I finished Jack McCallum’s new book about the Dream Team
today. It’s a good read – look for a review at The Good Point and maybe
elsewhere sometime soon – and I enjoyed it a lot.
There’s one thing about it, though, that keeps nagging at
the back of my mind: how often McCallum turns to other authors. It’s not
something he does often, but every so often he quotes a passage from Jackie
MacMullan’s When the Game Was Ours or
Bill Simmons The Book of Basketball
and occasionally from something else. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just kind of a
weird thing to me. After all, he interviewed Magic Johnson, so why is he using
a quote of his from another book?
That’s a minor thing, but it got me thinking about those
books. And once I started with that, I went
a little further and looked at all the basketball books I own and thinking
about the ones I’ve read and how they all compare. What follows is a few words about my favorite basketball books and if I'd recommend them over Dream Team.
A Season on the Brink
– John Feinstein
I suppose this is the definitive book about college hoops –
it’s certainly the best known one, anyway – and for good reason: Feinstein’s
long look at a still-incendiary Bobby Knight is occasionally breathtaking, and
not in a positive way. Knight was a destructive force: everyone probably has a
mental snapshot of him tossing a chair across the court and maybe feels that
he’s an irritable guy, but as I remember this book – it’s been a few years
since I read it – Knight comes like a tyrant, not the gruff guy he sometimes
seems like on ESPN.
Would I recommend it over Dream Team? Yes, especially if you like college hoops.
Heaven is a
Playground – Rick Telander
Another one I read a long time ago, back when I read
something like four or five sports books a month. While writing this, Telander
spent something like an entire summer living in New York and hanging out on
concrete courts around people like Fly Williams and Albert King. It’s a good
read, even if it’s depressing: the abject poverty, the drugs just off to the
side of the court – a memorable scene has a player turning down something that
looks like orange juice: methadone – and the divide between Telander and the
kids that can’t be bridged all add up after a while.
Would I recommend it over Dream Team? Nope. It’s good, but not quite as good and it’s a
little dated to boot.
The Last Shot – Darcy
Frey
Here, Frey spends time in Coney Island, an outpost of
despair. His book is tragic, with one of the principals dying and it’s most
successful figure is Stephon Marbury, whose career is nothing if not checkered.
I remember reading this on a bus, riding back from Moncton to Oshawa, and
plowing through it in one sitting. It’s a powerful book, and as far as I’m
concerned, it’s right up there with Hoop Dreams.
Would I recommend it over Dream Team? It’s a tough one, but I would: this is one of favorite
sports reads.
The Miracle of St.
Anthony – Adrian Wojnarowski
This is another one about basketball in the inner city,
although this is more of an upper than the two previous. Here Wojnarowski
spends time around Bob Hurley, coach at a school in New Jersey, and looks at
how the program keeps kids out of gangs, wins games and now single-minded
Hurley is: as he approaches his 800th win, a top ranking in the country and has
games televised, his teams practice in a gym that’s falling apart, in a school
struggling to make ends meet. I remember enjoying the hell out of this one.
But I wouldn’t recommend it over Dream Team, especially if you’re familiar with the PBS documentary
on Hurley.
Loose Balls – Terry
Pluto
I’ve written about this book before, as has pretty much
everyone else ever – so chances are you know how good this one is: it’s pretty
much the benchmark for oral histories, a book that manages to be both
illuminating (especially in how the league was formed) and entertaining (any of
the Marvin Williams stories, for instance). Would I recommend it over Dream Team? Yes, in a heartbeat.
Wilt – Wilt
Chamberlain and David Shaw
Written before Wilt decided to do things like attempt to
play pro volleyball, coach in the ABA (and
in pretty rad pants) and claim he slept with 10,000 women. This is more
about his earlier years, ranging from his time at Kansas to tangling with Bill
Russell in the postseason. And he doesn’t hold back, either, talking frankly
about discrimination and how much he didn’t like his coaches, throwing some of
them under the bus. Also he was and Nixon were friends?
Would I recommend it over Dream Team? No. It’s a fun biography (his second one is even
crazier), but it’s not a good a read.
Playing for Keeps –
David Halberstam
Maybe the definitive Michael Jordan bio will never be
written, given how private he seems to be and how much everyone likes him. But
this work by Halberstam comes damn close: it’s a detailed look a the first two
phases of Jordan’s career, ending with the 1998 championship run, and was the
first place I remember hearing a lot of Jordan lore: Larry Bird’s quote after
Jordan scored 62 in the playoffs, the flag draped over a Reebok logo, the
gambling debts, etc. Like pretty much everything Halberstam wrote, it’s packed
with research, well written and really enjoyable, even if Jordan didn’t really
take part in it. It’s another one I’d recommend over Dream Team.
Seven Seconds or Less
– Jack McCallum
His book previous to Dream
Team is also good and arguably better: McCallum spent a season on the bench
with the Suns, embedded and researching for this book, and was there for a wild
playoff run that forms the backbone of this: a back-and-forth seven game series
against the Lakers, a chippy series against the Clippers and them running out
of gas against Dallas in a memorable conference final. His portraits of players
like the moody, enigmatic Amare Stoudemire, the insecure Shaun Marion and the
irreplaceable Steve Nash really push this book over the top: it’d have been
easy to write something about how much fun this team was to watch, but he went
further into how this team ticked. Would I recommend it over Dream Team? Definitely, yeah: it’s maybe
my favorite basketball book.
The Breaks of the
Game – David Halberstam
Another one I haven’t read in a while, although I can
remember where I bought it (a little hole-in-the-wall store in downtown Oshawa)
which is more than I can say for most of my books. It claims it’s a season-long
look at the 1978 Portland Trail Blazers, although it’s really more than that:
it’s a look at the NBA as it’s in trouble and struggling to stay alive. It
wasn’t just the drug problem, which everyone points to now: Halberstam points
to reasons like ABC Sports losing the contract and deciding to crush the
league’s ratings by running made-for-TV sports at the same time. It’s
enjoyable, another of my favorites and it’s back in print, too! I had a hell of
a time finding a copy back when it was still OOP. Another I’d recommend over Dream Team and would especially
recommend reading right before, if only to appreciate where the league had to
overcome before it could get to the Olympics.
Let Me Tell You A
Story – Red Auerbach and John Feinstein
Red never wrote an autobiography, so it’s nice that
something like this came out: Feinstein hung around the legendary figure for a
while and was able to get some stories about the golden years of the league out
of him. It’s a fun read, especially enjoyable if you’re into either the Celtics
or basketball history, but it’s a lesser effort from Feinstein and never really
rises beyond “Here’s Red telling some cool stories in each chapter.” I wouldn’t
recommend it over Dream Team.
The Free Darko
Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac
A dark horse for best basketball book of the last decade,
the first Free Darko book is a collection of profiles, infographics and the
occasional illustration that’s dripping with insight, wit and charm. Granted,
those sound like empty review words, but it’s a book which is equally funny and
informative. It goes into why a temper is good for Ron Artest, into Kobe
Bryant’s intense drive for perfection and why Vince Carter is unfairly maligned
(and not just by Toronto). But it also is packed with good gags, like Isiah
Rider applying for a job at Starbucks, rankings of How Euro various countries
are and the wisdom of Rasheed Wallace. I’m torn if I’d recommend it over Dream Team, though: there’s a sort of
implied knowledge here, that you know this book is half tongue in cheek but
also really damn clever. If you don’t remember Free Darko, chances are this
book isn’t for you.
The Book of
Basketball – Bill Simmons
A gargantuan book, a huge ranking of players and seasons by
someone who’s maybe incapable of writing short columns. The Book of Basketball
was probably designed more to start arguments than to resolve them, and I
suppose it does that pretty damn well since I disagree with a bunch of stuff
here, but when read front to back, it’s a struggle to get through. Not only
because it’s so long, not only because so much of what Simmons argues seems to
be arbitrary (but aren’t all rankings?) but because he keeps making porn and
sex jokes and it frankly gets a little weird after a while. Still, gotta admire
the effort and there’s a good bibliography of basketball books in the back.
Would I recommend it over Dream Team? No, because it’s really just way too much of a thing.
It’s a great thing to pick up once in a while and work your way through – much
like another huge book, the Norton
Anthology of World Literature – but it’s something of a slog.
That pretty much covers the basketball books I own and have
read, although there’s a few other good ones I’m not going into detail over
since I don’t have them handy: Pistol by Mark Kriegel, Tall Tales by Terry
Pluto, Red and Me by Bill Russell and Alan Steinberg.
Whatever you do, don’t read that one Paul Shirley wrote, it’s
self-obsessed trash and he’s
pretty scummy to boot.
