What do you think?
Rate this book
Basketball: Great Writing About America's Game: A Library of America Special Publication
From the street game to March Madness to Jordan and LeBron, the greatest writing about the grit, grace, and glory of basketballMade in America, basketball is a sport that stirs a national passion, reaching fever pitch during the NCAA's March Madness and the NBA Finals. Masterfully assembled by longtime Sports Illustratedwriter Alexander Wolff, Basketball spans eight decades to bring together a dream team of writers as awe-inspiring and endlessly inventive as the game itself. Here are in-depth profiles of the legends of the hardcourt--Russell, Kareem, Bird, Jordan, and LeBron--and storied franchises such as the Knicks and Celtics, along with dazzling portraits of the flash and sizzle of playground ball and more personal reflections on the game by some of America's finest writers, among them Donald Hall, John Edgar Wideman, and Pat Conroy. Highlights include James Naismith recalling how he invented the game that would go on to conquer the world; John McPhee capturing the ever-disciplined Bill Bradley as a Princeton Tiger; Peter Goldman's indelible portrait of the life and death of a Harlem Globetrotter; and Michael Lewis's account of the brave new world of NBA analytics. Classic journalism about inner-city basketball by Pete Axthelm, Rick Telander, and Darcy Frey is joined by stories of the game's popularity across America, from the heartland of Hoosier country to an Apache Reservation in Arizona.
485 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 27, 2018
34 people are currently reading
124 people want to read
About the author
Alexander Wolff
25 books40 followersThanks for your interest in my books and me!
I spent 36 years at Sports Illustrated, leaving in 2016 as the longest-tenured writer on staff. Besides covering basketball at all levels, I filed from the Olympics, soccer’s World Cup, the World Series, every Grand Slam tennis event, and the Tour de France. SI story assignments took me to China, Cuba, and Iran, and dealt with such issues at the intersection of sport and society as race, ethnicity, gender, drugs, the environment, education, youth development, business, armed conflict, and ethics, as well as cultural themes like art, style, food, and the media.
I’m the author or co-author of seven books about basketball. They include Raw Recruits, a New York Times bestseller that examined college basketball recruiting; Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Adventure, an account of a year spent chasing the game around the globe to take the measure of its impact, which was named a 2002 New York Times Book Review Notable Book; and The Audacity of Hoop: Basketball and the Age of Obama. I also edited and introduced a collection of basketball writing for the Library of America, Basketball: Great Writing About America’s Game, published in 2018.
In March 2021 Atlantic Monthly Press and Grove UK will publish Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape, and Home, with DuMont Buchverlag of Cologne releasing a German edition in Fall 2021. The book explores the lives of my grandfather and father, both German-born men who became American citizens. Kurt Wolff, a book publisher of Jewish descent, went into exile to escape the Nazis and founded Pantheon Books in New York in 1941; his son, who because of a divorce remained behind in Germany, was left to fight in Hitler’s army before landing in the U.S. in 1948.
My writing for Sports Illustrated includes three pieces that appeared in The Best American Sports Writing. In 1996, with Hoop Dreams filmmakers Steve James and Peter Gilbert, I collaborated on Team of Broken Dreams, an Emmy-nominated documentary short that detailed the impact of the Yugoslav crisis on basketball players from the Balkans. Broadcast on NBC and based on one of my SI articles, the film won the International Olympic Committee’s Media Award.
As a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton in 2002, I taught a seminar called Writing About Sports and the Wider World. In 2010 I served as commencement speaker at Springfield College, and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame honored me in 2011 with its Curt Gowdy Media Award for contributions to the game as a print journalist.
At Brighton High School in Rochester, N.Y., I co-captained the varsity basketball team. In 1980 I earned a B.A. in History with honors from Princeton after having taken a leave to play basketball with a club team in Switzerland. In 2006 my wife Vanessa and I founded the Vermont Frost Heaves of the American Basketball Association, whose birth and life I chronicled in SI and on SI.com.
I love hearing from readers and am happy to speak with book clubs, collaborate with bookstores, libraries, and festivals on events, and otherwise affirm and spread literary culture. Books are in the family blood!
I spent 36 years at Sports Illustrated, leaving in 2016 as the longest-tenured writer on staff. Besides covering basketball at all levels, I filed from the Olympics, soccer’s World Cup, the World Series, every Grand Slam tennis event, and the Tour de France. SI story assignments took me to China, Cuba, and Iran, and dealt with such issues at the intersection of sport and society as race, ethnicity, gender, drugs, the environment, education, youth development, business, armed conflict, and ethics, as well as cultural themes like art, style, food, and the media.
I’m the author or co-author of seven books about basketball. They include Raw Recruits, a New York Times bestseller that examined college basketball recruiting; Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Adventure, an account of a year spent chasing the game around the globe to take the measure of its impact, which was named a 2002 New York Times Book Review Notable Book; and The Audacity of Hoop: Basketball and the Age of Obama. I also edited and introduced a collection of basketball writing for the Library of America, Basketball: Great Writing About America’s Game, published in 2018.
In March 2021 Atlantic Monthly Press and Grove UK will publish Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape, and Home, with DuMont Buchverlag of Cologne releasing a German edition in Fall 2021. The book explores the lives of my grandfather and father, both German-born men who became American citizens. Kurt Wolff, a book publisher of Jewish descent, went into exile to escape the Nazis and founded Pantheon Books in New York in 1941; his son, who because of a divorce remained behind in Germany, was left to fight in Hitler’s army before landing in the U.S. in 1948.
My writing for Sports Illustrated includes three pieces that appeared in The Best American Sports Writing. In 1996, with Hoop Dreams filmmakers Steve James and Peter Gilbert, I collaborated on Team of Broken Dreams, an Emmy-nominated documentary short that detailed the impact of the Yugoslav crisis on basketball players from the Balkans. Broadcast on NBC and based on one of my SI articles, the film won the International Olympic Committee’s Media Award.
As a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton in 2002, I taught a seminar called Writing About Sports and the Wider World. In 2010 I served as commencement speaker at Springfield College, and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame honored me in 2011 with its Curt Gowdy Media Award for contributions to the game as a print journalist.
At Brighton High School in Rochester, N.Y., I co-captained the varsity basketball team. In 1980 I earned a B.A. in History with honors from Princeton after having taken a leave to play basketball with a club team in Switzerland. In 2006 my wife Vanessa and I founded the Vermont Frost Heaves of the American Basketball Association, whose birth and life I chronicled in SI and on SI.com.
I love hearing from readers and am happy to speak with book clubs, collaborate with bookstores, libraries, and festivals on events, and otherwise affirm and spread literary culture. Books are in the family blood!
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
June 4, 2018
I love baseball. As we watch LeBron James do what he is doing right now in the NBA finals I have been enjoying this package of some of the best writing on basketball. In the introduction to this collection the editor says that basketball lends itself to great writing and by this evidence this is very true. I have read a great deal on baseball, literary or otherwise and while there have been some standout essays this collection, in its totality, stands out as unique.
The collection starts with a writing by James Naismith himself as he describes the origin of the game he invented. Looking for a game his football players could play inside, in the winter, that would not expose them to serious risk of injury, he come up with basketball. While the game has changed one could also walk into Naismith’s gym today and recognize the game he invented one weekend. It is very interesting.
Herbert Warren Wind writes a piece about Bob Cousy. “ Farewell to Cousy “ chronicles the legendary point guards years of changing the NBA game forever.
John McPhee’s career was essentially made with his most famous essay about a collegian named Bill Bradley at Princeton. Just a small excerpt here but I’ve read it several times. McPhee is a master, who would know the heights the cerebral Bradley would reach.
Roy Blount Jr wrote a quite interesting piece about Wilfred Hetzel. Discharged from the Army in 1943 for a nervous condition Hetzel was not a great basketball player, in fact he says he was not even good. Through great practice, however, he became a legendary traveling trick shot artist. This report on him, by this point very late in his career, when his skills are fading, was quite moving and sad.
I’m of an age to remember when Pete Axelthem was on NBC ‘s pregame football show as an answer to Jimmy the Greek. By then, his legend was made, he was actually on the downside of a mercurial career. His book “ The City Game” from 1970 focused on city basketball in New York and the legends of the playgrounds. This story focusing on the still revered legend of Earl Maginault that is excerpted here is legendary.
