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Make It, Take It
An inventive novel, Make It, Take It sneaks the reader past the press conferences, locker rooms, and huddles of college basketball. Without judgment or sentimentality, Rus Bradburd lays bare the web of conflicts between players and coaches, blacks and whites, revealing the complex humanity of a team’s inner circle. Here, every choice has a very real cost.
Steve Pytel is an assistant coach and top recruiter for a university basketball program. His goals are simple. He wants to keep his job and be a head coach someday. Keeping his wife barely makes the list. The team staggers; everyone’s days are numbered. Pytel was responsible for landing prized recruits Leonard Redmond and Jamal Davis. Pytel’s duties now? Keep Leonard out of jail. Make sure Jamal ignores the advice of his preacher, sidesteps his girlfriend’s pregnancy, and puts the ball in the basket. Good thing Pytel doesn’t carry around a bagful of scruples.
Rus Bradburd is the author of the controversial Forty Minutes of The Extraordinary Life of Nolan Richard (HarperCollins/Amistad) and a memoir, Paddy on the A Journey in Irish Hoops (University of New Mexico Press). He spent fourteen years as a college basketball coach, working for legends Don Haskins and Lou Henson. A regular contributor to SLAM Magazine, his essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Houston Chronicle, and Chicago’s SouthtownStar. He is married to poet Connie Voisine. They live in New Mexico and Chicago, Illinois.
Steve Pytel is an assistant coach and top recruiter for a university basketball program. His goals are simple. He wants to keep his job and be a head coach someday. Keeping his wife barely makes the list. The team staggers; everyone’s days are numbered. Pytel was responsible for landing prized recruits Leonard Redmond and Jamal Davis. Pytel’s duties now? Keep Leonard out of jail. Make sure Jamal ignores the advice of his preacher, sidesteps his girlfriend’s pregnancy, and puts the ball in the basket. Good thing Pytel doesn’t carry around a bagful of scruples.
Rus Bradburd is the author of the controversial Forty Minutes of The Extraordinary Life of Nolan Richard (HarperCollins/Amistad) and a memoir, Paddy on the A Journey in Irish Hoops (University of New Mexico Press). He spent fourteen years as a college basketball coach, working for legends Don Haskins and Lou Henson. A regular contributor to SLAM Magazine, his essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Houston Chronicle, and Chicago’s SouthtownStar. He is married to poet Connie Voisine. They live in New Mexico and Chicago, Illinois.
160 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2012
112 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 11, 2017
The only reason I read this was because I've become acquainted with the author through the process of an MFA program application. I'd normally need to be paid to read about sports. I was therefore delighted by how good this is. Basketball is a detail, the impetus driving the characters, rather than the subject of the story. This turned out to be an intelligently nuanced character-centric story with interesting racial and sociological examinations. Bradburd's writing is sharp and witty, consistently enjoyable.
October 18, 2017
Rus Bradburd is an author who is gaining a name for himself in the sporting genre, with two previous works Paddy on the Hardwood and Forty minutes of Hell receiving good reviews. Both non-fiction works about basketball, they were received well by those who know what they're talking (or writing) about. Rus also knows what he's writing about, as he spent over 10 years coaching College basketball.
Make it take it is a good book: Rus has based the "plot" around a fictional State University Basketball team; some of their new recruits, the assistant coaches and the coach. Each chapter comes from a different viewpoint, and is almost a self-contained story. The book reveals what goes on to keep the show on the road - how much of the assistant coaches duties revolve around baby-sitting star players, solving their problems, and hunting out the gun recruit that will help them make the jump to senior coach.
As each viewpoint gets added to the mix, the reader is in turn appalled, dismayed and occasionally uplifted by what's happening. The chief coach, Jack Hood, is not a sympathetic character, and he gets his comeuppance late in the book in a way which turns out to be both funny, and an insight into his character.
Steve Pytel, the assistant coach is another protagonist who has to come to terms with what the coaching life has done to him - he almost has an "awakening" moment early in the book, which he rejects as a path forward. The soul-less nature of the basketball business has affected him, and by the end of the book he is close to achieving his dream, only to have it snatched away.
The players, seen by the coaches as kids, are characters in their own right, and their travails, suggestibility, cynicism and nobility come through as the book progresses.
What resonated most for me was the selfishness that abounds in the novel - everyone is looking for their own angle, and those that aren't are initiated by the others into doing so for themselves. Where the sport has gone, I don't know (and nor do some of the characters).
I approached this book with a little trepidation - as someone who doesn't follow basketball I wondered if I would understand it or like it at all - but what Rus has given us here is a fine study of human nature, with a basketball covering. A book I stayed up late to finish, which is always a good sign.
Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au/
Make it take it is a good book: Rus has based the "plot" around a fictional State University Basketball team; some of their new recruits, the assistant coaches and the coach. Each chapter comes from a different viewpoint, and is almost a self-contained story. The book reveals what goes on to keep the show on the road - how much of the assistant coaches duties revolve around baby-sitting star players, solving their problems, and hunting out the gun recruit that will help them make the jump to senior coach.
As each viewpoint gets added to the mix, the reader is in turn appalled, dismayed and occasionally uplifted by what's happening. The chief coach, Jack Hood, is not a sympathetic character, and he gets his comeuppance late in the book in a way which turns out to be both funny, and an insight into his character.
Steve Pytel, the assistant coach is another protagonist who has to come to terms with what the coaching life has done to him - he almost has an "awakening" moment early in the book, which he rejects as a path forward. The soul-less nature of the basketball business has affected him, and by the end of the book he is close to achieving his dream, only to have it snatched away.
The players, seen by the coaches as kids, are characters in their own right, and their travails, suggestibility, cynicism and nobility come through as the book progresses.
What resonated most for me was the selfishness that abounds in the novel - everyone is looking for their own angle, and those that aren't are initiated by the others into doing so for themselves. Where the sport has gone, I don't know (and nor do some of the characters).
I approached this book with a little trepidation - as someone who doesn't follow basketball I wondered if I would understand it or like it at all - but what Rus has given us here is a fine study of human nature, with a basketball covering. A book I stayed up late to finish, which is always a good sign.
Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au/
April 28, 2013
Rus’s “novel” is actually a series of linked short stories that are told from various points of view and take place over a period of about three years. The center of these stories is Assistant Coach Pytel, a man who is burned out with basketball yet still bases every decision he makes on his desire to be a head coach at a major university. He is mostly unconcerned about his wife and marriage, thoughtless on matters of human decency or morality, and selfish in his relationships with other players and coaches. Worst of all, he might not have what it takes to be a head coach.
What sets Rus’s book apart from virtually every other sports story that I’ve ever encountered is the total absence of sports in the story; all of the stories occur between games or even seasons. The only basketball we ever see is in a high school practice and on the playground at a children’s camp. Instead, the narratives focus on the coaches and, to a lesser extent, the players. And the overwhelming theme we get from this basketball world is that every person in it—at least the successful ones—is totally self-absorbed and selfish. This selfishness does not only manifest itself on the team though: these motives bleed into the lives outside of the game and everyone suffers. Marriages fall apart, morality goes to pasture, lives are ruined. Even those who start out innocent become corrupt.
We began to wonder if this dim view of humanity doesn’t extend beyond the world of collegiate basketball: is these characters’ ruthless pursuit of winning a commentary on the American way of life? Is the uniquely American blend of individualism and drive for success actually ruining all of our lives? It’s possible, but Rus gives us hope: many of the characters not associated with the game still manage, somehow, to keep their heads out of the game, so to speak.
What sets Rus’s book apart from virtually every other sports story that I’ve ever encountered is the total absence of sports in the story; all of the stories occur between games or even seasons. The only basketball we ever see is in a high school practice and on the playground at a children’s camp. Instead, the narratives focus on the coaches and, to a lesser extent, the players. And the overwhelming theme we get from this basketball world is that every person in it—at least the successful ones—is totally self-absorbed and selfish. This selfishness does not only manifest itself on the team though: these motives bleed into the lives outside of the game and everyone suffers. Marriages fall apart, morality goes to pasture, lives are ruined. Even those who start out innocent become corrupt.
We began to wonder if this dim view of humanity doesn’t extend beyond the world of collegiate basketball: is these characters’ ruthless pursuit of winning a commentary on the American way of life? Is the uniquely American blend of individualism and drive for success actually ruining all of our lives? It’s possible, but Rus gives us hope: many of the characters not associated with the game still manage, somehow, to keep their heads out of the game, so to speak.
March 19, 2013
Coach Pytel is immensely unlikable as a burned out mid-level state school basketball couch floundering to keep his job as he searches to recruit the next big basketball star. His wife and marital problems are a secondary concern for him as he is more interested in having a marriage and kids for appearances sake as 'all the top coaches have families.' Jamal Davis, the gifted basketball player Pytel scouts out, is equally unlikable as a cocky, horrifically stereotypical inner city teen who leaves his pregnant girlfriend to move on to the greener pastures of a basketball scholarship.
The themes about sports that are typically appealing are lacking in this particular sports story. This is not an underdog team fighting to win a championship, Coach Pytel is not an inspiring leader who brings out the best in his players, and Jamal does not learn an important life lesson about love and family. Let's say that everyone gets what they deserve, and the book fizzles out as Jamal is manipulated by Pytel in a basketball training camp scandal, and Pytel himself is left without the job he so coveted in the beginning. The book is too gritty with not enough heart or relatable characters to appeal to teens.
The themes about sports that are typically appealing are lacking in this particular sports story. This is not an underdog team fighting to win a championship, Coach Pytel is not an inspiring leader who brings out the best in his players, and Jamal does not learn an important life lesson about love and family. Let's say that everyone gets what they deserve, and the book fizzles out as Jamal is manipulated by Pytel in a basketball training camp scandal, and Pytel himself is left without the job he so coveted in the beginning. The book is too gritty with not enough heart or relatable characters to appeal to teens.
November 4, 2013
This novel is written in interconnecting short stories told from the perspective of different characters involved in the State basbetball team. I'm not a big sports fan, so this book didn't have automatic appeal tp me. Some of tha characters are wildly unlikeable, which made certain sections of the book a struggle. That being said, I enjoyed the book more than I thought I would--Ernie, one of the assistant coaches,and Jamal were engaging narrators.
July 24, 2013
My father was a basketball coach so I know something about the game both from observation on the bench and playing. I also write. From this prospective, the coaches in this book are loaded with testosterone. They used the players like pieces on a chess board, without compassion with only one goal in mind -- to win. Yes, this is the way it is but give the characters some humanity.
June 1, 2013
I loved the concept, but it can be a bit too sensational. The topics and issues certainly are a part of college basketball today. There's a lot to work with, though, and I love to see more books with a smilar theme.
January 30, 2013
This is not a game winner. It is an out of bounds pass. It is kicking the ball off the foot. It is a travel. It is a double dribble. It is a book full of missed bunny shots.
August 20, 2013
Literary fiction about sports. Sports! I found it super interesting to learn that being a college level assistant basketball coach is a really shitty job.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews