Most hoops fans are familiar with the works of John Feinstein, Seth Davis, David Halberstam and other renowned modern chroniclers of the game. They may be less familiar with the following often-exceptional works that make them MUST-READS:
Ellsworth, Scott. THE SECRET GAME: A wartime story of courage, change and basketball’s lost triumph
Perhaps the finest basketball book ever crafted. Meticulous research combined with often-lyrical prose about hoops and racism in America during an era in which people “were reaching for something different, a kind of basketball that hadn’t happened yet.”
MacMullan, Jackie; Bartholomew, Rafe; and Klores, Dan. BASKETBALL: a love story
Brilliantly conceived and executed. This is a book you’d select for your stranded island library. Basketball “will find you, captivate you, and become part of you.”
Jenkins, Bruce. A GOOD MAN: The Pete Newell story
Chronicle of innovations wrought by the Canadian-born Newell, who many call the greatest and most principled coach in history. A-list stuff.
Bartholomew, Rafe. PACIFIC RIMS
Dazzling. A Fulbright scholar forays to the Philippines to explore the nation’s passion for basketball and discovers myriad trajectories of corruption and grace. I was hooked from chapter one: “The sides of jeepneys are home to a semiotic buffet of logos and decals that provide a window into the cluttered psyches of their operators. The symbols represent a mash-up of familial, religious and pop culture references with no obvious organizing principle.”
Skelton, Marc. POUNDING THE ROCK: basketball dreams and real life in a Bronx high school.
“When you play too much basketball, you live in an underworld, a circle constructed of social and racial stratifications, political realities, and economic circumstances. It is inhabited by insipid journalists, sebaceous recruiters, corrupt officials, selfish players, diabolical agents, pedestrian parents, nefarious administrators, blind referees, vacuous fans, and washed-up former players.” Still, it is a sanctuary in a country that has lost its way.
Powell, Michael. CANYON DREAMS: a basketball season on the Navajo Nation.
At the intersection of pastoral mysticism with poverty, abuse, fatalism, alcohol, crystal meth or racism, school ball constitutes the “peak” of Navajo lives. Eventually, “they’d graduate high school and basketball would become a horse galloping off down the road.” Yet, in a world where men and women often get drunk and freeze to death while stumbling home, “to insist that life was about material reality alone was to place a hand over an eye: You saw half of what was there.”
Hickey, Mike. DREAM BIG DREAMS: The Jack Donohue story
Anyone who ever met Donohue knew immediately they were in the presence of a unique character. Hickey does an admirable job of capturing that charisma and magic. Chock-full of hilarious anecdotes but what really shines through are the efforts Donohue made to elevate the level of coaching in Canada.
Dooley, Chris. CAN’T MISS: The Kevin Pangos story.
In my decades of covering Canadian basketball, I quickly learned to value the altogether rare commodity of civility. In the case of the Pangos family, I now understand its origins. Dooley’s insightful chronicle of the merits of a work ethic and decency also seems apropos given the Cleveland Cavaliers’ September/2021 decision to ink Pangos to a US$3.5-million/two-year contract.
Nick Nurse, with Michael Sokolov. RAPTURE: Fifteen Teams, Four Countries, One NBA Championship, and how to find a way to win – damn near anywhere
A thought-provoking read for anyone intrigued by the philosophy of coaching. As a biography, it isn’t particularly revealing, indicating that Nurse is an intensely private man. He’s also fundamentally decent, as a rare of moment of insight into his character is revealed when he discloses that he was willing to unnecessarily wear glasses on the court so that his 94-year-old mother could more readily identify him on television.
Triano, Jay. OPEN LOOK
An object lesson in patriotism. You gotta love Triano.
Larson Webb, Bernice. THE BASKETBALL MAN: JAMES NAISMITH
Creating a game for the “incorrigibles” to play.
Russell, Bill with Steinberg, Alan. RED AND ME: my coach, my lifelong friend
As an unabashed Bill Russell fan, there isn’t a book about, or by, this man that isn’t worth reading. Everything I have ever read or heard about the thoughtful Russell makes me wish I could pick his brain for a day. Russell’s autobiographies Go Up for Glory and Second Wind: the memoirs of an opinionated man are philosophical and stimulating, while the pedantic prose of Murray Nelson’s Bill Russell: A Biography is rescued by the subject. Meanwhile, Gary Pomerantz’ oddly-written The Last Pass: Cousy, Russell, the Celtics and What Matters in the End seems little more than a defense of a premise that the great point guard wasn’t racist.
Keiderling, Kyle. SHOOTING STAR: The Bevo Francis story
A riveting account of a shy, tortured soul and a ruthlessly ambitious coach who combined to captivate America in the aftermath of the betting scandals of the early 1950s.
Keiderling, Kyle. HEART OF A LION: the life, death and legacy of Hank Gathers.
Keiderling delivers another captivating gem, in this instance, the tragic tale of a driven player, a compliant cardiologist and the ‘gasoline-on-fire’ Loyola Marymount Lions. “In the sanctified atmosphere of the tiny Jesuit school, whose main thoroughfares are laid out in a cross with the gymnasium at the bottom and the chapel at the top, redemption, restoration and recognition would be theirs [Gathers, Bo Kimble and Paul Westhead]. Together they would be lifted up. At least that was the plan.”
Ballard, Chris. THE ART OF A BEAUTIFUL GAME.
A deconstructive marvel, complete with hilarious quotes and anecdotes. Chapters on Steve Nash, Kobe Bryant and dunking are sublime. Central premise? It’s all about work ethic, and possibly attitude. Favorite line? “After all, isn’t getting older about remembering things the way we want them, not the way they were?”
Yardley, Jim. BRAVE DRAGONS: A Chinese basketball team, an American coach, and two cultures clashing.
Largely a vehicle for conveying a Pulitzer winner’s perceptions of China: its history; its people – “a turnstile of humanity”; the evolution of the game and the often-tortured ethic behind its development; as well as the unfathomable antics of a narcissitic multimillionaire owner of a professional team. “China appealed to the maven, the polymath, the autodidact because of how insistently it withheld itself, forcing them to prove their worthiness through mastery of successively more complicated levels of language, custom and culture.”
Reeder, Lydia. DUST BOWL GIRLS
A glittering tale about an “outlaw” AAU championship team playing that most pernicious of sports: women’s basketball. Critics “saw young faces malformed with grimaces and sweat, legs yawned wide in a crouch, eyes shifting like an animal’s, mouths half open, gasping for breath, soft bodies crashing together in desperate combat. A slaughter of innocents. … their pelvises would eventually wither and shrink. … the uterus would completely disappear, turning her into a man.”
Christgau, John. MICHAEL AND THE WHIZ KIDS: a story of basketball, race and suburbia in the 1960s.
A beguiling account of a 5-foot half-blind black student and his diminutive white teammates efforts to emulate the fabled high-flying Illinois Whiz Kids while racing to an age- weight- and height-restricted (exponent) Mid-Peninsula Athletic League (California) high school title. Coach Christgau writes that Michael Thompson’s parents “had pushed him into a white world, and in the process he had elevated himself, not just because they had pushed him but because he had willed it.”
Chansky, Art. GAME CHANGERS: Dean Smith, Charlie Scott and the era that transformed a southern college town.
In a university town characterized by a “façade of civility,” the sort of place where a restaurant owner urinated on a peaceful sit-in protestor, Scott and Smith were “two young men with a lot to lose, figuring it out as they went along during one of the more turbulent periods in American history, both trying to protect their people and their own potential.”
Rosen, Charley. THE FIRST TIP-OFF: the incredible story of the birth of the NBA.
Hard to imagine the pampered modern pro enduring such privation or obstacles, like a ball that “only approximated roundness.” There are some notions, though, that should not have been abandoned, like issuing technicals for praying. As well, the league obviously set a precedent for its future by hiring several megalomaniacs as coaches.
Summitt, Pat with Jenkins, Sally. RAISE THE ROOF: the inspiring inside story of the Tennessee Lady Vols’ undefeated 1997-98 season.
“Usually, it’s the coach who changes a team. But in this case, it was the team that changed the coach.” Moments of dazzling, haunting prose: “Who can explain why a small child is drawn to a ball? Maybe the future simply enters into them.”
Monroe, Earl, with Troupe, Quincy. EARL THE PEARL: my story.
A remarkable tale, told with clarity, candour and grace. “I just looked at it as ‘it is what it is’.”
Reilly, Rick. HATE MAIL FROM CHEERLEADERS and other adventures from the life of Reilly.
Who doesn’t love Reilly, given his decency, his sense of humor and his humanity? Although only a few of his columns are about hoops, all are gems (except, of course, the one in which he slags Canada).
Howard-Cooper, Scott. STEVE KERR: a life.
Rarely do the privileged exhibit such humanity and empathy. If you weren’t a Steve Kerr fan, you will be.
Jacobs, Barry. ACROSS THE LINE: profiles in basketball courage; tales of the first black players in the ACC and SEC.
The trials of trailblazers. No psyche “unscathed.”
Young, Chris. DRIVE: How Vince Carter conquered the NBA.
Far more interesting than the florid praise of Carter are the descriptions of dysfunction in early iterations of the Raptors and the challenges of dealing with the delicate egos of the NBA.
Smith, Doug. WE THE NORTH: Canada’s team – 25 years of the Toronto Raptors.
It is, Smith writes, “more a story of the evolution of a sport, and more important, a society.”
Auerbach, Red and Feinstein, John. LET ME TELL YOU A STORY: a lifetime in the game.
“Not trusting Red Auerbach on the subject of basketball – even at [age] eighty-seven – is a little bit like not trusting Mozart or Beethoven on the subject of great music. When a master speaks, the wise listen.”
Roberts, Randy. But They Can’t Beat Us: Oscar Robertson and the Crispus Attucks tigers.
It’s America, so it’s always about race. “The game had odd powers. Like great art, it had the ability to transcend and transform reality. It could raise players and spectators above their sometimes squalid and mundane lives or torpedo them into abject depression, and in that sense it was always more than a game.”
Barkley, Charles and Johnson, Roy S. OUTRAGEOUS!: the fine life and flagrant good times of basketball’s irresistible force.
Candour, thy name is Charles Barkley.
Bradburd, Rus. FORTY MINUTES OF HELL: the extraordinary life of Nolan Richardson.
A riveting tale of racial politics in Razorback country, a world in which, as former Arkansas judge Wendell Griffen notes: “The tendency to believe what isn’t true is easier, when you don’t care what the truth is.”
Robertson, Oscar. THE BIG O: my life, my times, my game.
“Inner dignity is the one thing that should never be compromised.”
Bird, Larry & Johnson, Earvin ‘Magic’ with MacMullan, Jackie. WHEN THE GAME WAS OURS.
As former NBA chief marketing officer Rick Welts notes: “It was as if they came out of central casting.”
Wolf, David. FOUL! Connie Hawkins.
An absolute classic. A Sad and pathetic tale of injustice and insecurity. Or, as Dick Barnett cogently notes on the book’s jacket, “an indictment of America as it is in the black ghetto.”
Iguodala, Andre, with Wallace, Carvell. THE SIXTH MAN.
Often startling and insightful prose by a man from a town “of people who had, through some combination of fate and inertia, ended up with lives they’d didn’t quite choose or wouldn’t have chosen.”
Streep, Abe. BROTHERS ON THREE: a true story of family, resistance and hope on a reservation in Montana.
In a state “built on broken promises,” basketball is everything, and nothing. “Why basketball? I asked. ‘No clue.’ Phil looked down at the ball in his hands. ‘It’s hard. It takes learning. You gotta work for everything you put into that basketball’.”
Thompson, Wright. THE COST OF THESE DREAMS: sports stories and other serious business.
Fourteen remarkable tales of myopia, particularly the spellbinding ‘Beyond the Breach’, crafted by the gifted Thompson. “I crawl around in the lives of men and women who yearn for a different kind of self and future and pay a price for that yearning.”
Goodman, Matthew. THE CITY GAME: triumph, scandal and a legendary basketball team.
In a time and place where virtually everyone gambled, or was on the take, particularly the police, seven Beavers are excoriated for point-shaving, a year after winning an NCAA/NIT double. “It was as though the deceit were a virus that floated through the air, seeking weaknesses, reinfecting all those who had ever been exposed to it.”
Wertheim, L Jon. TRANSITION GAME: how hoosiers went hip-hop.
Wertheim returns to his native state of Indiana and discovers “players who could soar above the rim Matrix-like or create their own shot against any defender or unspool velveteen fingers rolls, but couldn’t be counted on to hit an open fifteen-footer. … Homeboys have replaced the farmboys.”
Green, Ben. SPINNING THE GLOBE: the rise, fall and return to greatness of the Harlem Globetrotters.
Masterfully crafted history of world’s most famous team. Impresario Abe Saperstein was “a complicated, multilayered personality – a pioneering humanist to some (the Abe Lincoln of basketball) and a racist huckster to others, the purveyor of a demeaning minstrel show for whites.”
Withers, Bud. BRAVE HEARTS: the against-all-odds rise of Gonzaga basketball.
“The success is always going to end at Gonzaga, but it never does. … Ultimately, it’s about a triangle of faith, a term the Jesuits would like – faith on the part of recruits that they will develop at Gonzaga, faith by the coaches in a system, faith of the school administration that the best way to sustain this supernova is to reward longtime coaches, to keep them in succession like French kings.”
Dohrmann, George. PLAY THEIR HEARTS OUT: a coach, his star recruit, and the youth basketball machine.
A seamy tale about players as prey by a Pulitzer Prize winner. “The greatest crime committed by [Joe] Barrett and coaches like him is that they bleach the drive out of some of America’s most gifted players by failing to teach them that the foundation for success is a catalog of failures.”
Robinson, Craig. A GAME OF CHARACTER: a family journey from Chicago’s southside to the Ivy League and beyond.
“Life happens to you, putting choices in your path that offer an abundance of opportunities as well as challenges (and sometimes both), and that the best choices are usually the ones that require courage.” A fascinating account of an America that may no longer exist.
Kuska, Bob. CINDERELLA BALL: a look inside small-college basketball in West Virginia.
The demise of small college hoops is a canary in the coalmine; “it’s a sign of the asphyxiating side effects of corporate-dominated broadcasts on small-town life and athletic culture; and it’s a barometer of the encroachment into rural America of the suburban-mall monoculture, with its seductive message of image and affluence.”
O’Brien, Keith. OUTSIDE SHOT: big dreams, hard times, one county’s quest for basketball greatness.
A Bluegrass tour de force. “He was sinking, inching ever deeper into a world where child athletes called the shots and their parents demanded athletic greatness at seemingly any cost, while these fans, this county, longed for the innocence of a not-so-distant past.”
Walker, Marianne. WHEN CUBA CONQUERED KENTUCKY: the triumphant basketball story of a tiny high school that achieved the American dream.
Hoops in the hills in an era in which poverty was endemic, education often irrelevant and hardcourt showmanship revered. “Mostly, there was a lot of time, and a lot of outdoors.”
Abrams, Jonathan. BOYS AMONG MEN: how the prep-to-pro generation redefined the NBA and sparked a basketball revolution.
“The idea of delayed gratification evaporated after [Kevin] Garnett. The path of least resistance to the riches and fame of the NBA became the preferred route.” Sublimely crafted.
CONSIDER READING:
Although nowhere near the quality of ‘must-reads’ above, the following are still worthy of your time:
Walker, J. Samuel Walker and Roberts, Randy. THE ROAD TO MADNESS: how the 1973-74 season transformed college basketball
Two historians posit that North Carolina State’s NCAA tournament victory, and particularly the Wolfpack’s defeat of the dynasty known as U.C.L.A. in the semis, prompted the NCAA to expand tournament entries. Although the premise is tenuous at best, and the authors provide little in the way of evidence for the proposition, their steadfast refusal to deify John Wooden, exacting research and clarity of prose are admirable.
Johnson, James W. THE DANDY DONS
The central premise, that the University of San Francisco, led by Bill Russell and K.C. Jones, revolutionized college basketball by focusing their efforts on defence, is more than sketchy. It’s not as if blocks and ball pressure were entirely foreign to the game, though Russell, in particular, certainly perfected the former. But the wit of the cerebral Russell, and the obdurate character of coach Phil Woolpert, are amusing.
Barton, Don & Fulton, Bob. FRANK McGUIRE: the life and times of a basketball legend
The prose is prosaic but the anecdotes and quotes from interviews are often hilarious. Chapter 11 is among the highlights for those interested in comparative coaching philosophies. And who would have thought that academic issues lay at the root of South Carolina’s decision to bail from the ACC.
Love, Robert Earl and Watkins, Mel. THE BOB LOVE STORY: if it’s gonna be, it’s up to me
An unpretentious tale of hardship, stardom, obscurity and redemption. Best line: I wanted to be the Beethoven of basketball.
Bondy, Filip. TIP-OFF: how the 1984 NBA draft changed basketball forever.
The title premise is entirely unsupported other than a flimsy claim that Hakeem Olajuwon, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley and John Stockton “reshaped the basketball world with drop steps, impossible acrobatics, bruising rebounds and perfect passes.” Bondy also posits that tanking to draw favorable spots in that draft led to the creation of the lottery. While that was probably true, how exactly did it “change” the game? Still, well-researched and entertaining.
Maraniss, Andrew. GAMES OF DECEPTION: the true story of the first U.S. Olympic basketball team at the 1936 Olympics in Hitler’s Germany.
Sufficed to say, basketball is but a peripheral element of this book. More typical is such commentary as: “recognizing the contradictions in America between everyday racism and ideals of freedom and equality, the Nazis held out hope in the early 1930s that the U.S. would ultimately join them in a brotherhood of white supremacy.” Concludes with the execution of 11 Nazi war criminals on gallows erected on a basketball court at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, noting “Olympic basketball was born in Nazi Germany. Nazi Germany died on a basketball court.”
Colas, Yago. BALL DON’T LIE: myth, genealogy and invention in the cultures of basketball.
Bills itself as a semiotic study of basketball as a form of thought but quickly becomes a dissertation on the evolution of the game, according to the consecutively prevailing tenets of Christianity, capitalism, white supremacy, globalization (i.e., American exceptionalism and triumphalism), and embryonic Trumpism (i.e., narcissism). Basketball’s past “exposes how cultural and philosophical convention conspire to stack the odds in favor of institutional authority and against players and that this process runs along racial and class lines, discriminating prejudicially against African Americans and the poor.” The future, he posits, is Lebron James; “nomad thought … (a) paradigm that does away with all paradigms.”
Barry, Rick, with Libby, Bill. CONFESSIONS OF A BASKETBALL GYPSY: the Rick Barry story.
Written in the immediate aftermath of the brouhaha over Barry becoming the first NBA star to jump to the ABA because of his ostensible avarice (a $75,000 versus a $40,000 contract), the book is remarkable for its candour, which is a testimony to Libby. It’s not easy getting that many people to be that forthright. Favorite line from Barry? “Let’s face it: I provoke trouble. I shoot my mouth off too much and I’m quick to throw a punch.”
Pluto, Terry. LOOSE BALLS: the short, wild life of the American Basketball Association.
A high antics classic about a Mickey Mouse league that players loved and its endless battle with then-rinky-dink NBA. Replete with hilarious anecdotes and quotes. Favorite line? Coach Babe McCarthy on Wendell Ladner not knowing the meaning of the word ‘fear’; “of course, he doesn’t know the meaning of many other words, either.”
Alfieri, Gus. LAPCHICK: the life of a legendary player and coach in the glory days of basketball.
Cogent and occasionally captivating, as when describing Lapchick’s days with the Original Celtics, and then with a barnstorming troupe during the depression.
Haygood, Wil. TIGERLAND: 1968-69: a city divided, a nation torn apart, and a magical season of healing.
Painstakingly researched and often compelling, but as often antiseptic. Ostensibly a tale of the intersection between the civil rights movement and a black high school in Columbus, Ohio. But the intersection is largely chronological and little effort is made to elucidate the character of any of the players who toiled for the state basketball and baseball champions, or how the movement impacted their lives. At best, erstwhile, non-evidentiary claims are made that national tensions “troubled the psyche and equilibrium of the team.”
Ferrin, Josh & Ferrin, Tres. BLITZ KIDS: The Cinderella story of the 1944 university national championship basketball team.
Amidst the insipid glorification of an ancestor (Arnie Ferrin), and periodic harebrained analysis, lies an occasional intriguing glimpse into the often-odd trials of playing wartime basketball.
Gomez, Ron, with Shipley, Beryl. SLAMDUNKED: the NCAA’s shameful reaction to athletic integration in the deep south.
A sordid tale from the inglorious history of the hypocritical NCAA. In an era in which Sam Gilbert was distributing cash, or buying cars and clothes, while arranging abortions for the girlfriends of players of a U.C.L.A. program run by puritanical pyramid-lover John Wooden, the NCAA issued a two-year death penalty to Louisiana-Lafayette (then-S.W. Louisiana) for unsubstantiated and minor violations, allegedly in the service of white supremacy.
Tarkanian, Jerry & Pluto, Terry. TARK: college basketball’s winningest coach
The NCAA serving as U.C.L.A. athletic director J.D. Morgan’s investigatory arm? The NCAA serving as former Bruins coach Jim Harrick’s recruiting arm? NCAA investigators so lacking in integrity that they asserted a right to “misrepresent the facts” by using hearsay evidence? Surely not!
O’Connor, Ian. THE JUMP: Sebastian Telfair and the high stakes business of high school ball.
America the grasping. To quote NBA journeyman and apparent gun nut Telfair, the first high school guard to have been made a lottery pick by the league: “It’s like a dream trying to come true.”
Michael Sokolove. THE LAST TEMPTATION OF RICK PITINO: a story of corruption, scandal, and the big business of college basketball.
Blue-blood malfeasance and greed? Surely not. An absolute indictment of all college sports that is fraught with innuendo, cheap shots and ridiculous claims, such as: “it’s an axiom of the recruiting game that kids don’t get recruited by the top schools until they have verbally committed somewhere else.”
Glockner, Andy. CHASING PERFECTION: a behind-the-scenes look at the high-stakes game of creating an NBA champion.
A dry but informative account of the evolution, use and impact of basketball analytics. The impact of analytics on Canadian university hoops.
Hess, Charles. PROF BLOOD AND THE WONDER TEAMS: the true story of basketball’s first great coach.
A meticulously researched account of the 159-game winning streak (and four straight New Jersey state titles) of Naismith Hall of Fame inductees and their predominantly no-dribble offence. Endless pages of piety and petty politics. School administrators jealous of success and a coach who asserts that his team “plays for MANHOOD.”
Byrne, Julie. O God of Players: the story of the Immaculata mighty macs.
Even Catholic girls just wanna have fun, though it “runs against the grain of Catholic women’s history of subordination in ritual and theology, inscription in religious ideologies of gender and sexuality, implication in a Catholic ‘culture of suffering,’ and martyrdom to the patriarchal family.” An often-redundant foray into the intersection of Catholicism and women’s basketball in Philadelphia.
Bradburd, Rus. PADDY ON THE HARDWOOD: a journey in Irish hoops.
“This job was supposed to be like a vacation. Now the worst thing that can happen to a coach was happening to me: I was starting to dislike all my players.” Particularly current University of Alberta coach Barnaby Craddock, who is described as being “thirty one years old, couldn’t complete a Phys Ed degree, a big ego, and a committed golfer.” Yet ultimately, “what I didn’t know was that I would find peace with the broken romance that was my relationship with basketball.”
Rose, Jalen. GOT TO GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT: true stories and flagrant opinions from centre court.
Among the opinions? “It’s all about the money. … You can’t go back in time. Mistakes are what shape you, missteps are what you learn from, and misfires are what make you focus harder next time.”
Levine, David. LIFE ON THE RIM: a year in the Continental Basketball Association
It is, to quote then-Albany Patroons coach George Karl, “a different world.”
Salzberg, Charles. FROM SET SHOT TO SLAM DUNK: the glory days of basketball in the words of those who played it.
A few chapters, such as the interviews with Johnny Kerr and George Yardley, are remarkable but the bulk are primarily a soporific wasteland.
Wideman, John Edgar. HOOP ROOTS: basketball, race and love.
A lyrical and rambling account of basketball as a window into, and one of the determinants of, a black man’s identity. “Lost chances, lost causes, lost time, time nobody gets back, those heartrending, thuggish truths about time you don’t need to waste more time bemoaning … Leave time alone and maybe it will leave you alone a bit longer til you get past this season of dying. … A country dying before it grows past its adolescent bluster, selfishness, callousness and cruelty.”
Heisler, Mark. THEY SHOOT COACHES, DON’T THEY?: UCLA and the NCAA since john wooden.
The trials of being a blue-blood in a world in which everybody cheats (including St. Wooden and the Bruins). As one player notes: “it’s the American way.”
Swade, Josh. THE HOLY GRAIL OF HOOPS: one fan’s quest to buy the original rules of basketball.
More of a paean to Rock Chalk Jayhawk than a quest for a holy grail.
Gaines, Clarence E., with Johnson, Clint. THEY CALL ME BIG HOUSE.
Several remarkable passages, such as one asserting that the point-shaving scandals of the early 1950s “delayed the integration of black athletes into the mainstream of college education by at least a decade. Looking back on it 50 years later, I know it sounds odd to say that the scandal was good for me and my fellow black coaches, but there is no doubt that it helped build our programs.”
Libby, Bill and Haywood, Spencer. Stand Up for Something: The Spencer Haywood Story.
An intriguing tale, indelibly marred by Libby’s hyperbole, convoluted syntax and such ridiculous assertions as “he curls his huge hand into a fist and shakes it at the life he led.”
Hall, M. Ann. THE GRADS ARE PLAYING TONIGHT! The story of the Edmonton Commercial Graduates Basketball Club.
Primarily mini-biographies of Grads players. Well researched, but periodically inconsistent, for example, identifying one Grads 1922 foe as alternatively being Barons, Calgary Barons and Lethbridge Barons.
Savage, Jim. The Force: David Robinson, the NBA’s newest sky-high sensation.
“I searched very hard to find the one thing that I could be great at, and suddenly I found myself seven feet tall. I guess it better be basketball.”
Yao, Ming, with Bucher, Ric. YAO: a life in two worlds.
“I live in two places – one that is very new and different to me [USA], and one that is very old and very different now, too [China].” Dry, but worth reading for its insights into Chinese society.
Pippen, Scottie, with Michael Arkush. UNGUARDED.
A life of a towering ego (Pippen) in the shadow of the massive ego known as Michael Jordan and the unvarnished egos of Chicago Bulls management, as well as other thoughts from a troubled soul.
Katz, Milton S. BREAKING THROUGH: John B. McLendon, basketball legend and civil rights pioneer.
Painstakingly researched tale of a remarkable coach that’s written in academic, dry-as-dust prose.
Guffey, Greg. THE GREATEST BASKETBALL STORY EVERY TOLD: the milan miracle, then and now.
Largely a lament for a lost way of life.
McCallum, Jack. :07 SECONDS OR LESS: my season on the bench with the runnin’ and gunnin’ Phoenix Suns.
Primary focus is the 2005-06 Suns coaching staff. Unwieldy structure with periodic trenchant observations, such as Steve Nash is so hard-nosed, he “spits blood.” Among more amusing lines was one of total disdain for ESPN broadcaster Greg Anthony, to wit: “He is a Republican.” Best line? Basketball “was once about freedom of movement and decisions made on the run, the sporting world’s answer to jazz.”
Peavy, Linda and Smith, Ursula. FULL COURT QUEST: the girls from Fort Shaw Indian School, basketball champions of the world.
Predominantly an homage to an off-reservation boarding school.
Banks, Kerry. THE UNOFFICIAL GUIDE TO BASKETBALL’S NASTIEST MOST UNUSUAL RECORDS.
Ever wondered why George Gervin was nicknamed after a pimp? Then this is the book for you. Favorite line? Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle noting of Kobe Bryant that “when you show up for your rape trial in a second-rate private jet, the message you’re sending to the jury is clear: This is not a classy individual.”
Campbell, Nelson, editor. GRASS ROOTS AND SCHOOLYARDS: a high school basketball anthology, 50 years of the best basketball writing.
“If there is a sport of the people, it is basketball. … It’s only a game, but then a violin is only a wooden box.”
Lucas, Adam. THE BEST GAME EVER: how Frank McGuire’s ’57 Tar Heels beat Wilt and revolutionized college basketball.
Yet another revolution in college basketball? Surely not. Presumably, the revolution was Carolina’s becoming a blue blood. But who knows? Despite the clarity of the prose, the premise is never articulated, let alone supported by evidence.
.Merlino, Doug. THE HUSTLE: one team and ten lives in black and white.
In America the bleak, an experiment is conducted in which basketball is a “vehicle of integration.” Among the outcomes? “Tyrell had been shot in the back of the head. Both of his legs had been dismembered. They were not found with the body.”
McCallum, Jack. GOLDEN DAYS: West’s Lakers, Steph’s Warriors and the California Dreamers who reinvented basketball.
McCallum clearly wanted to pay homage to West but as that’s been done so many times, he opted to do so under the guise of a questionable premise that The Logo was singularly responsible for the Dubs and Lakers dynasties. Chapters on the Dubs’ evolution are worth reading, if only because McCallum is a gifted writer with a rapier wit.
Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem, with Obstfeld, Raymond. BECOMING KAREEM: growing up on and off the court.
A journey to black pride, Islam and manhood. Includes extensive assessment of the impact of Jack Donohue’s utterance of a racist slur.
Lenehan, Michael. RAMBLERS: Loyola Chicago 1963 – the team that changed the color of basketball.
A well-crafted but oddly-structured and often-derivative tale about the about three teams in the 1963 NCAA tournament. Even the author calls the title proposition preposterous. “A book like this is obliged to make such a claim on its cover.”
D’Orso, Michael. EAGLE BLUE: a team, a tribe and a high school basketball season in arctic Alaska.
“But up in the bush, something was slipping away. Natives throughout the Arctic, were torn between who they had once been and what they were now becoming, between where they could once turn to feel pride and connection and where they now felt little but lostness and shame. They were fragmenting – as families, communities, even as individuals. Amid such upheaval, this simple game, basketball, gave them something to turn to pull them together.”
Lynn, Scott. THORNRIDGE: the perfect season in black and white.
Saccharine, dull prose occasionally enlivened by a vaguely provocative quote, such as: “all it was is circumstance and fate. I believe it was supposed to happen to him, as it was supposed to happen to all of us.”
Barr, Josh. GOOD ENOUGH TO BE GREAT: the inside story of Maryland basketball’s national championship season.
“Coaches make mistakes. You call a wrong play and look back after the game: ‘What was I thinking about?’”
ON THE BUBBLE (perhaps best to avoid):
Works with some redeeming qualities:
Schumacher, Michael. MR. BASKETBALL: George Mikan, the Minneapolis Lakers; and the birth of the NBA.
Billed as the “definitive” biography of Mikan, it makes little effort to elucidate his character and even pretentiously dismisses him as a less than “terribly complex individual – what you saw was what you got.” It’s hard not to conclude that Schumacher dislikes Mikan. But some quotes, including ones lifted from Mikan’s book, are illuminating and occasionally, there’s an amusing anecdote.
Gasaway, John. Miracles on the Hardwood.
Proposes that there is a “parish” and a “plains” tradition in American college basketball that somehow distinguishes the hoops historically played by Catholic institutions but offers nothing in the way of support for the notion. Rather, it simply catalogues their many hardcourt accomplishments and then concludes, in a blazing exhibition of Jesuitical sophistry, that “it is perhaps the ritual of basketball itself, more than particular success within the sport, that binds this one faith to this one game.”
Blythe, Will. To Hate Like This is to be Happy Forever: a thoroughly obsessive, intermittently uplifting and occasionally unbiased account of the Duke-North Carolina rivalry.
“Fandom positioned you in an endless here and now of current seasons. … So maybe fandom and religious experience were exchangeable currency. Perhaps the agony and ecstasy afforded by sport could actually propel you on your way to hard-won spiritual knowledge that politer forms of instruction (Sunday school, for instance) could not reach.” It’s tempting to conclude that the author is as sanctimonious as Mike Krzyzewski.
Thompson, Stephen. A Gift Before Dying: the legacy of Robert Scott’s final season for the Crimson Tide.
There are times when you read a book that is so mediocre, it becomes an exemplar of vapidity, yet somehow worth reading as such. Page after page of insipid prose with the depth of paint, redeemed only by sporadic but often trite glimpses of a dying assistant coach’s impact on a team’s dynamic.
Roberts, Nadine & Richardson Cynthia. GENE BESS: college basketball’s winningest coach.
Success, it seems, is entirely a function of Baptist faith.
May, Reuben A. Buford. LIVING THROUGH THE HOOP: high school basketball, race and the American dream.
“Inequality and race help systemically structure the kinds of choices young black men make.” High school basketball is viewed as an avenue of escape from deleterious communities but given the rarity with which players enter college or pro ranks, it is not a “viable means of social mobility.” While it may provide “safe passage through the streets” of crime and drugs, it is a “dirty trick” that masks structural impediments to accomplishment in other avenues of life. (Note: for less than compelling reasons, all player and place names are anonymized).
Libby, Bill. THE WALTON GANG.
A shameless homage to U.C.L.A. that unwittingly confirms that Bill Walton was always a pompous flake and that John Wooden was perhaps even more hypocritical and sanctimonious than Mike Krzyzewski. Favorite line? Walton noting that “I put out the word that they can speak to [construction magnate, money-launderer and UCLA sugar daddy] Sam Gilbert if they want to speak to me. He takes cares of my business.”
Carey, Mike. BAD NEWS: the turbulent life of Marvin Barnes, pro basketball’s original renegade.
Really, he didn’t mean to snort all that coke.
Croatto, Pete. FROM HANG TIME TO PRIME TIME: business, entertainment and the birth of the modern-day NBA.
A somewhat disjointed, and often fawning, take on the role that NBA and television brass had in shifting the game into playground mode to make bushels of corporate dollars. To quote ex-commissioner David Stern: “You just don’t get it. We’re not just a sport. We’re Disney.”
Porter, David. FIXED: How goodfellas bought Boston College basketball.
Another sleazy tale from avaricious America. It’s a given that crime is dull and most criminals are moronic, but who knew that point-shaving involved such intricate and convoluted plotting?
Olson, Lute with Fisher, David. LUTE!: the seasons of my life.
Just call me Saint Lute. The best line occurs on page 3: “One day I picked up a basketball and it never let me go.” Beyond that lie primarily dull, soporific platitudes, with periodic relief in the form of Steve Kerr quotes.
Williams, Alan. WALK-ON: life from the end of the bench.
Overcoming a litany of trivial slights through faith, complete with relentless references to gospel. Surely it wasn’t God’s plan that this book be published. Least tedious line? “As a non-scholarship player, I had to take pride in the little things. I once went 16 for 16 in warm-ups against Kansas.”
Miller, Don. OVERTIME KIDS: the untold story of a small-town Kentucky basketball team’s unlikely rise to the state championship.
The author was head professor of education at Morehead State for 30 years. Pity his former students if his lectures were as muddled and pedantic as his prose. As my dog Ruckus would say: Woof.
Amato, Laura. RISING ABOVE THE MADNESS: profiles of the greatest NCAA basketball coaches of all time.
Hard to imagine a more mundane collection of cliches and homilies.
Davis, Jeff. DEAN SMITH: a basketball life.
