he felt was worth remembering. This made for a really interesting and insightful book. Whether it was reading a story about respect from Navy center Doug Wojcik or reading a story about how a coach you would have never intentionally read about because of college rivalries, awes you because of his dedication to protecting his players like Roy Williams when his team lost in the championship game.
The book had two common themes. One, the Final Four is the most important weekend in the college basketball community. Whether their team was in it or not, most, if not all, college basketball players and coaches watched, listened, or found a way to fin out what was happening at every second of the three games. Second, Coaches miss the way the tournament used to be. They often talked about how they could go to the Final Four and meet with other coaches in hotel lobbies and talk about basketball for hours. However, the media takes advantage of the situation the way a shock bulb takes advantage of a fly's inability to bypass a bright light.
I strongly recommend this book who agrees with the Jim O'Connell. "He's the guy who gets home from the Final Four after seeing 150 games in a season and sits down in front of the TV set on Tuesday night and feels lost because there's no basketball to watch. 'I pick up the remote and don't know what to do,' he said, laughing.'All there is to watch is baseball. It kills me. For one night every year, I hate baseball'"

[Don · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The Final Four is the Holy Grail,” says Gary Williams, Men’s Basketball Coach at the University of Maryland from 1989 through 2011, and a focal character in The Last Dance, John Feinstein’s book focused on the 2005 NCAA Final Four.
What this book is NOT is another “A Season on the Brink,” Feinstein’s recounting of his fly-on-every-wall year of accompanying of Bob Knight’s Indiana University team through its season leading up to its entry into the NCAA Tournament and its first round loss to Cleveland State – all Knight and the team all the time. Nor is it another “A Season Inside,” Feinstein bouncing around the nation from league to league and team to team during the 1987-88 basketball season to give us a comprehensive blow-by-blow account of a college basketball year that ended with a Kansas of the NCAA tourney.

“Last Dance” uses the 2005 Final Four as its structure. We hear from the coaches involved, watch the players as they earn their way into the tournament and proceed into and through the Dance. But what is unique about “Last Dance” is its comprehensive and historical focus through its day-by-day focus on the full cast and crew that make up this iconic annual sports and media event the activities and logistics - their hopes and worries, their moments of awe, glee, or disappointment. Feinstein turns his journalistic story-telling skills to let the head coaches, the assistant coaches, the basketball stars and the role players and bench-warmers tell their tales, but we hear, too, from the referees, the stadium crews, photographers, television staff, coaches and players from past Dances, as they share their feelings about the importance of the Final Four – the joys of being there, the moment of first walking into the arena and onto the court, their reactions to their successes and/or their disappointments.

Do you like collegiate basketball? Ever done a bracket and entered an office pool or national bracket competition? Had your own emotions rise and fall as your team (or one your bracket performance depended on) won or lost key games in the tourney? Do you enjoy the ‘up close and personal’ style of hearing from and about the people involved in the games? John Feinstein’s your guy and Last Dance will entertain you as we move toward another year’s Last Dance (may it please the Covid gods to allow its occurrence). Enjoy!

[Aaron · Rating 2 out of 5]

Last Dance is a "behind-the-scenes" look at the roots, growth, commercialism, players, coaches, and administrators of the Final Four. The book uses the 2005 Final Four (when Coach Roy Williams won his first championship with North Carolina) as a focal point for looking at the Final Four from the position of the NCAA, (especially) the coaches, players, and other ancillary characters. I had two problems with this approach; one, we get a very sympathetic viewpoint of Coach Williams, UNC, and the ACC (next to Duke, UNC is probably a close second for many's most-hated lists), and two, he recaps the events leading up to the 2005 a number of different times as he talks about all the side stories and people involved.

It's a breezy read with some nice anecdotes about the interesting people outside the limelight of the Final Four. The best portions were his critique of the Selection Committee process and the Afterword that focused on the 2006 Final Four. The author comes down very hard on the NCAA for its opacity and bias during the selection process. He definitely comes down on the side of basketball fans that say the NCAA gives too much weight to the "power conference" programs at the expense of the small schools that provide the tourney with much of its drama. Of course, I feel the same way, so I thought his analysis was spot on and some of the examples he used were illuminating.