Back at some point in the mid seventies in my youth I had a Jim Chones basketball card from the period when he was with the Cleveland Cavs. My preteen self certainly did not know his backstory and certainly did not know about this legendary piece “ The Coach who Couldn’t Shoot Straight.” Told about the legendary Marquette coach Al Mcquire and his pursuit of the phenom Chones it is a great piece. Al, make no doubt, wants to win, but unlike 99 percent of the coaches I have seen or heard about, he understands that for a player like Jim Chones basketball is about much more than winning a college title. It is, in a very real sense, a life and death matter.
Rick Telander’s seventies basketball book “ Heaven is a Playground “followed the , by now, well worn groove to the the inner city playgrounds to watch the players, the characters, the grifters. Barack Obama has called the book his favorite ever on the subject of basketball and he is as close to the truth as can be. In this short excerpt we learn about Rodney Parker, a ticket scalper and basketball aficionado who truly does seem to have altruistic motives for the young players he influences.
Peter Goldman ( I read at 13 the book he coauthored with Sparky Lyle about the 1978 baseball season ) writes an essay called “A Requiem for. Globetrotter” which tells the tale of Leon Hilliard. I must confess I had never heard of him. Usually a performer on the second team he was, according to this, a very respected black man, a basketball man, a man who stood up for himself at a time when that was dangerous even for a Globetrotter. Shot dead in a domestic dispute Goldman tells the tale of this, even by the time of this writing, mostly forgotten man and the many bright basketball lights that came to pay their respects.
Douglas Bauer writes “ Girls Win, Boys Lose,” an interesting story about Prairie View, Iowa and the dominance of the women’s basketball program in the middle of the last century and the long lasting effect those players had on the memory of the people in that small town. The boys program was less successful hence the name of the article. I should note that earlier in this collection is an excerpt from a famous piece bout Hickory, Indiana ( Indiana ‘s Town of Champions ) and that legendary tournament we’ll know so much about. This piece on the Iowa women, is to my mind, better written but, Hoosiers WAS a hell of a movie.
David Halberstam was one of the great writers of the second half of the twentieth century. Whether he was writing about politics, sports, or popular culture he had a way of presenting his story just right. The car accident that took his life prematurely cost us all thousands upon thousands more good words. Still, he left us so much great work. His book about the 1977 Portland Trail Blazers entitled “ The Breaks of the Game “ was a tour de force. This excerpt focused on the CBA signed Billy Ray Bates and the attempt by Jack Ramsey to fit the showman Bates into his precise offense effectively is excellent. A whole book could be written on Bates alone. His struggles in and out of basketball could focus on much of the incredible challenge of the black experience of the sixties, seventies, and eighties.
Another long, legendary, frequently anthologized, piece comes from Frank Deford. His piece for SI on Indiana Coach Bobby Knight from 1981 called “ The Rabbit Hunter “ told of the contradictions that existed in the famous Coach. They always had, they did then, they would never abate. Knight would correctly point out that he ran a very clean program compared to other less scrutinized Coaches, his graduation rate was among the very best, and he made his players behave like role models. But, it always conflicted with the other Bobby. The one who yelled, who threw chairs, who grabbed players. As we now know the problem never corrected itself, leading to his eventual downfall. Now, in the last couple years, most famous as a Donald Trump supporter his legacy is in tatters. But at this article shows Knight was just a man out of his time and certainly is today.
A fantastic piece by David Bradley focuses on Kareem Abdul Jabber. Titled “ Autumn in the Age or Abdul Jabber “ this is still a fantastic contemporary read. In my mind somehow he has become one of the most underrated truly great athletes in our time. He is still alive, we should be appreciating him more while he still walks among us.
Mark Jacobsen wrote an excellent piece “ The Passion of Dr J “ in the eighties. It is worth reading to know more about his this legend burst onto the scene in the ABA, did incredible things in the NBA but because the flower of his game and the best of his knees were spent their we who watched him in the eighties never got to see the real Doctor. Erving talks as much about his 8mage and his careful cultivation of it, this makes the post notes quite meaningful.