Largely derivative and altogether prone to drifting off on tangents (typically of the gridiron variety). Little effort is made to elucidate Smith’s character or his role in events. Even Smith’s civil rights activism is given but passing reference, while the thin chapter on North Carolina’s academic malfeasance is all but incoherent.
Austin, Dan. TRUE FANS: a basketball odyssey.
Well, the movie version won the Banff Mountain Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award.
Mallozi, Vincent M. ASHPHALT GODS: an oral history of the Rucker Tournament
“The rules of the game were overlooked in favor of a good show.”
Breslin, Ed. THE DIVINE NATURE OF BASKETBALL: my season inside the Ivy League.
“The nefarious voice in my head said I was a hopeless idiot with no chance of delivering an interesting book on college basketball as played in the Ivy League.” Seems that some voices know what they’re talking about.
Goldstein, David A. Alley-Oop to Aliyah: African American hoopsters in the holy land.
Although written by a Canadian, it reads like an advertising brochure that might well have been crafted by the Israeli ministry of tourism. Only the chapter on racism (p. 167-188) seems vaguely balanced.
Self, Bill, with Rohde, John. BILL SELF: at home in the Phog.
Dang, did I tell you how humble I am? [The current equivalent? ‘I had no idea what Adidas was doing, paying my Jayhawks.’]
Berkow, Ira. Court Vision: unexpected views on the lure of basketball
For those who might conceivably care about what ‘celebrities’ like Woody Allen and Donald Trump think about basketball.
Wojciechowski, Gene. THE LAST GREAT GAME: Duke vs. Kentucky and the 2.1 seconds that changed basketball.
Ridiculous hyperbole ostensibly based on the premise that the victory of “prestigious” and “iconic” Duke over Kentucky in the 1992 NCAA East regional final somehow changed basketball. Must have been the product of the opening chapter’s description of Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski’s courtship of his wife. Woof.
James, LeBron and Bissinger, Buzz. SHOOTING STARS (alternately published as Lebron’s Dream Team)
Not even Bissinger, who crafted the sublime ‘Friday Night Lights’, which many believe the best football book of all time, could redeem James’ often-juvenile drivel.
Dohrmann, George. SUPERFANS: into the heart of obsessive sports fandom.
The jacket bills this as “utterly hilarious,” “uproarious and alarming” and “vastly entertaining.” How about ‘none of the above’? Primarily lethal interviews with psychologists.
Glass, Keith. TAKING SHOTS: tall tales, bizarre battles, the incredible truth about the NBA.
An agent’s take on the game’s culture of entitlement. “The game itself has become a selfish, tedious, and colossal bore.”
Shirley, Paul. CAN I KEEP MY JERSEY? 11 teams, 5 countries and 4 years in my life as a basketball vagabond.
An altogether monotonous exercise in pompous cynicism and American exceptionalism, featuring such pronouncements as: “I am surrounded by imbeciles.”
Marantz, Steve. THE RHYTHM BOYS OF OMAHA CENTRAL: high school basketball at the ’68 racial divide.
Basketball takes a backseat to what is primarily a coming-of-age tale about racism in Omaha.
Schwomeyer, Herb. A HISTORY OF INDIANA HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL.
A compendium of results between 1911-1970. For trivia buffs: Q: who presented the hardware at the 1925 tournament? A: James Naismith
Litos, Michael. CINDERELLA: inside the rise of mid-major college basketball.
Periodic moments of interest, as when discussing Colonial Athletic Association scheduling challenges, but largely a foray into vapidity, featuring such mind-numbing prose as: “Despite the lack of emotion, crowd, and Cinderella angle, there was a greater feeling of bigness.”
Rice, Russell. Adolph Rupp: Kentucky’s basketball baron.
A friend’s sympathetic, if not apologetic, account of a coaching legend.
Thompson II, Marcus. KD: Kevin Durant’s relentless pursuit to be the greatest.
Rarely is a biographer so fawning. “Can he stand being a prisoner to [Stephen] Curry nostalgia?” Why, like Jesus, Durant even speaks in parables. Ad infinitum, and often, ad nauseum.
Heathcote, Jud with Epling, Jack. JUD a magical journey.
A rambling and occasionally incoherent autobiography. “When I played golf, and I still do this to this day, I never washed my golf ball. I had a habit of putting it in my mouth. I think some fertilizer got in my system.” Really?
Brignall, Richard. FOREVER CHAMPIONS: the enduring legacy of the record-setting Edmonton Grads.
Classify this as being among books that redefine mediocrity.
Gullan, Harold I. JUMPING THROUGH HOOPS: why Penn wins.
Better to ponder, Gullan posits, is why Penn matters. “They operate under a different set of rules, the rules of sanity.” But after that intriguing start, comes naught but adulatory propaganda.
Hunt, Donald, with special commentary from Aaron McKie and Eddie Jones. CHANEY: playing for a legend.
Cheerleading 101.
Haskins, Clem with Ryan, Marc. BREAKING BARRIERS.
A god-fearing, massive ego who’s always “right. … I believe strongly in certain things and I’m a man of principle.” [Two years after the book’s publication in 1997, Haskins was forced to resign when an academic scandal revealed he’d long been paying someone to write papers for his players. He was ordered to return $815,000 of his buyout and Minnesota was stripped of NCAA and NIT tournament wins between 1994-98.]