The Afterword was excellent because it chronicled the amazing run of George Mason to the Final Four in 2006. The ultimate Cinderella story, I could have read a book on George Mason's season. As short as it was, it was an excellent ending to a book that had not really wowed or moved me much.

[Ice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Feinstein is turning out the sports books faster than ever, as his whirlwind tour of the NCAA college basketball tournament follows quickly on the heels of his fall 2005 look at pro football, Next Man Up. Maybe that explains the somewhat rushed feel, as Feinstein skips briskly from one anecdote to the next.

In his effort to depict the annual climax of "March Madness" from as many perspectives as possible, Feinstein collects stories from coaches, players, referees, sportscasters and others, more often than not finding the positive angle. Even Terry Howard's missed free throw during a 1975 semifinal game is turned into a reflection on what an honor it is just to be able to play in the Final Four. The closest Feinstein comes to controversy is when he criticizes the NCAA's recent decision to add a 65th team to the tournament.

The account of last year's battle between Illinois and North Carolina for the championship is largely perfunctory; Feinstein is clearly much more interested in revisiting the past with coaching legends like Dean Smith and Mike Krzyzewski (who also supplies a brief foreword). Then again, in all likelihood, so are most readers. 8 pages of photos.

College basketball's Final Four is part party, part circus, part game, and a whole lot of mystique. John Feinstein, who has covered basketball for decades, uses the 2005 Final Four to explore the history, culture, and madness that are the event. His style is easy to follow.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is sort of a mess, as far as organization and cohesiveness go, but I still found this collection of stories about Final Fours past, set around the 2005 tournament, very, even surprisingly, enjoyable. I'm not supposed to like Feinstein. As a Kentucky fan, I am contractually obligated to be thin-skinned and easy to rile, full of righteous indignation at anyone who has ever said anything bad or even sort of maybe not flattering about Kentucky basketball, ever. And Feinstein is famously a Kentucky detractor. I dont' even think that's my paranoia talking. But, it is exhausting, to hate so many people. And very limiting, when it comes to your reading list. Are there any college basketball books that are written by writers against whom I do NOT have a grievance? So I decided to try this book anyway, despite it being by the dreaded Feinstein, it being March and Kentucky ranked #1 and me being in basketball-centric frame of mind. And I learned these two things: 1)oh yeah, Feinstein definitely, obviously hates Kentucky and 2)he still writes a great book for the college basketball nerd.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Final Four is the focus of the work. Although the tournament was ten years ago, the story remains relevant because the author focuses upon the history of the Final Four. Rather than highlight the Final Four of that season, Mr. Feinstein uses the bulk of the text to present the legendary coaches and games from Final Fours in the past. There are extensive interviews with some of the coaching greats of the game. Coaching stories and interviews comprise the bulk of the text.

The author intersperses the growth of the tournament throughout the novel. The focus of the tournament shifts from the from the NIT to the NCAA's, then the NCAA's begins to expand the size of the field. The shift of the tournament from small, traditional sites to arenas becomes another piece of the interesting read.

Locally, the novel contains interest because the Illini are part of the Final Four and championship game.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I have read all of Feinstein's books dating back to A Season on the Brink when I was in high school. I have always enjoyed his stories as he has an excellent knack of writing in an entertaining manner on interesting sports topics. I have also heard him a lot on sports radio so many of the things in this book are some of the same rants about the NCAA, the concept of the student-athlete, etc, that John calls out frequently. Setting that aside, the book is about the week of the final four while also covering the selection Sunday leading into the tournament and other milestones. John interviews numerous coaches, players, broadcasters and administrators giving you a complete picture of the final four. If you enjoy college basketball and march madness, this is a great book to read. You may not agree with Feinstein, but you should find the book fascinating.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Last Dance by John Feinstein tells the story of many college basketball coaches and their final four experiences. Throughout the book you get stories from games, and also many off the court stories. You hear stories from legendary coaches like John Wooden, Bobby knight, Dean Smith, and many more. You hear stories from the beginning of the final four to current times, and you see how it has evolved and changed. I liked the book but it got somewhat confusing at times trying to keep track of all the characters, and the book also got a bit long. I would recommend this book to readers who like a relatively longer book, that tells all true stories, and enjoys sports and history of sports, especially basketball. If you like The Last Dance you may Also like Knight:My Story, because this book also tells a true story about bobby knight a legendary college basketball coach.