Book of the Year

Sirs,

I'm on the case.

I would love to borrow Peace's method for a feature but I think I'd do better to steal it.

o-<

 

A lot worse. The officiating in the NBA is laughable. Not saying the other sports don't have their troubles, but the officiating is a big reason why so many fans are turned off by the NBA.

 

Here's another vote for the Krakauer book. Just tremendous. Also liked a book called "Fading Echoes," by Mike Sielski, a sports columnist in suburban Philly. In the interests of full disclosure, Mike is a friend and respected colleague. But the book, about two football players from rival high schools who go off to war in Iraq, stands on its own merits.

I also generally like Simmons' book, though I wonder how a guy who's such a big fan of team play (he calls it "The Secret" in the book) can also be such a big fan of Iverson.

 

Back to the Donaghty book. NBA refs are a total joke. Have been for at least 25 years. They have about three sets of rules depending on who the player involved is. Most of these guys are just egotistical actors----a lot of what they call is either contrived or anticipatory, and if you listen to their repartee with coaches and players from near the bench area, you can see how a lot of these guys like to tease players/coaches or insert themselves into a situation beyond just being cordial or even funny when the moment calls for it. It's almost like they are following a script. NBA games always felt scripted to me.

 

No, I am not a basketball referee, although I did work high school basketball games a few years ago. I am also not that big of an NBA fan, to the point where I watch maybe the sum-total of one half of one game a year.

But as someone who has and still does officiate sports, it galls me that people always say officiating is crooked. It's been credited to many different people, but the quote goes, "Officiating is where you are expected to be perfect on your first day and get better every day after that."

Officials are not perfect, and never will be. But neither are the players or the media covering them. A perfect example is this past weekend's Butler-Xavier game. The three officials got that end-of-game situation dead-nuts right. Yet, the announcers on the game (Musberger and Knight, IIRC) assumed the officials were going to ADD time to the clock. So for five minutes, they showed replay after replay and explained what was going to happen, only to be completely wrong.

There are known measures for player performance. As far as the public eye can see, there is only hearsay about an official's performance. I'd sure love to know what the so-called experts (fans and media alike) have that demonstrates that the officials in whatever sport are horrible. It just isn't true.

 

One more vote for "Where Men Win Glory," the Krakauer book. Loved it.

 

Another vote for Krakauer and a first vote for "Our Boys" by Joe Drape.

 

Sirs, Madames,

The book that I didn't understand the buzz for was Born to Run. I'm sure the marathon running Mexican tribe were nice folk but I just don't get it. And I like track, running, etc as my former handle here indicated.

o-<

 

Didn't read a lot of sports books this year, but I agree with the original poster that The Beckham Experiment was a great read. Not often you'll find a guy with the athletic skill of Landon Donovan who is so willing to rip his even higher-profile teammate. Even Donovan now says it was mistake, but the bad blood is laid out for the world to see. It's a very honest account from everyone except Beckham. Alexi Lalas didn't hold back either, but I guess he had no reason to since he lost his job over the whole situation.

And I think it's outstanding that the ad at the bottom of this page is all about becoming a basketball referee.

 

In the last couple months I read Krakauer's book, Tom Verducci's 'The Yankee Years' and another book about Lombardi's first season in Green Bay. Krakauer's book was easily in a class of its own, while Verducci's wandered around too much. Rather than approaching the Torre era chronologically, 'Yankee Years' read like a bunch of columns mashed together. Some interesting stuff, but I thought it could have been better.

 

I was on his SI page today looking for a story on the US National team and it says he's 35 and has been at SI for 13 years. Before that he was at the Miami Herald. Is that possible? This dude started there at 22? If so, he's the definition of an "effin' stud" as folks like to say here.

 

The Yankee Years gave me a case of vertigo. As you said it jumped all over the place. At one point he would be talking about 1996 then without warning you would be in 2003.