Slo Mo!

by Rick Reilly

Growing up in a bizarre cave-dwelling cult in Colorado, seven-foot, eight-inch Maurice " Slo-Mo " Finsternick knows nothing about the NBA--that is until the day he's discovered and becomes the hottest sports icon in the country.

This uproariously funny satire of pro sports is Rick Reilly at his very best. The bestselling author of the classic Missing Links has delivered again with this dead-on tale of " Slo-Mo " Finsternick, a genius player with a patented thirty-foot hook shot. Eventually, though, Slo-Mo begins to move away from his kind, truthful, polite, and self-effacing ways and gradually learns to behave like a famous athlete. Can the big man's innocence survive the charms of the big show?

Genres: Sports, Fiction, Humor

304 pages, Paperback

First published August 8, 1998

Reviews

[Nathan Woll · Rating 3 out of 5]

Making fun of NBA stuff was funny. I always enjoyed Rick Reilly's column in Sports Illustrated, and his novel writing is no Lee's funny or engaging. I dropped it a star though because of all the adults trying to have sex with a 17 year-old.

[Matt Luebke · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was nothing that I thought it was going to be. I came into this book hoping for a nice little book about about a tall basketball player who has unique skill. After about fifteen pages I realized that this book is perverted and the author has a weird twisted mindset for writing this book the way he did. I have read other Rick Reilly books and none of them have ever been like this. I would have to go out and guess that he was going through a hard/weird time in his life. In the book he talks about how a man tries to produce semen while just thinking. Red flag.... Then he proceeds to talk about how he tried everything including having women do strange things near him. And that was only one topic. Another topic that I thought was quite perplexing was when he met his athletic trainer, the trainer had a weird affection for him and was wanting to advance sexually with him. It started with just giving him butt massages in a back room every day. Even when Mo (The main character) would explain that his shoulder hurt, the athletic trainer would give him butt massages still. Again red flag... Finally, the last weird topic was when Mo was trying to get out of his contract he sneaked into this house to find two men having anal sex. One can only imagine what this author was going through in his life while he was writing this book. Overall, I would not recommend this book to children first, or anyone because this book made me want to crawl into a safe with holes in it, lock it, and push it into the ocean. So just trust me and don't read this book....

[Karlo · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book by Rick Reilly tells the story of Maurice Finsternick, a 7 foot 8 inch tall basketball player who has just been acquired by the NBA team, the New Jersey Nets. Maurice knows nothing about the NBA, and only plays basketball when he cleans up trash in front a hoop. Maurice lives in a cult in Colorado and does not know much about the outside world, but when he is found by the NBA, he is immediately moved into a completely different lifestyle. Maurice never really practiced basketball that much before he moved to New Jersey, but the team didn't know that so they thought he was gonna be an amazing centre, they were wrong. Maurice didn't know how to play like a normal centre, instead he would stand at the three point line and shoot threes like a guard, that didn't benefit the team at all. As a result the team didn't play Maurice in games that much, only at the end when the starters could rest. In the mean time of all this, Maurice didn't really know his father growing up, but he knew one thing, his name was Genghis Korn, so he tried to contact anyone he knew to try and find his dad. Eventually Maurice starts playing like a real centre, and breaks the New Jersey Nets scoring record, and at the same time he finally finds his dad.
I like the way author Rick Reilly wrote this book, because he wrote like he was an NBA player actually experiencing the life of the NBA. Since Maurice was from a foreign cult, he even made some Mr. Reilly made some grammatical errors to make the character seem more real.
Honestly, this was not one of my favourite books I have read this year. I never really got into the book, it just felt like everything was going too slowly. I would recommend this book to any young teenagers who like basketball, because it has some basketball history in it, and a comedy aspect to the story, which to me was perfect.

[Ellenjsmellen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wierd, me no likey.

[L · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me a while to get into this book, but once I did, I really enjoyed it. It's sort of like a darker, basketball-filled version of Flowers for Algernon. Definitely an interesting read.

[Sarah Hovis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I usually love Rick Reilly, but this was so-so.