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Basketball: Great Writing About America’s Game

Edited by Alexander Wolff

Foreword by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

“Alexander Wolff has put together this collection like a master point guard distributing the ball, deftly providing both a chronology of the game and a full, rich accounting of its place in American culture.”—Glenn Stout, series editor, The Best American Sports Writing

Overview
Table of Contents
Contributors

Overview

Interviews Endpapers: A family story about books, belonging, and the bloodlands of 20th-century Europe
April 2, 2021

Interviews Sportswriter Alexander Wolff: “Basketball becomes a way of working through things”
March 28, 2018

Story of the Week Edith Roberts, “Indiana’s Town of Champions”
March 22, 2018

Made in America, basketball has become a national obsession whose rise as a popular entertainment has coincided with the ascendancy of new ways of writing about sports. In this landmark anthology, the biggest and best collection of basketball writing ever assembled, an all-star roster of sportswriters, essayists, and players cover the game in all its myriad aspects: the storied teams, like the Celtics, Knicks, and Tennessee Lady Vols; the iconic superstars, like Kareem, Jordan, LeBron, and Steph Curry; the frenzy of March Madness and the NBA finals; and the sheer poetry, grace, and spectacle of the sport.

The book opens with James Naismith’s account of inventing the game in 1891, an unlikely origin story of a global phenomenon. It moves on to Red Smith’s momentary dalliance with a sport he claims not to have liked and Edith Roberts’s account of the legendary Indiana championship immortalized in the film Hoosiers before it fast breaks to the 1960s, when basketball writing came into its own. John McPhee on Bill Bradley, Jimmy Breslin on Al McGuire, David Halberstam on the Portland Trail Blazers: these masters of long-form journalism sized up players, coaches, and teams in prose that is always trenchant. Meanwhile reporters like Pete Axthelm and Rick Telander began exploring the glories and tragedies of the “city game,” the electrifying world of playground ball and its players’ complex stories.

Expertly edited and introduced by longtime Sports Illustrated writer Alexander Wolff, the pieces gathered here range from personal reflections about the sport (John Edgar Wideman, Brian Doyle, David Shields) to indelible profiles (Frank Deford on Bob Knight, Gary Smith on Pat Summitt) to pieces influenced by the revolution in basketball commentary on the internet (the FreeDarko Collective, Zach Lowe). Others approach the sport as a way to think about America more broadly, particularly about race, illuminating Michael Novak’s observation that “a part of our deepest identity is uttered in this game.”

Alexander Wolff, editor, spent thirty-six years writing for Sports Illustrated and is the author or co-author of seven books on basketball, including The Audacity of Hoop: Basketball and the Age of Obama; the New York Times best seller Raw Recruits; and Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Adventure, a 2002 New York Times Notable Book. In 2011 he received the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame’s Curt Gowdy Media Award for lifetime coverage of the game.

Cover photograph: Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls drives to the basket for a layup against the Hubert Davis of the New York Knicks during the first game of round two of the 1996 NBA Playoffs in Chicago, Illinois. Copyright © 1996 by NBAE. Photo by Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE/Getty Images.

This special publication features full-cloth binding, acid-free paper, and a unique design with specifications differing from those of Library of America series titles.
Table of Contents

Foreword by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Introduction by Alexander Wolff

James Naismith | from Basketball: Its Origin and Development
Red Smith | A Case of Malnutrition
Edith Roberts | Indiana’s Town of Champions
Herbert Warren Wind | Farewell to Cousy
John McPhee | from A Sense of Where You Are
Roy Blount, Jr. | 47 Years A Shot-Freak
Pete Axthelm | from The City Game
George Kiseda | A Reflection of Society
Jimmy Breslin | The Coach Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight
Tom Meschery | from Caught in the Pivot
Rick Telander | from Heaven Is a Playground
Michael Novak | from The Joy of Sports
Stanley Cohen | from The Game They Played
Peter Goldman | Requiem for a Globetrotter
Douglas Bauer | Girls Win, Boys Lose
Bill Russell and Taylor Branch | from Second Wind
David Halberstam | from The Breaks of the Game
Frank Deford | The Rabbit Hunter
David Bradley | The Autumn of the Age of Jabbar
Donald Hall | Basketball: The Purest Sport of Bodies
Mark Jacobson | The Passion of Doctor J
Curry Kirkpatrick | Memories
Bob Ryan and Terry Pluto | from Forty-Eight Minutes
Dave Kindred | Pete Maravich
Alexander Wolff | The Coach and His Champion
Charles P. Pierce | The Brother from Another Planet
Darcy Frey | from The Last Shot
Gary Smith | Eyes of the Storm
Rick Reilly | Last Call?
Melissa King | It’s All in the Game
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar | from A Season on the Reservation
John Edgar Wideman | from Hoop Roots
Pat Conroy | from My Losing Season
Steve Rushin | I Believe in B-Ball
James McKean | Playing for Jud
FreeDarko | from The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac
Michael Lewis | The No-Stats All-Star
George Dohrmann | from Play Their Hearts Out
Bryan Curtis | The Fiberglass Backboard
Jack McCallum | from Dream Team
Brian Doyle | His Last Game
Lee Jenkins | The King: LeBron James, Sportsman of the Year 2012
Zach Lowe | The Life and Death of Fandom
Rowan Ricardo Phillips | Days of Wine and Curry
David Shields | Life Is Not a Playground
Contributors

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Pete Axthelm
Douglas Bauer
Roy Blount, Jr.
David Bradley
Taylor Branch
Jimmy Breslin
Stanley Cohen
Pat Conroy
Bryan Curtis
Frank Deford
George Dohrmann
Brian Doyle
FreeDarko
Darcy Frey
Peter Goldman
David Halberstam
Donald Hall
Mark Jacobson
Lee Jenkins
Dave Kindred
Melissa King
Curry Kirkpatrick
George Kiseda
Michael Lewis
Zach Lowe
James McKean
Jack McCallum
John McPhee
Tom Meschery
James Naismith
Michael Novak
Rowan Ricardo Phillips
Charles P. Pierce
Terry Pluto
Rick Reilly
Edith Roberts
Steve Rushin
Bill Russell
Bob Ryan
David Shields
Gary Smith
Red Smith
Rick Telander
John Edgar Wideman
Herbert Warren Wind
Alexander Wolff

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ISBN: 978-1-59853-556-3 485 pages

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