Curry Kirkpatrick wrote about College Basketball for decades for SI. For much of that time, when John Woodens UCLA Bruins we’re dominating it was a very second tier sport. As the tournament became March Madness in the eighties he wrote this great piece “Memories “ with little stories and trivia from his earlier days covering the tournament.
Dave Kindred wrote a short elegy about Pete Maravich upon his premature death on a ( fittingly ) pickup game gym floor. Generations will never know how good he was, what a talent he exhibited. One of the few players from the NBA’s long ago and far away that would perhaps be an even better player today than he was then.
Alexander Wolff enters his own story “The Coach and his Champion “ about John Wooden in his retirement and his friends, family, and fans hope to,lure him back to life after his beloved wife passed away. Incredibly powerful story of devotion.
Charles Pierce writes “ The Brother From Another Planet “ about Larry Bird and you simply cannot, even now, come away from this article and not feel even more respect for Bird. Even as he was proclaimed as The Great White Hope Bird scoffed at that, he knew what he was, he respected the “ blackness “of the game. He had no issues with it or his place in it. We should all be so wise.
Revered writer Gary Smith writes “ Eyes of the Storm “ about legendary Tennessee women’s coach Pat Summit. Smith writes this story by studying Summit’s relationship with one player who comes through her program. Michelle Marciniak is a high school phenom who dreams of playing for Pat but, whole eventually doing so, takes a circular path in doing so. The Coach - Player relationship can always be volatile. This one certainly is. While both parties claim a love and respect I have to tell you that I’m not sure if Summit comes off as well as the article supposes. Her goals are great, her results are superb, her players do well and graduate (if they stay). She is probably just as people make her out to be kind to small dogs and children. And I realize Pat is gone and suffered a horrible illness. But, at the time of this writing what Smith describes is the same behavior that would, in Bobby Knight’s behavior, be called bullying. There, that’s a hot take for you.
Rick Reilly wrote a piece about Micheal Jordan’s last championship run with the Bulls and Melissa King wrote about being a young woman trying to play on the asphalt courts in the city of Chicago. Both are excellent.
Kareem Abdul Jabber wanted to Coach in the NBA. For whatever reason that did not come to pass. One summer he attempted to Coach a program on a program on an Indian reservation. Speaking in this excerpt of his full length book “A Season on the Reservation “ Jabbar speaks to the cultural considerations which must be considered when breaking down the plY of his young charges in addition, of course, to all things basketball.
Noted author Par Conroy was at his best when he wrote autobiography, even when it wasn’t labeled as such. One book at was indeed labeled that way was “My Losing Season “ in which he wrote about his Senior year as an under tall, under talented, guard for The Citadel basketball team. This is an extraordinary piece.
My son is a basketball fanatic. He also is in college studying math and actuarial science. He, in a perfect world, would love to get into the data driven NBA front offices. I’m a big baseball fan and I think it is well know.n the revolution data has wrought in baseball. Well in a less known way the same if not more has happened in basketball. This piece by Micheal Lewis called “ The No Stars All Star “ is just an incredible example. Could be for the data minded the best piece in the whole book.
George Dohrmann wrote a book called “ Playing Thier Hearts Out “ which might be the most infuriating piece you will read in a long while. Demetrius Walker was on the cover of Sports Illustrated well before he was sixteen with the expectation of being “ The Next LeBron. “ This excerpt tells of the breakdown of the relationship between Demetrius and his youth coach/mentor who, there is no other way to put it, just discarded him when he could no longer find it profitable to do so. Needless to say you have not seen Walker in the NBA. This article shows the depth of the cesspool that has formed around high profile youth sports.
In an introspective piece Bryan Curtis returns to his childhood home and talks about “ The Fiberglass Backboard “ that still stand s sentry in his driveway. Where he played whole games with himself, where he recovered from the shattering death of his Father, where he learned that fiberglass, unlike other backboards, makes a bank shot a necessity. A very moving story.
Jack McCallum has been considered the Dean of the NBA writers, his piece here about “ The Dream Team “ in 1992. Never challenged as they made their way through the Olympic field, in this article he tells of a closed door scrimmage where teams captained by Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson went at it tooth and nail in the best game never seen.
There are other articles of not in this book, there are no bad ones. This features impeccable writing.
The collection starts with a writing by James Naismith himself as he describes the origin of the game he invented. Looking for a game his football players could play inside, in the winter, that would not expose them to serious risk of injury, he come up with basketball. While the game has changed one could also walk into Naismith’s gym today and recognize the game he invented one weekend. It is very interesting.
Herbert Warren Wind writes a piece about Bob Cousy. “ Farewell to Cousy “ chronicles the legendary point guards years of changing the NBA game forever.
John McPhee’s career was essentially made with his most famous essay about a collegian named Bill Bradley at Princeton. Just a small excerpt here but I’ve read it several times. McPhee is a master, who would know the heights the cerebral Bradley would reach.
Roy Blount Jr wrote a quite interesting piece about Wilfred Hetzel. Discharged from the Army in 1943 for a nervous condition Hetzel was not a great basketball player, in fact he says he was not even good. Through great practice, however, he became a legendary traveling trick shot artist. This report on him, by this point very late in his career, when his skills are fading, was quite moving and sad.
I’m of an age to remember when Pete Axelthem was on NBC ‘s pregame football show as an answer to Jimmy the Greek. By then, his legend was made, he was actually on the downside of a mercurial career. His book “ The City Game” from 1970 focused on city basketball in New York and the legends of the playgrounds. This story focusing on the still revered legend of Earl Maginault that is excerpted here is legendary.
Back at some point in the mid seventies in my youth I had a Jim Chones basketball card from the period when he was with the Cleveland Cavs. My preteen self certainly did not know his backstory and certainly did not know about this legendary piece “ The Coach who Couldn’t Shoot Straight.” Told about the legendary Marquette coach Al Mcquire and his pursuit of the phenom Chones it is a great piece. Al, make no doubt, wants to win, but unlike 99 percent of the coaches I have seen or heard about, he understands that for a player like Jim Chones basketball is about much more than winning a college title. It is, in a very real sense, a life and death matter.
Rick Telander’s seventies basketball book “ Heaven is a Playground “followed the , by now, well worn groove to the the inner city playgrounds to watch the players, the characters, the grifters. Barack Obama has called the book his favorite ever on the subject of basketball and he is as close to the truth as can be. In this short excerpt we learn about Rodney Parker, a ticket scalper and basketball aficionado who truly does seem to have altruistic motives for the young players he influences.
Peter Goldman ( I read at 13 the book he coauthored with Sparky Lyle about the 1978 baseball season ) writes an essay called “A Requiem for. Globetrotter” which tells the tale of Leon Hilliard. I must confess I had never heard of him. Usually a performer on the second team he was, according to this, a very respected black man, a basketball man, a man who stood up for himself at a time when that was dangerous even for a Globetrotter. Shot dead in a domestic dispute Goldman tells the tale of this, even by the time of this writing, mostly forgotten man and the many bright basketball lights that came to pay their respects.
Douglas Bauer writes “ Girls Win, Boys Lose,” an interesting story about Prairie View, Iowa and the dominance of the women’s basketball program in the middle of the last century and the long lasting effect those players had on the memory of the people in that small town. The boys program was less successful hence the name of the article. I should note that earlier in this collection is an excerpt from a famous piece bout Hickory, Indiana ( Indiana ‘s Town of Champions ) and that legendary tournament we’ll know so much about. This piece on the Iowa women, is to my mind, better written but, Hoosiers WAS a hell of a movie.
David Halberstam was one of the great writers of the second half of the twentieth century. Whether he was writing about politics, sports, or popular culture he had a way of presenting his story just right. The car accident that took his life prematurely cost us all thousands upon thousands more good words. Still, he left us so much great work. His book about the 1977 Portland Trail Blazers entitled “ The Breaks of the Game “ was a tour de force. This excerpt focused on the CBA signed Billy Ray Bates and the attempt by Jack Ramsey to fit the showman Bates into his precise offense effectively is excellent. A whole book could be written on Bates alone. His struggles in and out of basketball could focus on much of the incredible challenge of the black experience of the sixties, seventies, and eighties.
