Dearth of NBA literature

WOW

 

The best piece of NBA trivia I know is that Chuck Connors, who was later better known as "The Rifleman," was the first NBA (or BAA, as the case may be) player to ever break a backboard. He was an original Boston Celtic and apparently he did it during the warmups prior to the team's first-ever game.

 

You can look for "From Cages to Jump Shots," by Robert W. Peterson, best known for a baseball book (naturally), "Only the Ball Was White," the first major history of the Negro Leagues. Peterson's book covers pre-NBA ball quite well. It wasn't "history," at the time, but David Halberstam's "The Breaks of the Game," on the 1977-78 Blazers, is a fascinating look at a doomed team. Paul Shirley's book was a good read, too, a fascinating look at a doomed player. For an interesting look at lower levels, Phillip Hoose's "Hoosiers" -- just pre-dating the movie of the same name -- is a great look at Indiana high school basketball.

But I would agree there isn't the history and hagiography like there is in baseball. Of course, that's a sport that is obsessed with its past, while basketball seems to make a point of remaining ignorant of it. That might change once someone writes either of two definitive biographies:

1. David Stern -- who else to center the rise and fall and rise and fall and rise and fall, etc., of pro basketball than him?

2. Bob Knight -- despite "Season on the Brink," the definitive biography has yet to be written, and probably won't be until he dies and people aren't afraid to talk about him anymore. Not just about his own fascinating personality, but he also would be a great person to center the discussion of the evolution of the college game and the cult of the coach. Note to book publishers: I'm ready and willing to write you my own proposal!

 

Good points, Bob Cook, especially about Knight. It will be quite interesting when he dies.

And I wasn't making a racial statement with my joke, I was just coming from the perspective of someone who hates the NBA (for which I blame David Stern, but that's a whole 'nother story).

 

I can name more than a handful of NBA books I own, and love:

Halberstam's "Breaks of the Game" and "Playing for Keeps," his Jordan bio.

Bill Bradley's NBA diary, "Life on the Run."

Jayson Williams' "Loose Balls," which was used, I believe, by the prosecution in his murder case, because he wrote about his mishaps with guns

Jack McCallums' Suns book, "Seven seconds or less." (I need to get his old Celtics book(

Phil Jackson's book on the Lakers was a good read

Sam Smith's "The Jordan Rules"

Michael Leahy's bookend to that, "When Nothing Else Matters."

 

Hemingway has some tremendous stuff on marbles.

 

I misread the thread title.

 

Baseball and golf lend themselves to talking more because those sports have periods where participants can talk to each other at some length during play, even to the point of discussing the game and strategy as it is happening. Basketball is so fast that you really can't do that.

There are also fewer writers in fewer cities who are great writers in their sport. Every major league city, it seems, have had big-time writers of note writing about baseball for long periods of their career. I don't think you can say the same thing for basketball. I think it is harder to write interesting stuff about a losing basketball team compared to a losing baseball team.