Another long, legendary, frequently anthologized, piece comes from Frank Deford. His piece for SI on Indiana Coach Bobby Knight from 1981 called “ The Rabbit Hunter “ told of the contradictions that existed in the famous Coach. They always had, they did then, they would never abate. Knight would correctly point out that he ran a very clean program compared to other less scrutinized Coaches, his graduation rate was among the very best, and he made his players behave like role models. But, it always conflicted with the other Bobby. The one who yelled, who threw chairs, who grabbed players. As we now know the problem never corrected itself, leading to his eventual downfall. Now, in the last couple years, most famous as a Donald Trump supporter his legacy is in tatters. But at this article shows Knight was just a man out of his time and certainly is today.
A fantastic piece by David Bradley focuses on Kareem Abdul Jabber. Titled “ Autumn in the Age or Abdul Jabber “ this is still a fantastic contemporary read. In my mind somehow he has become one of the most underrated truly great athletes in our time. He is still alive, we should be appreciating him more while he still walks among us.
Mark Jacobsen wrote an excellent piece “ The Passion of Dr J “ in the eighties. It is worth reading to know more about his this legend burst onto the scene in the ABA, did incredible things in the NBA but because the flower of his game and the best of his knees were spent their we who watched him in the eighties never got to see the real Doctor. Erving talks as much about his 8mage and his careful cultivation of it, this makes the post notes quite meaningful.
Curry Kirkpatrick wrote about College Basketball for decades for SI. For much of that time, when John Woodens UCLA Bruins we’re dominating it was a very second tier sport. As the tournament became March Madness in the eighties he wrote this great piece “Memories “ with little stories and trivia from his earlier days covering the tournament.
Dave Kindred wrote a short elegy about Pete Maravich upon his premature death on a ( fittingly ) pickup game gym floor. Generations will never know how good he was, what a talent he exhibited. One of the few players from the NBA’s long ago and far away that would perhaps be an even better player today than he was then.
Alexander Wolff enters his own story “The Coach and his Champion “ about John Wooden in his retirement and his friends, family, and fans hope to,lure him back to life after his beloved wife passed away. Incredibly powerful story of devotion.
Charles Pierce writes “ The Brother From Another Planet “ about Larry Bird and you simply cannot, even now, come away from this article and not feel even more respect for Bird. Even as he was proclaimed as The Great White Hope Bird scoffed at that, he knew what he was, he respected the “ blackness “of the game. He had no issues with it or his place in it. We should all be so wise.
Revered writer Gary Smith writes “ Eyes of the Storm “ about legendary Tennessee women’s coach Pat Summit. Smith writes this story by studying Summit’s relationship with one player who comes through her program. Michelle Marciniak is a high school phenom who dreams of playing for Pat but, whole eventually doing so, takes a circular path in doing so. The Coach - Player relationship can always be volatile. This one certainly is. While both parties claim a love and respect I have to tell you that I’m not sure if Summit comes off as well as the article supposes. Her goals are great, her results are superb, her players do well and graduate (if they stay). She is probably just as people make her out to be kind to small dogs and children. And I realize Pat is gone and suffered a horrible illness. But, at the time of this writing what Smith describes is the same behavior that would, in Bobby Knight’s behavior, be called bullying. There, that’s a hot take for you.
Rick Reilly wrote a piece about Micheal Jordan’s last championship run with the Bulls and Melissa King wrote about being a young woman trying to play on the asphalt courts in the city of Chicago. Both are excellent.
Kareem Abdul Jabber wanted to Coach in the NBA. For whatever reason that did not come to pass. One summer he attempted to Coach a program on a program on an Indian reservation. Speaking in this excerpt of his full length book “A Season on the Reservation “ Jabbar speaks to the cultural considerations which must be considered when breaking down the plY of his young charges in addition, of course, to all things basketball.
Noted author Par Conroy was at his best when he wrote autobiography, even when it wasn’t labeled as such. One book at was indeed labeled that way was “My Losing Season “ in which he wrote about his Senior year as an under tall, under talented, guard for The Citadel basketball team. This is an extraordinary piece.
My son is a basketball fanatic. He also is in college studying math and actuarial science. He, in a perfect world, would love to get into the data driven NBA front offices. I’m a big baseball fan and I think it is well know.n the revolution data has wrought in baseball. Well in a less known way the same if not more has happened in basketball. This piece by Micheal Lewis called “ The No Stars All Star “ is just an incredible example. Could be for the data minded the best piece in the whole book.
George Dohrmann wrote a book called “ Playing Thier Hearts Out “ which might be the most infuriating piece you will read in a long while. Demetrius Walker was on the cover of Sports Illustrated well before he was sixteen with the expectation of being “ The Next LeBron. “ This excerpt tells of the breakdown of the relationship between Demetrius and his youth coach/mentor who, there is no other way to put it, just discarded him when he could no longer find it profitable to do so. Needless to say you have not seen Walker in the NBA. This article shows the depth of the cesspool that has formed around high profile youth sports.
In an introspective piece Bryan Curtis returns to his childhood home and talks about “ The Fiberglass Backboard “ that still stand s sentry in his driveway. Where he played whole games with himself, where he recovered from the shattering death of his Father, where he learned that fiberglass, unlike other backboards, makes a bank shot a necessity. A very moving story.
Jack McCallum has been considered the Dean of the NBA writers, his piece here about “ The Dream Team “ in 1992. Never challenged as they made their way through the Olympic field, in this article he tells of a closed door scrimmage where teams captained by Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson went at it tooth and nail in the best game never seen.
There are other articles of not in this book, there are no bad ones. This features impeccable writing.
May 19, 2018
There is an old adage in sports writing; the smaller the ball, the better the writing. Boxing, baseball, golf, have usually produced the best examples of literary sports writing, then basketball... and football, well, the ball is misshapen, and so goes the writing. Library of America, the gold standard of preserving the greatest writing in American past and present, brought together 80 years of great basketball writing to prove that good basketball writing can compete with baseball and boxing. I bought the book as soon as it was released, and reveled in every story, every page. Reading it was like reading a history of the game through its poets, statisticians, and even some former players. The book features analytics, oral histories, and even musings about the heart of the sport. It discusses everything from the NBA to college to high school to playground legends, and even features a piece about a kid's love of his broken backboard. This is a fantastic book that accomplishes its goal of producing gold standard writing.
August 10, 2022
If you are a basketball fan, young or old, you should dive into this book. The writers Wolff has chosen and their essays are outstanding. Most are fairly short, so you can bite off as much as you have time for. There are some very informative pieces, some poetic works and some fairly emotional ones, too. I liked the one by Naismith, the father of basketball, explaining how and why he created the game. Very interesting for a history geek like me. Melissa King's diary-like entry about playing various parks in Chicago, and the characters she meets and plays or shoots with. David Shields recollection is great in the way he presents it with a twist that caught me off guard. (Well, that's sort of the definition of a twist, isn't it?)
I highly recommend this book for any basketball fan, and probably most sports fans. Check it out.
I highly recommend this book for any basketball fan, and probably most sports fans. Check it out.
June 23, 2018
An excellent composition of basketball essays from as early as James Naismith, the inventor of basketball. Fun fact, James invented this game with Christian ideal in mind, to create a game that's both challenging enough to engage the energetic children and safe enough to play indoor. As a fan of basketball it's quite fascinating to see how sports writing evolved over the years. I am now more interested to look for more writings by some of the authors in this book.
April 1, 2019
Editor Alexander Wolff provides a compilation of articles, excerpts, essays, et al, celebrating the fascination with the game of basketball. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and relished the opportunity to rekindle memories and fun recollections of the growth of basketball in America.
April 5, 2018
Fun book to read about certain coaches, players and events that have taken place in basketball. This a great book for any basketball fan, junkie or casual reader. I highly recommend the book.
June 9, 2018
A smorgasbord of elite-level writing that transcends the sport. My personal favorite in this collection is Eyes of the Storm by Gary Smith.
August 21, 2018
The usual quality of a collection of stories, although these were mostly good. Full review to come.
September 23, 2018
Not only were the essays excellent, the endpapers are made to look and feel like a basketball. Well done.
October 26, 2021
Love me some basketball and got some new book ideas out of this too
January 11, 2023
A great anthology of stories about basketball and the players who have played the sport.
I have not read a better collection. It is broad in scope. Recommend it.
I have not read a better collection. It is broad in scope. Recommend it.
January 7, 2025
call this book KD the way the bag is mixed but deep
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews