But there are also other stories that need to be told. From Perry Wallace, who was the first Black basketball player to compete in the SEC to the social justice work led by WNBA players and protests that took place across the W and the NBA in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, author Andrew Maraniss is here to tell them all.

Maraniss, a New York Times bestselling author and a Visiting Author at Vanderbilt University Athletics, is a pioneer in his own right. He’s just released four books, including a new 10th-anniversary edition of Strong Inside (for adults), the paperback edition of Inaugural Ballers (for teens/adults) and the first two books in a new series for first and third graders called Beyond the Game. Get your copy here.

SLAM recently caught up Maraniss to discuss the inspiration behind his work and writing books for the next generation of sports fans:

SLAM: Let’s start with the first book you published. What inspired you to write Strong Inside?

ANDREW MARANISS: Growing up like you I was really into sports writing. I always saw sports and reading and writing as connected. My parents said I learned how to read by reading the back of baseball cards when I was a little kid.

In my sophomore year, I was taking a Black history course I was a history major. And it just coincidentally happened to be the same year that Perry Wallace was invited back to Vanderbilt to be honored as the Jackie Robinson figure of the SEC.

[It was] just a coincidence that he comes back at the same time I’m taking this course and there’s an article in a student magazine about his experience as the first black player in the league. Not growing up [in Tennessee], I had never heard Perry’s story before. And so it immediately grabbed me as something that I was interested in…so I called Perry out of the blue. He was a professor in Baltimore at that time, and I wrote a paper about him when I was 19 years old…And 17 years later, I emailed him and said, Hey, do you remember me wrote a paper about you and time ago? I’d like to write a biography about you.

SLAM: Your two books from your new series Beyond the Game are written for first and third graders. In which ways was your approach to writing a book for younger audiences different?

AM:  One piece of advice that I’ve gotten from my editors working on these books, not only for these little kids, but also for teenagers is to respect the audience and not dumb things down. And so what I’m trying to do is just tell a story in a clearer way, which I would be trying to do whether I was writing for elementary school kids or high school kids or adults…The major difference is the length of the books…[And] on the back, they have a glossary of terms that they might be unfamiliar with. They have sort of a call to action, like what have you learned from reading the story that could guide the kids and their families as they read the book.

The reason why I wrote [Beyond the Game] is that these issues are things that matter to families that a lot of families are actually experiencing…Maya Moore and LeBron James are fighting for the same values that these families have, and that they would like their kids to read about, at a time when there’s a lot of pressure on libraries and school districts and teachers from others in the community…And so I understand that these books are coming out at a time when they could be seen as controversial by some people.

But for me, that’s all the more reason to write them.

SLAM: This is a lot like making you choose a favorite child, but which of your four books is your favorite and why?

AM: Yeah, that is exactly like asking for your favorite child is. And I’ve used that analogy before. With that caveat, I would say that Strong Inside being my first book, with it being the book that took me eight years of my life to write, and also because of the relationship that I was able to form with Perry Wallace himself while he was alive, will always be the most special book to me.

And even while I was working on it, he was becoming a real father figure, mentor, favorite professor, type of figure to me. And I feel so fortunate that I was able to spend so much time around him and to learn so much from him about life and racism and courage and toll of pioneering. I saw him on his deathbed, you know, and he asked if we could plan the memorial service for him here at Vanderbilt.

SLAM: Even compared to other major sports, basketball has been a big player in advocating social equality. What makes basketball special as a platform to discuss societal injustice and promote equality amongst different genders and races?

AM: That’s a really interesting question. I think the answer goes back to the very beginnings of basketball. In Inaugural Ballers, I write that [basketball] was an international game…The first players were students from around the world, we actually have a sketch of the very first basketball game ever played. That was done by a Japanese student at that school. So from the very beginning, it was international, right, which I think is unusual in sports…Because there are only five players on the court, they’re not wearing helmets, it’s a very personal game and the players are visible. In that way, it gives them a platform that’s a little bit different than football even in visual ways.

Basketball has been a place where women and African Americans and other groups that are marginalized often have found success. Today’s game has enormous platforms…so with that comes an opportunity to use that platform to speak out for civil rights or human rights, women’s rights. And it’s been really impressive, I would say, to see how these basketball players are using that platform to try to make the world a better place for all people, not just for themselves.

SLAM: Now that your four books will be coming out in a couple of days, what’s next for you?

AM: Oh, well, the Beyond the Game series continues beyond these first two books that will come out on March 5. So the third book will be on Pat Tillman. You know, the NFL player who enlisted after 9/11 was killed by his fellow troops from friendly fire. And then the army lied about the circumstances of his death. So again, you could call that a heavy topic for first, second and third graders, but it’s a really interesting story.

The fourth book, I’m just beginning now will be about a Native American distance runner named Jordan Marie Daniel, who raises awareness of murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls. That’s her advocacy through her sport. So yeah, that would be the other things for people to know.

You can purchase Andrew’s books here.

Illustrations by DeAndra Hodge for the James and Moore books.

The post From LeBron James to Maya Moore, Author Andrew Maraniss Latest Work is for Every Generation of Hoops Fans appeared first on SLAM.

Now, Munch is adding yet another notable title to his resume: author. In his new book, Our P.S.A., he provides an interactive and comprehensive guide to how young men and women, especially people of color, can navigate their everyday life, from school and relationships to dealing with adversity. Munch hopes to not only empower others, but to spark conversation—the book features lessons he’s learned throughout his own personal life and there’s even multiple choice questions that readers can answer and discuss with their friends and family. 

SLAM recently caught up with Munch to learn more about the writing process and what he hopes readers can take away from the book. You can purchase the book here. 

SLAM: What was the writing process like for you while you were working on this book? 

Terrance “Munch” Williams: The process was, honestly, therapeutic when I first sat down and started to write [with a] notebook and pen. You just got these ideas circling through your mind. Obviously, outside of basketball, just as an African American male that’s been 40 years through the lifestyle, things that you go through, you try to focus on and make sure that you have an idea of where you came from, an idea of where you’re [trying to] go, and where you are [in the] present. The part that was natural for me was sitting down on a daily basis and writing. The part that got a little tricky in the process was after it was written—you go from writing in a notebook to writing on a laptop to self-editing to getting someone to edit [you] in a sense, and then that’s the part where you decide, alright, well what do I do with this because in order for it to get to the world, do you go to the big publishing company [or] do you go to the big editors?? 

That’s a process in itself, but that’s the process that takes away “the control” for me. I’m a person that likes to work at my pace and to do things in my style and make sure I like it and [that] it fits for myself before it touches the world. At the end of the day, the entire process was smooth because it was people that I trust, people that I know, and for the most part, it’s not overwhelming from the political aspect, and I look at it like, hey, it was a bucket list for me personally as a human and now that [it’s out] in the world hopefully it’s a gift and just a conversation starter for all the things we go through in the world. 

SLAM: Could you elaborate a little bit more on what it was like to venture into this project and what you wanted the narrative to be? 

Munch: It’s not hard. I’m humble [and] I think that it’s stuff that I’m doing on a daily basis. I understand the level that the program is at, but I also understand that where the program is today is 1,000 percent based on the men that I work [with] every day, the kids, the families, and everybody that puts their hand in the mud and continues to work at it. Even with this process, it was moreso [that] I’m jumping into waters that I’m not familiar with. I’m just a normal person, writing some stuff that [comes] to my heart and to my brain. So it wasn’t hard for me at all. The hardest part was, do I wanna be patient and wait on something bigger or do I wanna allow it to continue to be homegrown? I went with the homegrown part which is why the book is [available] on Amazon, and the editor is someone that’s not too far from me.”

SLAM: What were some of your favorite stories mentioned in the book?

Munch: The thing about the book is it isn’t about the kids in the program or grassroots basketball—it was just about the lifestyles of young African American males, whether you’re Latino or African American, and the journey you go through as a young boy, teen, and an adult. So, like, one of the topics is just the educational system when you’re a high-level basketball player and whether or not you’re taking your education [seriously and] whether or not those around you are providing you with the right tools to do so. 

There’s [also] a topic called Pass and Pass. What I mean by that is, if you’re passing the basketball, scoring, and becoming the star of the local basketball team or [on] your [own] journey, if you’re doing that at a high clip, a lot of times in certain educational institutions, in certain places, they’re gonna pass you in the classroom. That concept of, hey, if you’re a superstar basketball player and you’re just getting pushed [to a point] academically, how many times is that going on in society? It’s [happened to] my dad’s generation, my generation, and the generation behind me. That’s a norm in society, so I [try to] take you on this journey in my own life when I was in public school. I was a senior, and obviously at the time I was really successful on the basketball court, and the teachers and the staff and the security guards, everyone was behind me. [But] I wasn’t doing the right thing academically—I was passing the classes because I was a good basketball player. Until my senior year, I’m at my final stint and my math teacher gives me a 58. I’m upset about getting a 58, but in that process, I have to make a decision and that decision is: I could A, go see the principal and try to complain about it, I could B, suck it up and go to summer school, I could C, go see if I can do extra credit, or I could D, just drop out and leave the diploma all to itself. And in that story, that’s my life, and it gives you the moral of the story [which] is don’t allow somebody to belittle your education, whether you’re an athlete, not an athlete [or you] take academics [seriously]. Just do your best. You don’t have to be a straight-A student. 

SLAM: What has the response been like to the book? 

Munch: First thing is the shock factor of [how] most of the time when people see you in a certain space [they] label you in that space. Like, wherever your feet are—AAU coach [or] director—that’s what he is. I think the shock factor for people was, oh, I can’t believe you did that and, when did you have the time to do it [and] what is the process to it?

It’s kinda like, in a sense, you become a hero to your local friends, the people that you grew up with, close friends, family members, [and the] people that you’ve known for your entire life. They look at that space of, ‘Wow, you did that?’ Yeah, I can actually do it. Then there’s other people that’s like, ‘Wow, you motivated me to finish something that I’ve been thinking about doing or halfway started it.’ For my kids, it’s like, this is the exact example of what [we’ve] been always trying to tell you guys. You can be a big-time basketball player, but you can also enjoy life and try some things and see what happens right. There is no fail in this space for me because I’m not tagging myself an author. That’s not what I do for a living, so I want my guys to see and say, ‘Oh my director stepped outside the box, and he’s not just a college graduate [or] a person that [has their] Masters, he’s someone that wrote a book [and] ran [the] program. You can chase basketball and do it to the highest clip, but you [can] also have time to play the piano, try the trumpet, write poetry—just [do] anything you want to make yourself more versatile in this world. 

For me, I think this is another example of not just myself, the men around me, of trying to show the guys at PSA, never put yourself in a box. Do not let society tell you what you can do and not do. You get to determine that. 

SLAM: You’re also putting people onto the concept of using the game to your advantage and not just letting basketball use you. 

Munch: Yes, 100 percent. “Buck the system”, be who you wanna be. Think about it, if I have a whole group of people that wanna support me through my journey—whether it’s a high school coach, a trainer, an agent, whoever it is—[if] they wanna help and support the book because they’re interested in [how] this person stepped outside the box and did something different, [that] shock factor, let me support that. 

SLAM: What do you hope people will get most out of this book? 

Munch: My highest hope [is that] it’s gonna be a book that goes across cultures, across gender. Women can read the book and figure out some different stuff about men, [white] people and different races can read the book and learn about African Americans. It’s not [just] an AAU thing—the people that [can read this book] are AAU coaches, doctors, lawyers, teachers, firefighters, construction workers, they’re whoever. People who work at the diner, the pizza shop. People read. That’s the first thing I want people to do is [to] say, ‘I wanna read.’ [Even] teenagers [and men], [to say], ‘I’m reading, and that’s okay — I’m gonna read these two pages today but [also] talk.’ So I think it’ll be, at its best, a conversation starter throughout different cultures, genders, [and] age groups. That’s at its best.

SLAM: What’s your biggest aspiration in your own life? If nothing could get in your way, what would you want to achieve? 

Munch: My answer to that would be not having to answer to anybody on a daily basis, being financially stable enough where myself, my family, and those close to me are okay, and they can continue to depend on me in some form or fashion. And I don’t have a schedule of what I need to be doing at any time. 

SLAM: Looking ahead at this season, which PSA alums are you most looking forward to watching compete? 

Munch: From a college perspective, I’m looking forward to seeing two names. Walter Whyte at Boston University—[he] got his Bachelors, and he’s getting his Masters—I’m looking forward to seeing him continue to grow as a man but also seeing him grow as a player, [too]. I will [also] be watching AJ Hoggard at Michigan State [closely] because I think Tom Izzo is a unique coach to play for, and seeing AJ’s maturity and [him] being in that space has made me feel good inside. I’m looking forward to seeing how he continues to hone in on his skills as far as his weaknesses and things he knows he can get better at.  But then also seeing the man he comes out of Michigan State as, as opposed to the man that just walked in. 

[At the NBA-level], I’m looking forward to seeing what happens with James Bouknight [and what he] does this year. I was just down in Charlotte [to see him], and he was doing a back-to-school book drive and some great stuff off the court. He’s obviously uber-talented but just seeing him be able to function in a young environment ‘cause a lot of the guys in Charlotte are extremely young for better or for worse. But yeah, seeing if he could take another jump towards becoming what everyone thinks he can become in the NBA. 

Photos via PSA.

The post PSA Cardinals Executive Director Terrance ‘Munch’ Williams on His Empowering New Book, Our P.S.A appeared first on SLAM.

Inaugural Ballers: The True Story of the First U.S. Women’s Olympic Basketball Team, written by New York Times best-selling author Andrew Maraniss, tells the inspirational, true story of the Team USA’s pioneering women’s basketball team that won a silver medal at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. Inaugural Ballers features interviews from members of the ’76 team, which paint a vivid picture of the times in society and sports.

Packed with detailed photos that reveal the origins of women’s basketball in the United States, Maraniss’ passion for sports history and storytelling shines through brilliantly in Inaugural Ballers, as he smoothly explores not only women’s basketball but the social change required for the game to form and evolve.

Maraniss also makes it a point to artfully detail the stories of the forgotten women’s basketball pioneers, like the Fort Shaw Indian School, a barnstorming team of indigenous girls who ended up beating the St. Louis All-Star girls team, an undefeated group of white alumnae from the cities Central High School, at the St. Louis World’s Fair.

“It’s incredibly important to me; first of all, it’s the truth,” Maraniss said about his inclusive storytelling in Inaugural Ballers. “The first women to play basketball in an Olympic setting were Native American women at the St. Louis Olympics, which was also the World’s Fair. I thought that was an incredibly important part of history that isn’t talked about very much.”

“I also made a point of talking about the growth of black basketball for women in the country. In (the) decades prior to the Olympics. These women may have been excluded for playing for white colleges or YMCA or even excluded from abilities to try out for early national teams prior to the Olympics, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t playing or that they weren’t great players like Ora Washington, who were denied these opportunities. If I’m gonna write a non-fiction book that’s supposed to tell the truth, that history is important.”

Maraniss also explores the harmful misogyny and sexism, generations of systemic racism, and shortcomings of White-centered feminism leading up to and beyond the landmark passage of Title IX in 1972. Although the landmark legislation didn’t outright target girls and women in sports, it did help women athletes compete at the same level as their male counterparts.

Once the International Olympic Committee added women’s basketball to the 1976 Olympic games in ’73, Team USA built a squad out of the members from the ’73 World University Games and open tryouts. Mildred Barnes, a Team USA admin, empowered Coach Billie Moore and Sue Gunter and allowed them to build an underdog team that ultimately captured a silver medal.

“You look at Gen Z or kids who are in high school or college now, care and are active on so many social issues that are vital to this country and to the planet,” Maraniss said about the broad appeal of his book. “So I hope that a book that deals with feminism and women’s rights and inequities in athletics, I think that will be very appealing to this generation of students and of athletes. They can look and see where we were, to the degree we’ve made progress, and have a really good context and framework for the additional progress that still needs to be made that they’ll be the ones fighting for. I think it’s really important for them to know the history and where we’ve come from.”

As of 2021, the Team USA national women’s team has won seven straight gold medals.

The post New Book ‘Inaugural Ballers’ Surveys the Historic 1976 Team USA Women’s Basketball Squad appeared first on SLAM.

From the visionaries to the managers and all of those who helped blaze a trail while battling discrimination, the Black Fives helped strengthen and uplift their communities during Jim Crow.

Below is an excerpt from Johnson’s new book, which you can purchase here:

CHAPTER 26 

“TRUE WORLD CHAMPIONS” 

FEBRUARY 19, 1937, was a big night in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. That’s because  the Oshkosh All-Stars, a local all-White basketball team, were on the eve of  playing in a “World Series of Basketball” that would put the small city and the  state of Wisconsin on the national professional hardwood stage. 

Their opponents were the all-Black New York Renaissance Big Five. One  would think that in the Midwest, during the Great Depression, and during Jim  Crow, that the appearance of an African American team in an all-White town  would be of concern. But actually, the Rens were universally considered the  champions of basketball, and Wisconsin residents were some of the country’s  most passionate basketball fans. So they eagerly welcomed the visitors. 

Wisconsin was not new to interracial basketball. The Renaissance Five  had begun visiting Wisconsin in 1934. That year the Milwaukee Raynors, an  all-Black club, barnstormed the state from their home base of Milwaukee. The  Milwaukee Colored Panthers were also popular, and the all-Black Chicago  Crusaders toured through Wisconsin during the mid-1930s. 

Formed in 1931, the Oshkosh All-Stars had played the Rens for the first  time in February 1936 in a two-game series. The games drew so many specta tors that local promoter and Oshkosh team manager Lon Darling decided to  do it again in 1937. This time the two squads staged a five-game series to be  played in Oshkosh, Racine, Green Bay, Ripon, and Madison. Darling declared  that the winner of the series, which the papers dubbed the “World Series Of  Basketball,” would be considered the world’s champions of basketball. 

“It was a money-maker,” recalled former Renaissance Five star and future  Basketball Hall of Fame member John Isaacs. Each venue saw huge attendance,  and in local newspapers, race as a point of difference was rarely mentioned. It  seemed to matter only as a descriptive term. Prejudice was, if not trumped, at least mitigated by love of the game. According to Isaacs, on this trip the Rens  were able to stay in hotels and eat at restaurants like everyone else. “We had  trouble when we first started with all these white All-Americans, and when  we first started playing them, damn near every night we had to knock one  or two of them out,” said the Rens travel secretary and road manager, Eric  Illidge, many years later. “For two or three years straight, two or three jaws  were broken,” he continued. “Every night, every GAME we played, we had a  fight, not with the customers but with the players themselves—they couldn’t  stand us beating them,” said Illidge, whose only concern was keeping the score  down so they would get invited back. “I had two fighters on the team, they  broke about four or five different jaws, Pop Gates and Wee Willie Smith” he  explained. “And we kept doing it until everybody respected us.” Illidge had no  regrets. “My job with the Renaissance was easy and I’ll tell you why, we had  the best team at that time in basketball,” he said. “We was the biggest drawing  card in basketball.” His duties included making sure players would “leave on  time, be at the game on time, check the gate receipts, collect the money, give  them their lunch money, in fact, I took care of all the business.” Yet, Illidge  was always prepared for inevitable trouble. Often, the cash accumulated so  fast that he had to wire it back to Harlem using Western Union, unless it was  close to payday. “All this goddamn money in my pocket,” Illidge said. “One time  in Louisville some guy came and grabbed me and tried to take my money off  of me, but, he was so scared,” Illidge laughed. “I had my pistol in my pocket,  and I stuck it in his jaw, and he flew!” 

While the Rens faced all kinds of challenges on the road, none were as  bad as what happened to the New York Harlemites, an African American  barnstorming squad based in St. Louis. While driving toward Chester, Mon tana, on February 6, 1936, for a scheduled game, they encountered a blizzard.  Their car broke down and “the entire party was forced to get out and walk  to a farm house three miles away,” according to the Fort Benton River Press.  “The lowest reading of the thermometer was approximately 42 degrees below  zero” that week, the paper reported. They were rushed to nearby Shelby for  medical attention treatment of “frozen faces, feet and hands.” They continued  playing on schedule into March, when it was reported that the players, whose  frostbite injuries had “necessitated their playing with their hands taped, are  again able to play without bandages.” About 260 people showed for the game,  which the Harlemites won, 44-43, and “the colored artists performed perfectly despite the loss of their classy forward who died at Shelby when gangrene set  into his hands after they were frozen near there during the recent blizzards.”¹ The twenty-six-year-old professional basketball player, Benson Hall, had lost  his life after being sent home “because his mother back in St. Louis refused  to let them amputate parts of his body,” according to the daughter of Donnie  Goins, one of his teammates.

Getting back to the Rens, just in case, their team bus, a custom-made REO Speed Wagon, had two potbelly stoves on board for heat. These also  served to dry their sweat-soaked woolen uniforms when it was too cold to  let them air-dry with the windows open. “The bus was your home, when you  come to think of it,” said Isaacs in 1986. “The hard part wasn’t the playing,  it was the traveling.”³ Still, according to Isaacs, the Rens’ game strategy was  always the same. “Get ten points as quickly as you could, because those were  the ten points the refs were gonna take away.”  

Meanwhile, the Oshkosh All-Stars were trying to build a case to join the  National Basketball League, a proposed new circuit of teams from the Midwest  representing both large and small companies, from the Akron Firestones and  Akron Goodyears to the Indianapolis Kautskys and Richmond King Clothiers.  This league was still only just an idea at the time. The All-Stars lost that 1937  series with the Rens, three games to two, but Bob Douglas agreed to a return  engagement, a two-game series in March 1937. 

Ever the shrewd promoter, Darling declared that those two extra games  would extend their previous “World Series” to seven games. In other words,  if the All-Stars won both, they would be the new world champions, instead of  the Rens. The All-Stars managed to pull it off, and the following season the  NBL added Oshkosh as a founding member. 

Beyond delighting Wisconsinites, the series between the All-Stars and  the Rens served a purpose for basketball fans around the country: It helped to  determine which top-notch team was truly the best. For a long time, any team  (like Will Madden’s Incorporators) could claim they were “world champions,”  and often the public was understandably confused. Behind the scenes, promot 

ers took notice. A team’s won-loss record might speak for itself. But no hard  stats could prove the greatness of a barnstorming team without a doubt. Which  was why Edward W. Cochrane, a Chicago Herald-American sports editor,  came up with the idea for a World Championship of Professional Basketball.  “At the time there were no less than a score of professional basketball teams, all advertising themselves as world’s champions,” Cochrane remembered in  1941. The annual tournament was born “out of the chaos of these conflict ing claims,” he said. So, they decided to settle the chaos once and for all. The  clear-sighted inclusion by the Herald-American of all-Black teams from the outset gave legitimacy to the tournament as well as to pro basketball itself.  Twelve teams were invited to the inaugural tournament in 1939, the best  pro teams in the country, including the New York Rens, Oshkosh All-Stars,  Harlem Globe Trotters, and New York Celtics. It tipped off on March 26, at  the 132nd Regiment Armory in Chicago, a cavernous drill hall, where eight  thousand fans saw the Rens defeat the New York Yankees 30–21. The follow ing day, the Rens took down the Globe Trotters, 27–23 at Chicago Coliseum,  a historic structure that had been the site of six Republican National Conven tions and the home of the Chicago Blackhawks early in their existence. Bob  Douglas and his Renaissance Five had made it to the final, which was played  on March 29 against their familiar rivals, the Oshkosh All Stars. New York  triumphed, 34–25, making headlines across the country. But when champi onship jackets were awarded to the players, star guard John Isaacs famously  borrowed a razor blade from a teammate and carefully removed the stitches  that attached the word colored off of the back of his, so that it read, simply,  world champions. 

John William Isaacs, aka “Boy Wonder,” a bruising, powerfully built six-foot,  three-inch, 190-pound guard, was a star player from East Harlem. He led  his Textile High School squad to the 1934–5 Public School Athletic League  championship, with a defeat of New York City powerhouse and defending  PSAL champion DeWitt Clinton High School. Following a successful 1935–6  season, Textile lost in the city PSAL playoffs when Isaacs, being twenty years  old, was ruled ineligible to play in high school.”⁴ 

Being ineligible had its perks. Isaacs played games with the St. Peter  Claver Penguins, a Brooklyn-based “colored” team that featured Puggy Bell, a  future pro teammate, and in the fall of 1936, he appeared with the New York Collegians, another all-Black squad.⁵ These brief stints not only proved that  Isaacs could play at the next level, they also caught the eye of Bob Douglas. 

Excerpt from the new book THE BLACK FIVES: THE EPIC STORY OF BASKETBALL’S FORGOTTEN ERA by Claude Johnson published by Abrams Press

Text copyright © 2022 Claude Johnson

The post ‘The Black Fives’ Tells the Monumental History of the Black Pioneers Who Revolutionized the Game appeared first on SLAM.

“The SEC, the FBI or the IRS

I pass the alphabet boys like an eye test…”—Jay Z

When the Alphabet Comes: A Life Changed by Exposure is an emotional rollercoaster, reminiscent of a Hollywood script.

Jerome Allen, the former University of Pennsylvania men’s basketball head coach and current assistant coach for the Boston Celtics, writes a confessional tale that intertwines basketball, crime, poverty, self-awareness, family and forgiveness.

The foreword is penned by two-time NBA All-Star Isaiah Thomas, who also endured exceptional highs and lows throughout his career.

Jerome Allen is Philly basketball royalty. He bewildered Kevin Johnson during a Dream Team II exhibition with a crossover in ’94, and people continue to emulate the “Pooh Allen” move throughout the city.

The former two-time Ivy League Player of the Year and 49th overall selection of the Timberwolves in 1995 became the head coach of his alma mater in 2010. He resigned after five seasons, and was later indicted for accepting a six-figure bribe.

GRAB YOUR COPY OF SLAM 229

Through Alphabet, Allen opens up his heart to help others understand and accept their mishaps through the telling of his own trials and tribulations. Giving a firsthand account of the Varsity Blues federal case, Allen reflects on how that time in his life has come and gone.

It was a true test of his moral compass, and his failure of character was motivation for him to become a better husband, father and son—and ultimately a better version of himself. The scandal is not who Allen is, but rather a fraction of his life story.

The alphabet boys came for him and now he’s become a definitive example of faith and perseverance.

—

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Anthony Gilbert is a contributor to SLAM, and he resides in Philadelphia.. Follow him on Twitter @axgilbert.

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—

Joel Embiid is fond of comparing his life to a movie. The story, in his account, begins with a scout discovering him on the streets of Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon, where Embiid grew up. It’s a good opening scene, but not exactly true.

The story actually begins with an email.

“Best wishes brother!!!” Didier Yanga wrote to Joe Touomou in January 2011. “I’m sending you pictures of my nephew…Thomas’ son, who is 2m06 tall and 17 years old. He’s in 11th grade.”

Eighteen months earlier, Yanga’s nephew Joel Embiid had watched his first NBA game, a Finals matchup between Kobe Bryant’s Los Angeles Lakers and Dwight Howard’s Orlando Magic. Joel had grown up around sports. He excelled in volleyball, was an avid soccer fan, and also the son of a professional handball player. Yet something about the NBA spectacle was different.

“I had never seen anything like that,” Embiid recalled. “The way they moved, and the athleticism, I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. I had that moment like, I just wanna do that.” He found  a run-down hoop nearby and started playing regularly. “Kobe!” he’d shout after each shot. He’d extend his right wrist and freeze it in the air, just like he’d seen on TV.

He begged his parents to let him play. “But my brother wanted Joel to have excellent grades and not be distracted by anything else,” Yanga said. Thomas served as a colonel in the Cameroon military. His three kids knew his edicts were not to be violated, and his wife, Christine, was just as strict, forcing Joel to memorize his school notes before playing outside and forbidding him from staying up late to watch NBA games. “I didn’t even have any friends because all I ever did was sleep and do homework,” Embiid recalled.

As Joel grew older he became more rebellious. After school he’d arrange a bunch of highlighted textbooks on his family’s kitchen table and slip out to a nearby soccer field. He’d play until spotting his mom’s Mercedes driving down the street, then dash back, hide his sneakers, and greet her from behind a stack of study materials.

Thomas and Christine planned for Joel to leave for France after high school, where he’d enroll at the National Institute of Sport and Physical Education. He’d continue his volleyball training—a sport they understood—and maybe earn a spot on Cameroon’s national team. Thomas had followed this path and look at the life he now lived: Three beautiful children. A spacious home. A wife driving a Mercedes. The family even employed a maid.

But Joel didn’t care about any of that. What he cared about, what he wanted, was to play basketball, to be like Kobe. Slowly, Thomas began reconsidering his stance. He reached out to his brother, who had played some high-level amateur basketball in the Ivory Coast and coached a bit too. Yanga wasn’t an expert, but he knew enough to recognize the potential in his 6-foot-7 volleyball-playing nephew. He thought of an old friend of his, a man named Joe Touomou, one of the few bridges between Cameroon’s cracked courts and America’s lavish gyms. Touomou had grown up with Thomas and Yanga before leaving to attend Georgetown on a basketball scholarship. He was the first Cameroonian ever to play Division I and had worked as an international scout for the Indiana Pacers. He was the perfect person to illustrate all the opportunities basketball could provide.

Yanga explained the situation to Touomou, then sent him pictures of Joel posing in front of a doorway, to accentuate his height. Touomou received the photos on a Saturday afternoon. He saw how tall Joel was. He knew how athletic Joel’s father was. He booked a flight to Cameroon and a few weeks later was in the Embiid home handing Joel a gym bag stuffed with leftovers from a previous camp—basketball jerseys, shorts, and a size 16 pair of white sneakers.

Thomas and Christine told Joel to wait upstairs. They sat with Touomou in the living room. Touomou began by explaining the potential he believed Joel possessed. He said he knew a local coach who could help him harness all that potential.

“Joel is stubborn,” an unmoved Thomas said.

“All he wants to do is play sports,” said Christine. “He needs to focus on school.”

“Basketball can get him into the best schools,” Touomou responded. He was armed with examples. Look at Ruben Boumtje-Boumtje, he said, the first Cameroonian to ever play in the NBA. And look at Luc Mbah a Moute, an NBA forward whose father, in a similar conversation eight years earlier, Touomou had swayed. Both, thanks to basketball, had earned college scholarships.

The three spoke for more than an hour. Touomou could tell that the education pitch had softened Thomas and Christine. He told them to think it over, that he’d be back soon. Two days later, he returned to the Embiid home. Joel sat with them this time, and Christine served food. She and Thomas told Touomou that Joel could play, as long as he promised to remain focused on his academics. Joel looked on quietly, hiding his excitement.

In February, Thomas signed paperwork allowing Joel to join a local team led by a coach named Guy Moudio. Moudio gave Joel a tape of Hall of Fame center Hakeem Olajuwon to study. He used a medicine ball to build up Joel’s strength. Moudio had to teach Joel some of the game’s more basic skills, but he was impressed with what he saw and how Joel, despite being a novice, seemed to have an innate feel for the game. He mentioned his new pupil to Francois Nyam, a former French professional basketball player whose father was from Cameroon. Nyam was a cousin of Mbah a Moute’s and had since become a fixture in the country’s basketball community. He and Mbah a Moute were opening a basketball camp in Cameroon; that summer five attendees would earn an invite to Basketball Without Borders, a program organized by the NBA with the intention of spreading the sport across the world. An invite there was an opportunity to audition in front of a group of people with the power to fulfill the loftiest of dreams.

Joel was invited to participate, but while getting dressed on the morning of the camp’s first day, he began thinking about all the players he’d be competing against. They were so advanced and he was still so raw. Anxiety overcame him. He spent the day at home playing video games with his younger brother instead.

The next morning, Moudio showed up at the Embiids’ house. This was Joel’s chance, and Moudio wasn’t going to let nerves ensnare his prized pupil. He ushered Joel to the Yaoundé Sports Palace, and for most of the camp Joel was overmatched. “He couldn’t catch a basketball, dribble, or anything,” Nyam said. But like Moudio before, Nyam and Mbah a Moute were both impressed with the way Joel absorbed the game. “You could show him something completely new and he’d pick it up after, like, three tries,” Nyam said. That was all the group needed to see. About a month later, Joel was standing on a court in Johannesburg surrounded by a group of NBA coaches and some of Africa’s top prospects. He was skinny and raw, but also tall and agile. “His feet,” said Monty Williams, a former NBA player who worked as a coach for that camp, “were unreal.”

Impressed, Mbah a Moute and Nyam arranged for Joel to enroll as a junior at Montverde Academy in Florida, Mbah a Moute’s alma mater and home to one of the country’s top high school basketball programs. In September, Thomas and Christine drove Joel to Yaoundé Nsimalen International Airport. Joel was scared, but excited too. He barely spoke English, but he recognized the opportunity in front of him. He hugged his family, not knowing when he’d see them next, and boarded the plane. 

—

Tanking to the Top: The Philadelphia 76ers and the Most Audacious Process in the History of Professional Sports is available now.

Photos via Getty.

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Titled “Steven Adams: My Life, My Fight,” Adams’ book will reveal “untold stories of Adams’ life and basketball career.”

https://twitter.com/FredKatz/status/968177410423304192

Can you tell us a bit about the book?

Adams: “It’s about myself. That’s pretty much it, mate. It’s a book about myself.”

What inspired you to put together a book?

Adams: “I don’t know, just wanted to do one on myself… I didn’t actually want to do it. But someone told me it should be a good idea and they’ll be interested. So I was like, OK, whatever.”

Have you written before?

Adams: “No. I didn’t write it. I got a ghostwriter named Madeline Chapman. I can barely read, mate. I can’t write a book. Jesus.”

The autobiography is scheduled for release in early July.

Worked on this for the past year and can finally let my real friends (the public) know. Steven Adams autobiography out July 2018. pic.twitter.com/kstKGWk5T5

— Mad Chapman (@madmanchap) February 22, 2018

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It wasn’t that long ago you were living in Greece working as a street merchant. Your rise was swift and now you’re a 6-11 PG being coached by one of the great NBA wizards, scoring 30 in an All-Star Game. In The Alchemist, a boy named Santiago experiences such a journey. He goes from being a shepherd in Andalusia to a treasure hunter underneath the pyramids of Egypt. Santiago is on a quest to develop his personal legend, as are you. To complete this journey, he must look within and face what may seem like insurmountable odds. Giannis, wherever this season takes you, if you are able to carry Milwaukee deep into the playoffs, the best you can hope for is a chance to compete against the mighty king LeBron who has owned the Eastern Conference’s NBA Finals spot since 2011. Santiago faced a similar challenge. There is much for you to learn, and by reading Coelho’s novel, you may find the inspiration you need.

—

Sam Rubenstein is a SLAM contributing writer and a high school English teacher in Brooklyn. Follow him on Twitter @SamRubenstein.

Previously
Jeremy Lin x A Canticle for Leibowitz
Karl-Anthony Towns x The Wu-Tang Manual
Damian Lillard x Walden, or Life in the Woods

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Thoreau removed himself from society to commune with nature and simple living. What emerged was Walden, a masterpiece, broken into sections, encouraging the reader to abandon aspirational living, to truly learn who you are by detaching from what’s expected. A very popular read in Portland. But here’s the thing, Damian: The Blazers are not going to win a championship this year.

You are one of the top young guards in the League; you’re in a conference with Westbrook, Harden and Curry. Don’t worry about the All-Star snub. Thoreau explored how you can gain happiness by looking at the big picture, seeing competition for what it is. It’s a difficult read because of some archaic language, but think of the impact on your bars. As you move on through this season, putting up stats and highlights on a futile quest for maybe some playoff glory, you have time to sit back and read.

—

Sam Rubenstein is a SLAM contributing writer and a high school English teacher in Brooklyn. Follow him on Twitter @SamRubenstein.

Previously
Jeremy Lin x A Canticle for Leibowitz
Karl-Anthony Towns x The Wu-Tang Manual

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He was a No. 1 overall pick, Rookie of the Year, 11-time All-Star, four-time scoring champ, 2001 League MVP and a bonafide superstar respected by every single player that he ever crossed paths with. He’s been misunderstood, mischaracterized and mistreated over the years and therefore hasn’t always let too many people get too close.

But someone who has gotten close to The Answer over the years is photographer Gary Land, who met Iverson at a Reebok shoot back in the 1990s. By building trust and a strong rapport with Allen, Land captured some of the sickest photos of Iverson anyone has ever seen.

SLAM sat down with Gary to talk about his experiences with one of the most famous and popular basketball players ever and his new Iverson book, which is limited to 1,996 copies at IversonBook.com.

SLAM: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Gary Land: I grew up in Virginia Beach. I was really into skateboarding and surfing and that’s how I got into photography. I was just shooting my friends doing that stuff. I loved basketball and played a lot of it. I never really shot it growing up, but I stayed in the loop as far as who was doing what in the game. Extreme sports was really the launching platform of my career. I ended up moving to the mountains in Vermont where I became the first snowboard photographer to really capture snowboarding on the east coast. I worked for all of the mags, traveling around, shooting everything. That was how I got into photography.

SLAM: How did you come to start shooting Allen Iverson?

GL: I got lucky and landed a job at Reebok, managing their image library. At the time, there was no digital. It was prints, negatives and slides. I would provide duplicate and and prints for people to use our assets. I was pretty new at Reebok and someone wanted me to go to a photoshoot to check out the process. It was a big shoot with big lights. It was a big deal. Then I heard it was going to be Allen Iverson. He was our biggest athlete. He was a super relevant, young dude killin’ it. I was real excited about it and I remember sneaking my Pentax K1000 camera and a roll of film into my backpack and I was like, I hope I get to see him to take a couple shots! Luckily for me that’s when it all went down. That was literally the first time I ever worked with him. It was at the Reebok New York City gym. A big photographer was shooting him in the gym and I was basically going there to watch.

I heard his car was pulling up outside so I got to the elevator and ran down there and sure enough I got to the street and his limo pulled up. I just walked right up to him, put my camera out and put it in his face. He put up two fists like a boxing pose and I shot my first photo of Allen. I said, What up man? My name is Gary, I’m with Reebok. He was like, “Cool” and just walked in. That day was pretty crazy, but he went in, did the shoot and the shots were cool.

The crazy thing was that right next door Esquire Magazine had a photographer there and they were trying to get time with Allen and the only time they could get was right after the Reebok shoot. I went back into the shoot and the photographer wasn’t letting me get any behind-the-scenes shots.

I overheard Allen’s manager say they were going to the Esquire shoot after so I used that and said, “I’ll make sure Allen comes here if I can get some behind-the-scenes shots behind your back.” Allen came over to the Esquire shoot about an hour later and I ended up getting some behind-the-scenes shots there.

Over the weekend I processed the film and created some 11 x 14 prints for my office. A week later the president of Reebok walked by and she said, “Hey, what’s that?” I said, I took those photos on the set the other day, and didn’t really go into detail. So she called me to her office and she said, “These are amazing. Can we use these?” and next thing you know it was an ad in Rolling Stone. Then they wanted me to shoot everything. My check didn’t change, my title didn’t change, but I just became the in-house photographer. So then every time there was a shoot with AI, I would be the one to go. And that’s how we started building a relationship. I’m humbled. I’m very fortunate that I was in the right place at the right time.

SLAM: Why do you think Allen trusted you on shoots so much?

GL: I think we had a lot in common, honestly. We’re both from Virginia. We didn’t have much growing up and had to overcome a lot of obstacles. We both didn’t listen to our critics. Growing up, my family would say, “Photography is stupid. How are you gonna make a living?” and I just never listened, just like AI, who always had haters and critics.

SLAM: You spend time with AI during his prime. How would you describe him?

GL: He’s Hilarious. He’s die-hard. Just a fierce competitor. When it comes to competition he has to win at all costs. And giving. He’s just real giving.

SLAM: What was your favorite part of shooting Iverson?

GL: I think just the relationship and getting to see sides of him that no one else saw. Everyone knows Allen Iverson the basketball player, but not many people know Allen Iverson the practical joker, the father, or the friend. So that was the fun part. Over time I was going to shoot him it was like, “What the hell am I going to see now?” I felt like it was the unknown. One, is he going to show up? Two, what am I going to see? It was always something crazy. But the idea of shooting Allen was the ultimate pinnacle for me. Allen was the dude. I miss the nerves. I can shoot anybody and not get nervous but with him, I always got nervous. I acted as the stylist, photographer, the lighting guy. I was just one dude going in there. He didn’t want anybody else, so it was just me. We had a great relationship.

SLAM: What is your favorite photo you took of Iverson?

GL: My favorite photo of AI is the shot where he is dribbling up the stairs switching hands behind his back at the Philly Museum of Art. It was shot with film and was supposed to be in the portrayal of Rocky with Allen dribbling through the streets of Philly, then he finishes at the staircase where Rocky did. He was practicing it while the guys were loading the camera with film and he just one time caught the ball behind his back and kept going. I was shooting and he looked at me and said, “Did you get that?” and I said, I got it.

The director asked him to do it again and he said, “Nah man.” He said he wouldn’t be able to do it again, but he got it one time and it’s one of my favorite shots. It’s super iconic. I have a lot of shots, but there’s something about that one. Such a little dude in a big space. It’s metaphorical with him climbing those stairs, like going over the obstacles to get to where he got to. It’s a very meaningful photo to me. It’s very Philly.

SLAM: What is your most memorable moment with Allen?

GL: I’d have to say it was the time we spent together during 9/11. I really got to see him striped of all his accolades and friends and jewelry. I was with him on 9/11 at Dave and Busters that night. We shot pool and had some beers and stuff. We were with a group, and it was just Allen in a t-shirt and sweats, ya know. He was just hurt. It looked he had just lost the biggest game of his life. He as very emotional talking about how he wanted to be there. He wished he could have been there to help, to stop the terrorists from doing what they did and he was dead serious. That was the first time I’d ever seen him like that. He’s flashy, but that moment was like he was one of your boys that just lost somebody to an event like that. He was just crushed by it. That was real. That was one of the most real moments that I had with AI. I was actually in Philly to shoot Allen that day, but we ended up shooting the next day on the rooftop of the practice facility. Then, my son was born one year later on 9/11. Pretty crazy.

SLAM: You had a front row seat during Allen’s time in Philly. What was it like to see him get inducted into the Hall of Fame?

GL: It was emotional. I actually cried a couple times. My son was like, “Dad, what’s wrong with you?” Allen was very emotional up there too. He was super choked up. It was probably hard to for him to grasp that it’s over. But when he went into the Hall of Fame, I kinda felt vindicated too. I think he feels at peace now being a Hall of Famer. He signs his name with HOF now. I always tell him to think of the people he has touched through basketball. He can set a good example for people who follow him.

SLAM: How long have you been working on this book?

GL: I actually wanted to do a book back in 2003. I wanted to highlight what he had done for basketball and the culture. Then too many people to got involved. It felt like there was so much resistance and could just never get it off the ground. But I’m glad it took this long. It’s more relevant now, more nostalgic and it’s the year he was inducted into the Hall of Fame so it’s perfect timing.

SLAM: How proud of the book are you?

GL: I’m super proud of the book because I wanted it to be detailed and ornate and complicated like Allen. I wanted it to feel like him. That’s why I decided to publish it myself, because I wanted no rules with it. That’s why I paid the money, because I wanted it done right. It made sense with this book to break the rules, to make it as cool as it can be because to me that’s what Allen was and is, so I wanted the book to be a reflection of that. I wanted it to be like a scrapbook to show different sides of Allen. When I first got the book, I thought, “Oh my God. It’s not just good, it’s great.” I’m very happy with it and Allen loves it. That was the biggest thing. If Allen liked it then I knew everyone else would too.

Photos courtesy of Jordan Hagedorn & Gary Land

The post The Vision appeared first on SLAM.

Earl Joseph “J.R.” Smith III was born to let it fly. As the shooting guard for the 2015-16 Cleveland Cavaliers, he flourished in a role that required him to be exactly himself. But it wasn’t always this natural for the 12-year NBA veteran who entered the league directly out of St Benedict’s Prep in Newark, New Jersey. After being named co-MVP alongside Dwight Howard of the 2004 McDonald’s All-American Game, Smith was drafted with the 18th pick overall by the New Orleans Hornets. He’d make two more professional stops as a member of the Denver Nuggets and New York Knicks before finding a home that seemed crafted by specifically for Smith by the basketball gods.

With a smile on his face, the player once labeled a locker room malcontent thrived in Cleveland as a teammate of LeBron James. He also graciously welcomed the directive from Coach Tyronn Lue to fire away at all costs. Whether he was falling down, had a hand in his face, or was stepping into an open look in transition, the Cavaliers needed Smith to be a consistent weapon from beyond the arc. During a game against the Milwaukee Bucks on April 5, he’d ceremoniously fulfill that mission by knocking down seven triples to set the Cavs franchise record for most three-pointers made in a single season.

“I think it was the third one, honestly,” Smith said while colorfully describing the moment he believed he caught fire during the 39-point win over the Bucks when he set the record. “When I shot it, I felt a little bit off-balanced but I just held my follow through and it kind of rimmed in. After that, it felt like all of them were going down.”

Smith would finish the regular season shooting 40 percent from three while knocking down a record-setting 204. Those totals were also good for seventh in the NBA overall in three-pointers made and 21st in efficiency. But Smith was not simply a three-point specialist. At multiple times during the season, Coach Lue used his post game press conference to refer to Smith as “the best on-ball defender” on the team. But it was his brash delivery from three-point range that helped provide the biggest spark along the Cavaliers run to immortality.

“Everybody keeps telling me to keep shooting,” Smith said as the Cavaliers postseason run approached. “Everybody is enthused, especially the guys on the bench. I think we’re feeding off a great energy coming into the playoffs and we’re understanding who we are and what type of team we need to be. We’re always looking to get better, I can’t say we are there yet, but we’re close. So we’ll see what we can do.”

During the Cavaliers march to the NBA championship, it was more of the same from Smith as he offered a dizzying performance from deep on a routine basis. He hit seven three-points in Game 2 against the Detroit Pistons, and seven more in Game 2 against the Atlanta Hawks. Heading into the NBA Finals matchup with the Golden State Warriors, Smith had connected on 49-of-106 three-point field goals to lead the Cavaliers in that category through 14 games. He’d also improve his efficiency to a stifling 46 percent during that stretch. The player who was initially perceived as a risky asset forced upon David Griffin in a trade with the Knicks for an opportunity to acquire Iman Shumpert had become the long-range assassin Cleveland needed to secure its first championship in 52 years.

“This is something that I love to see because of my playing style,” Smith said following an Eastern Conference Semifinals game where the Cavaliers set an NBA record by knocking down 25 threes in a blowout victory. “But I think this is a credit of just how hard we work. We work on our shots every day and we are all very competitive with each other when it comes to shooting. I’m glad it happened.”

Cavaliers fans will always be glad that this season happened exactly when it did for Smith, too. And in Cleveland, no matter how long his franchise three-point record may hold, the work put in by Earl Joseph “J.R.” Smith III will never be forgotten.

The post Book Excerpt: Cleveland Is King appeared first on SLAM.

To him, it’s not all about the Xs and Os. It’s about lessons you’re taught in life and the way you use those lessons to better yourself as a human being. We caught up with him in New York to talk over his most recent book, So… You Think You Want To Be A Coach?

SLAM: What inspired you to write this book?

Gerald Davis: Well, it’s my second book. The first book that I wrote was Coaching With The Scriptures. As you can see from the title, it was really geared to the Christian or biblical individuals with that type of knowledge. So, it was kind of narrow just for that genre. I decided that I wanted to reach a little bit more. I want my demographics to branch out more. That’s when the idea came about: “So… you think you want to be a coach?” What I wanted to do was not be so pigeonholed, and my idea was, we live in a society where everybody can contribute. You can see on the news now with Carmelo, with the death of Muhammad Ali. The athletes are now starting to come together and try to join forces to make a difference in their culture. So I believe there are different cultures. There’s a culture in athletics. There’s a culture in entertainment. There’s a culture in business. There’s a culture in the culinary arts. With each and every one of these cultures, you can make a difference. So, with my background as a coach and a teacher, I said, why not make a difference as a coach? I think it’s a vital title, but everyone who calls themselves coach is not a coach. I wanted to put it down on paper areas that affect the coach and how he or she can be a better coach.

SLAM: With 100 lessons in the book, did you just sit down and write or what was your thought process for it?

GD: I went from A-Z and I brainstormed in area of As, what we did with as coaches in the As. So, I have academics, making halftime adjustments, I speak about the age factor, being an ambassador, showing ambition. How anger affects coaching. And what I did was I correlated different situations that maybe professionals have dealt with and just attached an example with it.

SLAM: I see this book as kind of like a coach’s bible. Something they can look to for advice and reassurance. Would you agree or what do you think?

GD: I would say so. The idea is to show that coaching is first difficult, but you’re going to see some of the good qualities that we as coaches have and some of the negative qualities that we have as coaches and let the reader decide how that affects themselves individually and maybe get them onto a path of thinking, “What can I do better? How could I do anything better?” It’s just another way to challenge them.

SLAM: How has the feedback been since the book has been released?

GD: It’s been pretty good. With the release of my second book, I started my website. You’re able to see what I’m about, what I’m trying to get out there, and you can purchase the first book or the second book. So far, the sales have been pretty good. I’ve been out to a couple of festivals selling that way. I’m really involved in the church, so my book is in the bookstore. You can also get my book from Amazon, which is good, and through the publisher themselves, Xulon Press.

SLAM: Planning on writing anymore?

GD: Oh yeah. I just finished my third one. It’s called A Coach’s Diary and what that’s going to entail is I went from the beginning of the season to the end of the season and I made entries every day. It could be whatever transpired that day and how it impacted me or how it impacted one of my players or administrators or athletic directors that I wanted to put on paper. Again, this is more geared to the biblical side and what I learned from that experience. What I did was I attached a biblical scripture to that day and it relates to that situation that day. It’s coming out soon.

Photos via coachingwiththescriptures.com

The post Q+A: Gerald Davis appeared first on SLAM.

“One minute we’re playing Madden, and the next minute a team of undercover cops is banging on the door, barging into the living room, whipping out the badges and guns, securing the premises. It was pretty much what you see on TV. They came in vans, disguised as dry cleaners. While the scene unfolded, I was defiant, laughing at the cops, talking to them, asking them incredulously what they thought they were going to find.”—Jalen Rose, Got to Give the People What They Want

In 1993, soon to be Michigan junior Jalen Rose found himself caught between the crossfires of undercover police and a civilian carrying three rocks of crack. Given his stature and future prospects of going pro at this crucial time, I asked him what was so funny.

“I was laughing unfortunately, because growing up in a concrete jungle,” Rose tells SLAM, “I was fearful of what could take place. You become so desensitized to violence and street life from a normal 17-, 18-year-old fear that I didn’t have. That’s unfortunate because you lose your innocence early.”

Rose’s candid and forthright ways that his fans have come to love about his personality have all been wrapped in this book, providing true accounts into the life of the Michigan star.

It’s been an open secret as to how Rose feels about the setup of the NCAA. Throughout his book and through our interview, Rose openly criticizes how the NCAA works.

“You realize everybody on the college campus can work or make money except student athletes.” Rose continues. “If you work for the school newspaper, they pay you. If you’re in student council and student government, they give you a parking spot, game tickets, thousands of dollars, all of that. They’re controlling my likeness and they’re controlling my freedom as a student athlete.”

Rose discusses how the universities are pocketing all this revenue through means of apparel, brands and likeness, while rewarding student athletes nothing, essentially controlling them as non-paid full time employees. In his book, he proposes several suggestions in how the NCAA can fix this mess.

“To me, the measure of a man is how he treats people who can’t do anything for him.”

This quote in his book really stuck with me, as we dived into the topic of his ongoing feud with childhood friend and possible future Hall of Famer Chris Webber. Detailed in the book, Chris Webber basically tells Jalen Rose to get lost at the 2013 NBA Finals. Since they practically grew up as childhood friends, I pressed Rose about the possibility of a reconciliation between the two.

“I think so yes, and I hope so even more. I think as we continue to grow and nurture, the relationship will be repaired. That’s my brother. I love him.” Rose goes on: “As you get older, there’s no rule that says you have to be friends with the people in high school or college. We all have that right. What makes our situation unique is we aren’t just former teammates or classmates or alums. We’re actually brothers, and normally you don’t fall out with family.”

Throughout Jalen Rose’s book, it is easy to see that Rose is all about philanthropy and never neglecting where he came from, for better or worse. Instead of growing up hating what he didn’t have, Rose appreciated what he did have and worked hard to get to where he is, so he could give back to his hometown.

Jalen Rose Leadership Academy (JRLA) was founded by Jalen himself and he has goals of building a system where 85 percent of the students graduate from his high school. Additionally, he plans to track future high school alumnus in college to make sure they graduate too.

“We’re tracking kids through college too,” Rose tells SLAM. “We have a college success staff also. We’re taking these kids and putting them in position to be successful in life. That’s why leadership is in the title. Life skills, social skills, etiquette, problem solving, decision making, leadership. While many have been really successful at graduating from high school, they don’t track how they do in college. We’re owning that data.”

His book is filled with stories that not many former professional athletes seem to want to share with the public, including an assassination attempt, stealing Patrick Ewing’s TV, as well as the reason he has a small bump on his forehead.

Jalen Rose’s book comes out October 7, and you can also catch Jalen Rose on ‘Jalen & Jacoby’ on ESPNRadio on the weekdays, as well as ESPN and ABC.

Oh, and what hurt more to Rose: losing to Kobe Bryant in the 2000 NBA Finals or letting Kobe drop 81 on him and Toronto?

“The Finals,” Rose says immediately. “Easily, without question.”

The post Story Time appeared first on SLAM.

All throughout his career, Butler has played with superstars, most of the time as his team’s second best player. From Dwyane Wade to Kobe Bryant to Kevin Durant, Butler has made a lasting impact on teammates that he now calls friends.

So when Butler called Bryant to write the forward for his upcoming book, Tuff Juice: My Journey From the Streets to the NBA, Bryant did, writing that Butler was one of only four former teammates in 20 years that he became friends with.

“A lot of people don’t know this, but Kobe’s so helpful. He’s a real dude. He’s a real dude,” Butler says, using repetition for emphasis. “When I reached out to my brother, my friend, and asked him if he was gonna put his support in my project, he was like, ‘You already know. There ain’t nothing I won’t do for you, bro.’”

After 10 minutes of talking with Butler on the phone, I can easily see why. He never says “I” or “me.” It’s always “we.” He talks about “real ones” and staying completely true to himself. And he talks about perseverance.

“There’s so much that you think you probably know, but you have no idea,” Butler says. “And I think people are gonna be surprised by the adversity that we had to overcome. Not just one big hurdle, but it was multiple hurdles to get to this point. But we stayed goal-minded. We stayed goal-oriented and we continued to just move forward.”

Butler oozes loyalty and commitment. He loves his family and his community in Racine, WI. He wants to use this book to make a genuine difference in people’s lives and for people to gain hope by reading his story. “[This book] is something that you can give to a kid, or anyone that needs to be inspired,” Butler says.

Butler spent a good part of his childhood going down a dangerous path, involved with drugs. The book, Butler says, has actually been done for about a decade, but he wasn’t ready to open up until recently. Now he’s using his story and his emotions (he described finishing the writing process as “real moving, touching, inspirational”) to help kids in the same way that he was helped all those years back.

“I had an officer that showed me tremendous favor,” Butler says. “He could have took me to corrections. I was facing 10-15 years. He showed me tremendous favor and I was able to move forward with my life.”

Butler certainly moved forward with his life. He’s been a constant on good teams for a long time now, with the stars wanting him on their teams. He credits guys like KD and Kobe wanting to play with him to being himself. “I’ve never tried to be anything else but who I was. I stayed true to myself,” Butler says.

Butler’s going into his 14th season, this time as a member of the Sacramento Kings, where he says he wants to help create a winning atmosphere, where the players have each other’s backs. The 2011 Mavs squad, Butler says, is a good example.

“After going down with the injury, the camaraderie that the team showed me, they were just like, ‘Man, we’re gonna do this for you. We gonna win this for you, man.’ And that was a brotherhood like no other,” Butler says.

“I learned how to be selfless and I learned a lot about myself during that title run. Being a teammate and being vocal and helping and planting seeds then and because of that run, that’s one of the reasons I was more comfortable talking about this book, because I learned a lot more about myself,” Butler says.

With this book about his incredible journey, everyone is going to learn a lot more about Caron Butler. Tuff Juice goes on sale on October 7, and Butler and the Kings tip-off their season against one of Butler’s former teams, the Clippers, on October 28.

Butler believes in the power of hope and inspiration. When he speaks, it’s easy to get lost in his greater message. At one point in our conversation, he says, “You can make it too if you just believe and continue to move forward.” Absolutely.

The post Caron Butler Looks to Inspire appeared first on SLAM.

Longtime NCAA Division I head coach Mike Jarvis’ newly released book, Everybody Needs a Head Coach: 23 Biblical Principles to Help you with the Game of Life (written with Chad Bonham), is about much more than basketball.

The inspiration for Jarvis’ “God-inspired” second book came to him while on vacation in Greece with his wife, as the pair traveled in the Apostle Paul’s footsteps.

The spiritual journey had the Cambridge, MA, native thinking he wanted to write another book, a more personal explanation of his career that he repeatedly refers to as a “blessing.”

“I didn’t want to write an autobiography,” said Jarvis from his home in Florida. “We decided that the book would be about my journey but be about God’s story and all of the great people God put in our path along the way.”

The goal of Everybody Needs a Head Coach, according to Jarvis, is to spark meaningful dialogue for readers of all types: coaches, players, parents, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters. There are 23 stories accompanied by the same number of Biblical references.

The book opens with a scene at The Journey Church in Boca Raton, FL, where Jarvis is speaking to the congregation about his journey as a basketball coach and more importantly as a man, father and husband.

The book includes stories about his mother, father, wife of 48 years Connie, former players Shawnta Rogers and Michael Jordan, who Jarvis coached along with Patrick Ewing at the 1981 McDonald’s All-American game in Wichita, KS.

Jordan famously did not get the game’s MVP award despite setting what was then an all-time scoring record 30 points and hitting the game-winning free throws. “I thought [Jordan] was going to win it,” said Jarvis. “In a game that we won 96-95, [Jordan] made our last six baskets.”

Former Maryland Terp Adrian Branch would be awarded the trophy instead. This was another example of determination after a letdown that Jarvis refers to.

The book is not all good feelings, however. Jarvis and co-author Bonham make sure not to gloss over the episodes that lead to Jarvis’ departure from St. John’s despite making the Elite Eight in 1998, winning the NIT in 2003 (the Red Storm’s only banner-worthy moment since the 1985 Final Four) and winning 110 games during his tenure.

Jarvis is no longer interested in coaching, at least not in the way he had done previously during his 46-year career as an assistant and head coach (Jarvis won 364 games as a head coach).

“The way I’m going to coach, hopefully many people, is through this book and through public speaking,” said Jarvis. “I want to encourage everybody that they have a story worth sharing and my hope is maybe in my very small way I can get people to do just that.”

One of Jarvis’ favorite players while at St. John’s was former Christ the King and NBA point guard Erick Barkley. There’s a chapter about second chances that refers to the issues that led to Barkley, leaving school earlier than he needed to in order to not face an NCAA suspension.

“I love Erick and am very happy he has gone back to St. John’s to get his degree,” said Jarvis. “There’s a chapter in the book about everybody needing a second chance and Erick is the main character in it.”

“There’s something in the book for everyone,” Jarvis said.

The book, currently only available in paperback, includes pictures of Jarvis’ family, former teams and players. Find it on Amazon and autographed copies can be purchased via Jarvis’ website at shop.coachmikejarvis.com.

The post REVIEW: Mike Jarvis’ ‘Everybody Needs a Head Coach’ appeared first on SLAM.

Through the years, Tyson discovered that things do not always go according to plan, and that one must cope with failures and mistakes. His long and difficult basketball journey brought him to a Division I school, a Division III school, and three different countries overseas. It recently culminated with a 2014 Full Court 21 Championship. In the end, Hartnett battled hardship and adversity and came out on top.

Read Tyson’s first person account of his inspirational journey to redemption through basketball in his new book, Hoop Dreams Fulfilled. The story highlights the pressure many athletes feel to succeed and how hard it is when there are bumps along the road. More than anything, however, Hartnett’s story demonstrates how one can overcome tough challenges to fulfill their biggest dreams.

Buy the book on Amazon.

The post ‘Hoop Dreams FulFilled’ Available Now appeared first on SLAM.

Remember? It was the 3rd quarter and Ray Lewis and the Ravens had the game in hand. Young Bey had just killed it during halftime with a performance that–you had to wonder–might’ve killed the power in the Mercedes Benz Superdome. It was a big deal at the time: Twitter set a record for activity during a sporting event.

The delay lasted 33 minutes, during which, as someone tweeted, all those rich folks got to feel what it was like to be in that building in the dark, and catch a glimpse of what thousands of New Orleanians went through during the aftermath Hurricane Katrina. Oh, right, that happened, too. How did you feel watching it?

Me? I was happy. I mean, I was like just-won-the-trifecta-euphoric times ten, the kind of high only surpassed when your kid is delivered safely into this world. For the previous nine months, I’d been working on a book about New Orleans, where I live. As the city moved from post-Katrina to what some called the “new New Orleans,” a lot of people predicted the game would be a time for New Orleans to shine, for the world to see how far we’d come. Super Bowl Sunday was the last of 100 days I planned to describe in the book, a time period where I asked folks, “How far have we come?” The results were mixed. New residents, new restaurants, a resurgent culture, an ambitious mayor: yes. Endemic poverty, rising cost of living, resilient murder rate, the demolition of the projects: yes. New Orleans, I knew, wasn’t all bright lights and major sporting events.

And then the lights went out in the Superdome. I screamed like a One Direction fan. My boy sidled up to me as I lifted my hands in the air. “Guess you got your metaphor, huh?”

The book, New Orleans Boom & Blackout: One Hundred Days in America’s Coolest Hotspot, came out in January; in March, it was named the One Book New Orleans selection for 2015, meaning there will be programs citywide to encourage folks to read it in this, the 10th year since the levees broke. The response so far has been humbling. (You can read excerpts here and here.)

And it never happens if I don’t email Lang Whitaker in 2003 and invite him to East Village Radio for my “Toney Blare Show.” Lang sent Ryan Jones instead (I think to get the official cosign), and then Lang, Khalid, Omar and Sam showed up the next month for “SLAM RADIO.” History was made. In 2006, I returned to New Orleans, where I went to college, just in time for the Chris Paul era. I remember riding through the Lower 9th with Ben, Aggrey, and Khalid during All-Star 2008, trying to explain what happened. Ben mentioned that SLAM could always use game notes, so Aggrey and I formed Greytone, the single greatest game notes tag team the league has ever known. We covered that wild ‘07-08 season from the baseline, where I learned the intricacies of professional sports, and the way to write amid the fireworks. That’s when I became interested in how New Orleans–the brand–was employed by the Hornets/Pelicans and Saints, what was sold and to whom. When Super Bowl XLVII came to town, Ben and Abe asked me to cover player parties for TD Daily, and Lang hooked me up with a GQ party headlined by Lil Wayne; all of that’s in the book. I also covered the announcement of the Pelicans name change, something that represented the “new New Orleans” as much as anything; the book includes histories of the team and owner Tom Benson, himself worthy of a novel.

On August 2, the family and I will be in NYC for a book party at Turnmill, yet another SLAM connect. It’ll be good to thank everyone in person. Hope y’all can be there.

Where: Turnmill, 119 E. 27th Street
When: Tuesday, 8/4, 7pm-10pm
Facebook invite here

If you can’t make it to the party, be sure to order your copy of the book here.

The post New Orleans Boom & Blackout is Available Now appeared first on SLAM.

That’s pretty much the only way a 19-year-old gets business advice from Mark Cuban and before the 2015 Draft got to spend a month consulting NBA scouts and analysts. Ambition also propelled Carver to brainstorm a multi-metric algorithm to rank history’s greatest NBA players, then pen a 334-page book about it.

The book, Ranketology, has helped open doors for the Kansas City area native to executives and analysts from nearly every NBA team. Last November, he got a phone call from Larry Bird while sitting in a business class at the University of Arkansas. Carver interviewed the Indiana Pacers’ president of basketball operations for a midlevelexceptional.com article, then got Bird intrigued enough by his book to request a copy.

“He treated me like an adult. I didn’t expect that,” Carver says. “I expected him to think, ‘Hey, this is a college kid. I’m doing you a favor even talking to you.’”

Two months later, the Indiana Pacers hosted the business management major during a game and mixer at Bird’s request. While no NBA team has yet hired Carver as an intern, he might have already set a record as the youngest volunteer NBA consultant when he put in 40-hour weeks crunching numbers involving post-injury analysis on certain draft prospects.

Carver doesn’t want to divulge research specifics but says he has gotten good feedback on the four project reports he delivered. Carver hopes this work is a first step to one day making basketball personnel decisions in an NBA front office.

That dream puts him in the same boat as, oh, perhaps 10 million other college students around the world. So what makes this kid special? Why do NBA brass give him the time of day?

Number one: He’s persistent. Like every-day-email-someone-in-the-NBA persistent.

Number two: He thinks outside the box, then backs up the rationale with data.

Pairing disruptive innovation with deliberate process is increasingly de rigeur in the modern NBA, where teams like San Antonio Spurs and the Golden State Warriors rule. This new culture is embodied at all levels, from commissioner Adam Silver—who last year openly advocated for the legalization of online sports betting in the United States—to D-League teams like the Reno Bighorns which have served as a kind of pro petri dish for Grinnell College’s system of turbo-charged tempo.

Carver blazes his own path along these lines with his book’s most controversial verdict. Like so many other hoopheads he always considered Bill Russell among the top-three greatest NBA players ever. But he and his colleagues discovered different after hammering out a definition for “greatness.”

Carver et al defined on-court “greatness” as a cocktail of 19 metrics, most involving individual statistics (basic and advanced), individual accolades and titles won. Each metric is weighted as part of an overall formula so, for example, regular-season MVPs matter more than career points per game average.

While Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain and Shaquille O’Neal form Ranketology’s Top 4 through the 2013-14 season, the Boston Celtics legend with 11 rings isn’t found until the No. 23 spot.

Initially that result shocked Carver, but after looking into it, he saw most of Russell’s individual stats pale compared to the 74 other all-time greats’ whose numbers were crunched. Russell was 66th in career points per game, 42nd in career PER, and 31st in All-NBA First-Team selections.

“Oftentimes, he would win the regular-season MVP award despite not being named to the All-NBA First-Team,” Carver says. “Voters agreed he was the most ‘valuable’ player to the team, but he was not a better player than Chamberlain at center.”

Carver is careful to add if a definition for “greatness” involves off-court production criteria, Russell easily ranks higher. He was the League’s first African American superstar, breaking multiple barriers at all levels, including one as the NBA’s first black player-coach. “You can’t call Russell overrated, because his contribution to the League and to society was astounding.”

Carver himself once dreamed of making his name in the sport as a player, following in the footsteps of his dad (who played for Kansas State) and an older brother who played for Holy Cross.

Unfortunately, a series of major health issues permanently sidelined those dreams in high school. The first diagnosis was ulcerative colitis. The 6-3 guard from Shawnee, KS, then discovered his body can’t produce enough adrenaline for high-level sports. Max effort in sprints and weight-lifting produced about 60 percent of the output others got for the same effort. “Basically, what they’re telling me is that I was screwed from the start.”

It got even worse.

Early in his junior season, Carver spent a 16-day stint in the hospital and lost 35 pounds. Upon release he visited a gym to run suicides.

Later that year he experienced abnormal heart palpitations, dizziness, blood pressure spikes and “three or four” more hospital stays. “When I was running, it felt like I was being hung upside down.”

Carver recalls most of his final high school game as a blur. He stayed on court by tracking his opponent’s orange shoelaces. They were all he could see of the man he was guarding.

“My mom was very scared. Every game, it wasn’t even like, ‘I hope Johnny plays well today.’ It was more like, ‘I hope Johnny stays conscious today.’”

After a final diagnosis of autonomic dysfunction, a broad term entailing breakdowns in the nervous system, Carver knew his playing days were over. But those long hospital stays had an unexpected silver lining. They allowed him plenty time to figure out a way to stay involved with the game which had been “my entire life.” He started to write Ranketology.

These days, after anti-inflammatory blood infusions and a daily dose of 13 medications, Carver feels much better. Sure, he still occasionally passes out when standing, but Carver hasn’t been hospitalized since starting college last fall. That’s big.

Also big: A few weeks ago, after more than a year and a half away from the gym, Carver played a little ball with high school buddies. He launched them from deep again, and relished it. Because through all the pain and heartache of his playing days, shooting had been “the one thing always in my control. I was so weak, I couldn’t box out sometimes. I was so fatigued, I couldn’t run up and down the floor very much.”

“I couldn’t keep up with my man, but I knew I could always shoot.”

Only the goal has changed.

***

This week, Evin Demirel will be reporting live from the Nike EYBL Peach Jam. For more Arkansas-related sports news, check out his Best of Arkansas Sports site.

The post Aim High appeared first on SLAM.

Held at NYC’s landmark Barnes and Nobles building in Union Square, the in-store author talk and panel discussion on sneakers was part of an initiative to raise funds for Brooklyn Democracy Academy (BDA), a transfer public high school for over-aged and under-credited students.

Proceeds of SLAM Kicks would go towards the school’s basketball and cheerleading uniforms. Moderated by Dr. L.A. Gabay, the council consisted of SLAM Magazine Editor-in-Chief and SLAM Kicks editor Ben Osborne, NBA TV’s and book contributor Lang Whitaker, and former Syracuse University and New York Knick standout John Wallace.

The conversation explored the impact of sneaker culture and its relationship to each panelist. Both Osborne and Whitaker explored their personal nostalgic aspect of sneakers. Be it Osborne scavenging along Fordham Blvd. in the Bronx looking for Converse Weapons or Lang’s waiting at the Atlanta airport to ask Dominique Wilkins (and other Hawks) for his game-worn kicks, the effects of sneakers on these men go well beyond commerce.

Wallace, who had his own signature line of sneakers with Karl Kani, shared his parental and professional reflections in regard to manufacturing companies’ fiscal, community, and societal responsibilities. “I now wear American-made New Balance and will not buy my children anything too expensive such as Jordan Sneakers.” His concerns include the values and messages being expressed through price gouging and the continual flow of new product. Interestingly enough, Osborne added that the burgeoning socks market with responsibility-minded companies such as Stance, may put less emphasis on continually getting the newest and most expensive sneaker. Socks are now gaining cool street credibility but are also considerably more affordable.

Underlining the youth culture-education nexus in the Q+A segment of the session, BDA principal, Andrew Brown, remarked, “We have been able to use basketball as a way keep our young men and women occupied with positive activities after school, and as a means to keep students dedicated to earning a diploma.” Proving him right, present amongst the audience were the BDA boys and girls basketball teams, cheerleaders, students and their kicks.

Photos by Joe Zallo

Crystal Lan is a freelance writer specializing in the media’s role within theology. Her work can be found in SLAM and The New York Times.

The post A Noble Idea appeared first on SLAM.

More importantly, we loved the game in spite of our stature, which goes with the theme of my debut novel, Slim and The Beast. The novel is about brotherhood. It is also about a stalker and bathtub whiskey. But mostly, it’s about the pursuit of passion versus career, about the challenge for post-grads to search for and find meaning.

Hugh Dawton-Fields, aka The Beast—UNC superstar, National Player of the Year, NBA lottery pick, 7-footer with a violent streak—finds himself banned from the Dean Dome after punching a coach in the face. His past has seen tragedy and his future is guaranteed: upon graduation, he will enter the NBA Draft. But like all of us, just because he’s good at something doesn’t mean he’s passionate. And so when The Beast is assigned community service at a burger joint called The Skillet, Hugh meets Slim, and everything begins to change.

There is more to the novel than basketball. For one, there are two other protagonists (Slim, an Iraq War veteran and The Beast’s best friend, and Sgt. Dykes, an alcoholic stalker). The reason I wrote about a basketball player, though, is because it was the first place I found passion. Hugh Dawton-Fields grew up as a loner. Kids made fun of him for his height. He played all day in the backyard, alone. But once he reached puberty, scouts began to take notice. All of a sudden, this young kid was no longer called Hugh. Everyone knew him as his on-court presence, The Beast, except for a disillusioned war hero who went by the name Slim.

And so the novel is really set once Slim and The Beast leave North Carolina for the 2010 NBA Draft. The excerpt below is about Hugh Dawton-Fields’ transformation from a quiet kid with a love for the game to an older kid with a celebrity nickname. Athletes—especially talented ones—don’t really have a chance to give us the real story. We see them on the court, in a state of grace, and think of them as transcendent. But they play XBox. They drink beer. They sometimes have trouble sleeping. It’s natural for us to regard sports stars as heroic, admirable faces…but when the buzzer sounds, when the TV is off, who are the real people behind the mask?

***

It’s a shame college athletes don’t have a right to their own name, and the All-American Hugh Dawton-Fields, aka The Beast, was of course no exception. One look at the young man and you’d be hard pressed to come up with a better nickname. He was 7-2 on his tippy-toes—size 19 feet, the biggest in the NCAA—and 290 pounds after a full meal. His hands were the size of frying pans, his wingspan about 7-6. Standing under the 10-foot hoop, The Beast could touch the rim without even straining. He had bulging biceps, massive forearms, and a chest that often got in the way. He entered most rooms sideways. One player described him as a 7-foot freight train. But as our man Slim would soon learn, the expression “appearances can be deceiving,” though trite and overused, was particularly true when it came to The Beast.

Hugh Dawton-Fields’ portrait was painted by secondary acquaintances, sports writers who thought they knew him and fans who believed they knew why he played basketball. They thought they understood why he didn’t like the spotlight; but even if he was shy, reasons aren’t the same as explanations. As a kid he was taunted for being tall, lanky, and quiet. When he went through puberty in early high school, he was made fun of just the same. He was a dominant, forceful player, but a frustrated one, too. Not used to his newfound size of a staggering 6-8 at 16, in high school he had trouble controlling his strength, breaking more than a few noses and wrists along the way. On account of his playing style, he usually ended up on the bench at the end of the game. He didn’t mind it though, hearing the final horn from the sidelines. According to one scout he had the size but lacked a passion; still, his averages spoke for themselves: 35.3 points, 21.5 rebounds, and 8.4 blocks, all while playing a little over half of the game. After a high school career that eclipsed even Wilt “The Stilt” Chamberlain’s, The Beast entered UNC destined to become a legend. In his first year he won ACC Freshman of The Year. During his sophomore year he was a top-five All-American. Forever the quiet one who distrusted the business side of things, Hugh Dawton-Fields was a soft-spoken superstar, refusing all interviews, hiding in the locker room after the game.

No one was able to crack The Beast’s demeanor. Professional scouts and well-dressed agents were baffled he didn’t leave early for the NBA. He was old school, if that still meant anything. Most believed he loved the college game and the focus on team, but the truth was his main goal was a college degree; and as long as UNC kept selling tickets, only opponents found time to complain. What with all the agents and hype surrounding such a dominant player, no one knew or cared about the kid behind the nickname. He was polite and quiet and always showed up to practice early; but he left on time just the same. Some NBA scouts questioned his intensity. The Beast was a superstar without the fanfare, a celebrity without the tabloids—if the kid known as Hugh Dawton-Fields were ever asked for an interview, that one might be granted; but UNC made too much money off the nickname (fans even petitioned to have it on the back of his jersey). And so he played more aggressively on account of the chants; he fouled more intentionally on account of the jeers; he screamed louder when he dunked on account of the TV and made a habit of fouling out at the end of games. On the court he was a phenom destined for the NBA, but off the court he refused to answer anyone who called him The Beast.

According to Sgt. Dykes, who said he’d done his research, everything came down to punching Assistant Coach Jim Brees. No one knows what Coach Brees said, but it most assuredly had to do with The Beast’s parents’ deaths—the punch came just three months after the family restaurant Chez Moi burned down, when The Beast returned to the hardwood in hopes of moving on. The only thing the media talked about was Jim Brees’ near-death experience—neither Jim Brees nor The Beast ever spoke about what was said. It was as if The Beast’s culpability was a foregone conclusion ’cause, like a NCAA spokesperson suggested, how could a respected Division I coach be in the wrong?One teammate said Coach Brees called The Beast a f—– for crying, for which The Beast picked him up by the armpits and slammed him to the ground before bloodying his face.

A janitor watching from high up in the stadium said The Beast knocked Brees out without warning; but the most likely story is that of Alex Morgan, a curly-haired point guard who spent quite a lot of time on the bench. “I won’t say what was said because I know what you’ll do with it. But trust me when I say it was out of place. I was running suicides, just like the rest of us. Coach Brees got in Hugh’s face for falling behind. Some words were exchanged and Hugh asked Coach Brees to repeat it. Coach did and Hugh backhanded him right across the face […] No, he deserved it. That’s my opinion at least. […] It wasn’t a punch, it was a backhand.” Even if Alex Morgan’s story is to be believed, verbal abuse was no excuse for almost rendering a coach blind. There were plenty of debates on ESPN and talk radio about what could have been said and if it even mattered, and if it did what did he say? and if he did say it, why? But The Beast refused to speak about it and Coach Brees seemed too scared. Whatever the case, The Beast was immediately expelled from the team and potentially the university; though he’d been suspended before, it had been for an in-game ejection (nose breaking), and it’s one thing for the powers that be to pull strings for flagrant fouls or the occasional bloodied face, but putting a staff member in a coma for three weeks? This was a serious offense that no PR expert, boat-shoe wearing donor, or hoity-toity academic could right fix. Lest The Beast’s story end prematurely, the sentencing judge—an adamant basketball fan who had high hopes for The Beast—saved Hugh Dawton-Fields from expulsion by sentencing him to five hundred hours of community service at The Skillet.

‘Slim and The Beast’ is the debut novel for Inkshares, America’s first crowdfunded publishing house. Samuél L. Barrantes is an essayist and novelist from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. His work has appeared in Paris Lit Up Magazine, SLAM Magazine, and The International Forum for Logotherapy. Samuél plays streetball in Paris in a neighborhood called The Swamp. He dreams of dunking in game and perfecting the Eurostep. Find more info, fiction, essays and inspiration at www.samuelbarrantes.com and Slim and The Beast at booksellers and at www.slimandthebeast.com

The post Excerpt: Slim And The Beast appeared first on SLAM.

With only one senior in their rotation, the Spartans had a foundation of youth that had originally been laid when the boys were seven and eight years old and first getting to know one another in The Hill. At 6-6 and almost 250 pounds as a junior, DeJuan Blair was the fulcrum of an offense that punished on the inside and ran with the horsepower of a stock car on the outside. Regardless of whether it was in high school, college, or the pros, Blair has always played bigger than his height would allow, courtesy of broad shoulders, a seven-foot wingspan, and outlandish strength that opens up paths to the bucket.

Blair’s current prowess on the highest level of basketball is remarkable, considering how he tore the ACL in each of his knees as a freshman and sophomore at Schenley and was sidelined for 16 months.

“I can still see DeJuan as a ninth-grader, hopping around the gym on one foot, trying to show everyone that he could still dunk,” Skrocki said. “His knee eventually healed, but the next year [in the state quarterfinals], he hurt the other one. For him to come back the way he did as a junior, it was just incredible.”

DeJuan and his other siblings gather their inspiration from DeMond, their brother who died when he rolled off the bed at three months old. And they got their game from their parents, Greg and Shari Blair. Greg, a teammate of Darrick Suber, graduated from Schenley in 1991 and played for Skrocki, while the former Shari Saddler averaged 20 points and 20 rebounds a contest at Serra Catholic in nearby McKeesport.

“I was never a troublemaker, but I don’t know where my life would be without basketball,” he said. “I’m glad my mom and dad put one in my hands.”

As a youngster, DeJuan was a fixture at the Ammon Recreation Center and at Kennard Park in The Hill, just like his future Schenley teammates were. It’s where they cut their teeth and inherited the swagger of their predecessors who never gave them any credit and swore they would never be as good.

As a 6-5 junior, D.J. Kennedy was a crafty southpaw, as resourceful as MacGyver, and a triple-double threat in every game he played. His father, David Kennedy Sr., won a PIAA title alongside NFL lineman Sam Clancy at Fifth Avenue High School, which shuttered in 1976.

(To address concerns about de facto segregation in the 1970s, Fifth Avenue and Gladstone merged to form Brashear High School, which welcomed more than 5,000 students to its new building on Crane Avenue in Beechview. Fifth Avenue had educated students in the Lower Hill, while Schenley’s territory included the Middle and Upper Hill. Kennedy and Clancy’s Archers earned a national ranking as high as No. 2, despite the uncertainty surrounding their 1975-76 season. The strike by the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers spanned 56 calendar days and 33 school days in December and January, and jeopardized Fifth Avenue’s last crusade before it even began. It eventually got under way, and the Archers, a nickname inspired by their school’s Gothic-style architecture, won all 15 of their games on the path to the crown. “The strike was really a drag,” said Clancy, Pitt’s all-time leading rebounder. “We knew we were good but never had the chance to prove it. Maybe that’s why the [PIAA] tournament meant so much to us. We were glad to see the strike end, but I’m not sure the rest of the state was.”)

An accomplished quarterback, the elder Kennedy concentrated on hoops in college at Cincinnati, and the Dallas Mavericks took a flier on him in the eighth round of the 1981 draft, although he never made the League.

“I had a lot of motivation early on to live up to my father’s name,” said D.J., who lived with his mother growing up. “I was always hearing from older dudes about how great of an athlete he was, but he didn’t push me. He gave me space to choose my own way.

“I looked up more to my brother [Derrick Holliday]. He was four years older than me, and didn’t make the best decisions with his life. He’s always had good intentions, but he got caught up in a lot of bad situations. Regardless, he always shielded me from the streets and did whatever he could to keep me on the right track.”

Jamaal Bryant, nicknamed “Onion” since he was a tyke when one of his youth coaches said his head looked like a bulb, stood just 5-9 and weighed 140 pounds as a junior. An artist at the point, he used the floor as his canvas and mesmerized crowds with fancy ballhandling and no-look passing. The mercurial playmaker saw the floor as clearly as anyone in Western Pennsylvania back then and could toss alley-oops to Blair and Kennedy in his sleep.

“My role?” Bryant asked. “To do whatever it took to win. I had to win, needed to win. I couldn’t stand losing. It was like coming face to face with death. I used to cry for hours after a loss.”

As a sophomore at Schenley, DeAndre Kane tried to use every minute of the 2005-06 season to make up for lost time. Kane didn’t play as a freshman, because he refused to carry the upperclassmen’s bags, perhaps foreshadowing some of the troubles he’d have later on in his career.

“DeAndre had the mentality that he didn’t have to listen,” said Bryant. “He was definitely uncoachable at first.”

The enigmatic Kane blossomed into a 6-4 point guard at the next level. But as a 10th-grader, he was a few inches shorter, playing off the ball, and carving out his niche on the team, all while trying to not get swallowed up by the streets.

Like Kennedy, Kane had championship blood coursing through his veins, as his father Calvin had steered the Spartans to their last state crown 28 long winters ago.

“Life was difficult in The Hill,” Kane said. “Everywhere you looked, there were cautionary tales, examples of someone who could’ve been the one to make it big, but the streets took over. It would’ve been easy for me or any of my Schenley teammates to get stuck in that life and end up dead or in jail like so many others.

“Growing up, we were stupid, young and stupid. We’d go to parties wearing red bandanas, thinking we were gangbangers. With all the stuff I saw and what people were into, I’m fortunate to still be here.”

Kane had a girlfriend and another friend who were murdered in separate incidents during his youth. The former was killed in a drive-by shooting, and Kane made it to the scene in time to see paramedics covering up her body. The latter died when he and Kane were at a party, and tempers began to flare. They left the house just before shots rang out, and were running toward their car when Kane’s friend caught a bullet in the head.

Kane was and remains best friends with the last piece to Schenley’s puzzle.

At 6-2, Greg Blair Jr., another sophomore, never sprouted like DeJuan, but his appetite for physicality may have exceeded his brother’s.

“I was the guy who gave us the spark,” Greg said. “When we needed a hard foul, I was the one to do it. And I loved that role.

“I always played basketball in DeJuan’s shadow, but having him there was a blessing, because it took the pressure off me.”

Schenley’s offense fired on all cylinders when DeJuan was drop-stepping through traffic, Kennedy was gliding to the rim from seemingly impossible angles, Onion was slicing up his defenders with his crossover, Kane was bombing from distance, and Greg was whooping it up and bullying the opposition.

Mark Hostutler is a former award-winning journalist at the Delaware County (PA) Daily Times and the author of Heads of State: Pennsylvania’s Greatest High School Basketball Players of the Modern Era, a book that profiles the best scholastic players in the Keystone State’s illustrious history. His new book, The Eulogy of Pittsburgh’s Schenley Spartans, examines how private and charter schools are tearing at the fabric of traditional high school basketball. To contact him, e-mail guruhoss@yahoo.com.

Photos courtesy of Eric Hartline

The post The Anatomy of a Contender appeared first on SLAM.

“Never let anyone
lower your goals.
Others’ expectations
of you are determined
by their limitations
of life.
The sky is your limit, sons.
Always shoot
for the sun
and you will shine.”

Author Kwame Alexander calls the above lines “Basketball Rule #3” in his book, The Crossover. Such a rule is in no way limited to the hardwood—it’s a life rule, and much like main character Josh Bell’s story told in heartfelt verse across 237 pages, it can relate to basketball enthusiasts and non-enthusiasts alike.

Junior high school student, Josh Bell aka Filthy McNasty, is the star on his team, along with his twin brother Jordan, nicknamed JB. The boys learned the game’s fundamentals from their father, a former pro who’s known as Da Man. Blues-loving and doughnut-eating Dad will coach from the bleachers during his kids’ games, while his wife, the principal of the boys’ school, keeps him and the twins in check.

Josh tells his stories in verse. He’ll narrate the play-by-play of his team, with each word and its typography playing a role in setting the scene:

A quick shoulder SHAKE,
a slick eye FAKE—
Number 28 is                 way past late.

His on-court commentary is but one aspect of the book, because basketball is but one aspect of his life—albeit an important one. Filthy’s adventures and troubles spill off-court too, when JB finds love and Da Man faces health issues. Filthy is left feeling lonely, a sadness he isn’t used to.

But with the game, determination to set problems with his brother right, and “Basketball Rules” like that quoted up top sprinkled between every few pages, Josh finds the will and the way to regain his basketball and bro privileges.

Alexander’s cool and touching read is one that keeps your fingers turning the pages for more. The book is like a down-to-the-wire game, with multiple lead changes and fast breaks coming in the form of Filthy’s life and experiences that deal not only with basketball, but family, brotherhood, tragedy, and acceptance.

The post The Crossover (REVIEW) appeared first on SLAM.

Kentucky coach John Calipari is a brave man, or a fool, to write about seasons past. Considering his track record, it’s definitely not the latter. His indomitable faith in putting players first despite recurring recriminations from the NCAA indicates it’s the former. Known as the one-and-done dude, he’s not a darling of the collegiate establishment because his philosophy is often misconstrued as cutting the middle man out of billions. The authorities have been going at him retroactively ever since he put Memphis on the map. They’ve held him responsible for dubiously petty misdemeanors he couldn’t have reasonably been aware of, like the kickbacks Marcus Camby received when he was down and out in Amherst. For the legions of jealous ones who still envy, Calipari can’t die soon enough. When he goes, his funeral will undoubtedly be transformed into a standing-room only affair by haters wanting to make sure he stays gone. Calipari’s been around the block a few times, however, and knows what’s really real; it’s doubtful he’ll go gentle into that good night any time soon.

His philosophy, finely articulated with the assistance of Michael Sokolove in his latest book, Players First, is easy on the surface but hardcore between the lines. Calipari, by his own hand-on-the-bible admission is crazy; crazier than Jerry Tarkanian was radical.,because his approach to the game flies in the face of an inequitably shabby institution that’s unsustainable in the long run. Like many coaches, he believes his job is making his players better than they think they were the year before thereby preparing them for competition on a higher level. He mentors kids not only in becoming better teammates but guides and counsels them on their path to evolution as “servant leaders.” He describes the process through anecdotes of developmental experiences with Derrick Rose, Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, and so many others. There’s a reason why his progeny are consistently high lottery picks, and it’s all there laid bare in his book. The chapters about recruiting will be a revelation for any ankle-biter who has aspirations of breaking ankles with Cal because he specifically lays out what he’s looking for in a prospect. The greatest impact on his success of late has been to recruit players in groups, much like Steve Fisher did in Ann Arbor with the Fab Five.

Young heads be forewarned, though. You best protect your neck if you get with Calipari because you’re gonna find out he means everything he says about putting your feet to the fire of a crash course in “failing fast” to stay ahead of the curve. Fortunately Coach Cal isn’t going back to Cali or anywhere else. He opted to stay put on the collegiate level, where he’ll have the greatest impact on the youth before they take their first baby steps in the NBA.

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by Jake Appleman

Writing a book about the first season of the Brooklyn Nets consumed 18 months of my life. I went all in with my meager finances to get a deal, attended 72 games, and even contemplated fighting the BrooklyKnight. I cannot even begin to calculate the amount of time I spent thinking about the Nets. It probably wasn’t healthy. 

The journey to write Brooklyn Bounce has roots with this publication, whether dating back to a teenage version of myself enamored with SLAM 25 (Generation Nets: Champs by 2001) at a Barnes & Noble; getting credentialed for SLAMonline in college and having Brian Scalabrine school me on the ins and outs of interview technique; or evaluating games and atmosphere at the Izod Center with OG Russ Bengtson. 

So what’s inside? The book includes, but is not limited to: a team affected by a hurricane; an owner that does backflips on his jet skis; meditations on Jay Z; Deron Williams’ catch phrase and Joe Johnson’s nicknames; scuffles on Christmas Day; game-winners; two coaches passing through the guillotine; and plenty of memorable moments, not only from the Nets, but from their opponents—LeBron, Kobe and KD—too. 

I felt comfortable tackling this project because the Nets’ arrival in BK was both new and old. The franchise dates back to 1967 when they were the ABA’s New Jersey Americans and writing about their fresh start was also a chance to honor their past. And basketball in Brooklyn is eternal. 

And the future? Well, any team in a budding borough is going to grow a new fan base and the story of the first rendition of the Brooklyn Nets is a must-have for folks familiar with the franchise as well as those new to the scene and future converts. There was also a side of me that wanted to capture extensively what covering the NBA in 2013 was like because, like the game itself, the game around the game continues to evolve.

While the Barclays Center glistened and the ownership presided with superstar presence, there wasn’t a singular charismatic force driving those Nets. In a way, that made the challenge more exciting; wonderful stories often live where few look. Deron Williams is an underrated character over the long haul. Gerald Wallace is fun to listen to. Each inaugural Brooklyn Net had a unique thread in the story and it was fun watching those various threads become more and more detailed. 

After the Nets lost a triple-OT Playoff game to the Bulls in Chicago, Reggie Evans reflected on the experience. “You ain’t gonna forget about this game,” he said. “Heck naw. Naw. Not at all. If you’re a true basketball player you won’t forget about this.” I hope the readers of Brooklyn Bounce feel a similar passion.

The post Under Review: Brooklyn Bounce appeared first on SLAM.

In 2003 the Knicks limped out of the gate going 9-17.

The few (if only) positive bounce in the NYC basketball world that year was the release of Bobbito Garcia’s Where’d You Get Those? New York City’s Sneaker Culture: 1960-1987. Rife with fact, feeling and footwear, the original book became an urban anthropological game changer—a coffee table book for sneaker connoisseurs as well as a “regular” in the syllabi of Yale, NYU and Carnegie Melon. 

A decade later the Knicks have once again stumbled out from the starting block going 9-17. Luckily, Bobbito Garcia has provided a most welcome reprieve; the 10th Anniversary Edition of Where’d You Get Those? 

The sneaker game has not changed so much as it has evolved over the past decade—and the 10th Anniversary reflects this continuum. With a clean and colorful new cover, updated and expanded text from Bobbito and a must-read introduction by Elliot Peter Curtis, what remains in WYGT’s 10th are the amazing photographs and clever dialogue amongst the contributors. 

One of the select original voices to the book, Blake ‘Lord Scotch’ Lethem, reminisced with me about those amazing few hours when Bobbito came over circa 2003 with a tape recorder to research and share. “Sneakers are unique because they are simultaneously nostalgic yet very present tense.” 

Looking down at Lord Scotch’s fresh out the box white and gold adidas Superstars, I then asked the obvious question that more and more have been asking since 2003: “Where’d you get those?”  

“Church Avenue…they are less expensive there.”

Check the details from Testify Books’ official press release about Bobbito Garcia’s updated classic below:

“Documenting more than 400 pairs of sneakers in a highly illustrated, chronological format, Where’d You Get Those? is simply a stone cold classic. Sneakers are fetishized by consumers worldwide, and dozens of subsequent sneakers books have come and gone, but none have come close to attracting the readership and unfettered adulation that this book has enjoyed. (Carnegie Mellon University even offered a class, Sneakerology 101, that used Where’d You Get Those? as its main textbook.) Updates to the new edition include new sneakers inaugurated into the canon, as well as a new foreword, introduction and afterword.”

The post Rebirth of Cool appeared first on SLAM.

by Habeeba Husain / @

Four-time NBA All-Star, four-time All-NBA First Team, three-time NBA scoring champ, Olympic gold medalist, 25 years young. There’s more, but really, need I go on?

We all know his name, and we all watch his game: Kevin Durant of the Oklahoma City Thunder.

After seeing Durant play at Madison Square Garden back in 2006, author/graphic designer/hoophead Brad Graham from Sydney, Australia embarked on a project—The Backpack Baller. If you picked up SLAM 174, you got a glimpse of this book about Kevin Durant and his journey so far.

SLAM caught up with Graham about his book and the Kickstarter campaign (closing December 31) that’ll take care of the final steps in making The Backpack Baller a reality for KD fans everywhere.

SLAM: So I’m going to jump back in time to start off. What got you interested in graphic design?

Brad Graham: I was an illustrator from a very young age. Once high school had finished, I was forced to look at what career avenue I wanted to take. I studied fine arts for two years and didn’t really see how that was going to be able to provide an income, given that a lot of money that you make through that is either freelancing or government funds based on proposals and what not you send. I wanted to turn what felt like a natural skill in illustration into some sort of ability to make money off something I really enjoyed. I used that to be the springboard into university.

SLAM: How about basketball?

BG: It was in the later stages of eighth grade that I had stopped spending my lunchtimes playing soccer and started to migrate to the basketball courts. Some of the people I started spending more time with were very into the game.

SLAM: What made you want to combine your graphic design background and love of basketball into The Backpack Baller, which you describe as a coffee-table book?

BG: I think [editor Brian Duff’s term “coffee-table book”] is more just the notion that if you have a copy of this book, it’s the sort of thing you can leave lying around, and whoever is enjoying the entertainment at whichever house they’re at will flip through it. It’s almost a communal type of experience. Ideally, what we’re trying to accomplish with this is it becomes something not only fans but people who are just casual followers of the game want to thumb through.

The merging of the two passions happened once I’d gotten my first job out of university at an independent publishing house. I worked for a publisher named Dov Kornits. He had a movie magazine called Filmink, and I was a junior designer for him. After being employed by him for a while, 12 months I think it was, I preached the idea to him to start a national basketball publication in Australia primarily because we didn’t have one, and secondly because Andrew Bogut had just been drafted first overall and the timing just felt right.

I was then elevated to the position of art director and editor-in-chief of that publication, which I ran for four-and-a-half years. During that time of running that magazine which was titled Handle, I was traveling to the U.S. frequently attending NBA games, All-Star Weekends, and that’s how I discovered Kevin Durant. Being in New York City, and seeing the University of Texas play at Madison Square Garden, it was all part of this journey for me to eventually develop the skills necessary both from a design standpoint creatively and from an editorial standpoint.

SLAM: What can readers expect to see from page to page?

BG: As it stands, there’s 16 chapters that mark the different stages that are significant to Kevin’s journey and each one is either a very visually centric piece, might include a bunch of stats and infographics and large type elements, or ultimately it’s an essay or magazine-style feature. Kevin’s unconventional. His journey’s unconventional and I felt it was important to have a book that, in essence, was actually an unconventional book. There is an overarching theme, and that is let Kevin and his personality and ultimately his journey be the thing that decides what this product is going to look like.

SLAM: Why Kevin Durant and why now?

BG: I think he’s at a point where we can actually step back and appreciate the journey he’s gone on, and I don’t think he’s gonna fall off any time soon. I don’t think he’s a one hit wonder, and so this book is ideally a part of his origin story. It is a Volume One in essence, but it is an all-encompassing way to look at what he did over his first 25 years.

SLAM: He’s a pretty humble guy, Kevin Durant. How did he react to all this?

BG: Back in March of this year he happened to be in New York. The Thunder were playing the Knicks, and after the team shoot around, I sat down with him and I just had the manuscript, the pages themselves. Although they were on their way to being designed, I didn’t have some of the images that I was still securing the rights to in order to show him the true representation of what the book’s final form would be. So what I did was printed it out, just the text. He had a hundred-page document of straight text. He kind of looked at me puzzled. His first question was, “Is this whole thing about me?”

SLAM: What’s been your favorite part of working on this project? 

BG: A matter of selecting which bits of information, which little gems, would be included. Then working with the book’s editor on extracting what key statistical pieces we were then going to reshape into the infographcis and ultimately, just building the book. I’ve never built a house, I’m not a handyman, but I imagine the same satisfaction an architect gets from designing…or a builder gets from seeing a finely crafted house being built from the ground up. In many ways, that’s the attitude I had with this—that once we had the blueprint, we then went ahead and built the house and part of the fun was picking out the furniture. Decorating the book with the images and designing the layouts. I guess any designer or any person with an arts background will always tell you there’s nothing better than sitting down with a blank canvas because you can ultimately shape it in any way you see fit.

SLAM: What are the remaining steps?

BG: The remaining step now is we just need to get the money together through Kickstarter in order to reach our funding target, so we can actually go back and attain all the images we need to make this book the best possible product it can be. We’ve got an agreement with Getty Images where we can actually use the images for previewing purposes, but we don’t have the rights to publish them in print yet. There’s the printing. There’s the binding. There’s the distribution. This is a hardcover, 250-page first edition book with custom printing, quality paper stock, and everything about it will make it a true collector’s item. The furniture’s there. The house is built. It’s ready to be lived in, but it’s the little extras that are going to help decorate it to make it that much more satisfying or rewarding for both the casual and die hard consumer.

To help fund Brad Graham’s The Backpack Baller, check out his Kickstarter page before December 31.

The post Q+A: Brad Graham, Author/Designer of The Backpack Baller appeared first on SLAM.

Then, in November, I heard from a student of David’s named Kevin Dowd. Kevin had interviewed David for a brief blog post on The Seattle Times’ website focusing on his interactions with race and sports, and they covered a lot more ground than was able to run on the blog. Together, Kevin and David agreed that SLAMonline might be a good home for the rest of the interview. I, of course, agreed. They made some tweaks, we formatted it into SLAMonline style, and the result is below. I hope you find it as interesting as I did.—Ben Osborne

by Kevin Dowd / @kevindowd

SLAM: You were born in L.A., raised in San Francisco, and lived for about 20 years on the East Coast. In Black Planet, you joke a lot about not wanting to become a Seattleite. Are you still holding out?

DS: There are parts of Seattle that still drive me crazy. There are a number of characters in the book. There’s me, my daughter, my wife, Gary Payton, George Karl, and Seattle is definitely one of the main characters in the book. In a later book I wrote called The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead, I take one part of my father and really emphasize his physical vitality. That’s only one part of him. In Black Planet, I take that part of Seattle that is un-Sonics-like. Basically, I tried to create a contrast between the rudeness of the Sonics that year and create tension between Seattle and the Sonics. The Sonics were so perfectly anti-Seattle, the Seattle of that time. Or better said, the Sonics expressed an undertow to Seattle which is there but is often disguised.

SLAM: Did that rudeness draw you to the Sonics, coming from the East Coast, where that whole ethos is kind of different?

DS: I think that’s really true, that I just loved the Sonics so much. It’s not like I’m some person who grew up in Harlem or something. But it did strike me on coming back here. It felt like Sweden to me, it just felt vey different. I felt really Jewish. I grew up in a very Jewish, if very secular, family in L.A. and San Francisco, and Seattle either felt very Asian to me, or very Nordic. I remember living in Ballard for a couple years, and I just felt like I was going crazy. I felt like I was tweaked too high, that I sort of wear my nerve endings on my sleeve. And Gary Payton was speaking for me. I loved him so much. The main point of scoring an incredible basket was to create a verbal tattoo on the other player. It was almost like the game mattered less than the verbal pyrotechnics that followed. He would score an incredible basket, and then he would run down the sideline and start yelling at the reporters who thought he couldn’t make a shot; he just seemed to live through language so powerfully. Which I think in the book I connect to stuttering. Basically, I grew up with a stutter, and still have glimmers of it, and at the time I was worried that my daughter might inherit my disorder. But anyway, I was relatively recently married, I was a new father of a very young daughter, and I was living in Wallingford. I felt very Jewish in relationship to my WASP-y wife, who seemed in a way to fit more with Seattle. She’s from a suburb of Chicago. Her cultural style is closer to Seattle’s, in a way. Somewhat undemonstrative. She doesn’t wear her heart on her sleeve the way I do, certainly. I was processing a lot of issues, and I think all that was a bit of the background to why I cartoonize Seattle, I think. How does Seattle play in the book to you?

SLAM: It seems extremely accurate.

DS: As I was walking here and you saw me coming across, I jaywalked. I wasn’t consciously doing it; it’s just the way I walk; I’m really impatient. I don’t pretend to be some incredibly urban person, but it’s just how people walk in big cities. And yet, people in Seattle sometimes come to a screeching halt and imply, “Well, if you’re going to violate the law that much, you must be a kind of quasi-criminal and so I’m going to insist that you walk in front of me.” I’m not aware of any other cities in which people obey the stoplights as much as they do here. To me, it’s sort of like obeying nature: Seattle worships nature more than I do.

SLAM: Sports radio is another big part of Black Planet. Do you still listen much to it?

DS: I do again, mainly because I’m hugely into the Seahawks right now. During baseball season, because the Mariners are so awful, I don’t watch the Mariners. And there’s no basketball team, alas, though I hope they come back. But sports radio is to me an amazing anchor that that you drop into the ocean of the American id: pure American male, largely white, id. Part of me is listening as a fan, because I’m just hugely wired into the Seahawks right now, and part of me is listening as a pith-helmeted anthropologist who is listening for cultural revelations.

SLAM: What was the reception for Black Planet?

DS: I was driving around in the car one day, maybe six months after the book came out, and I was listening to ESPN radio, nationally: they were talking about the book. And they were really putting a lot of distance between themselves and the book. They were basically mocking it: Oh, isn’t this pathetic, this white guy who thinks he’s Gary Payton in bed with his wife, chuckle chuckle chortle chortle. My response was: You are telling me way too much about yourself on ESPN radio. All those shows—they live through this vicariousness, this voyeurism, this homosexual panic. I just owned it, that’s all. I named what is there but what no one is willing to talk about.

SLAM: What’s changed since you wrote the book?

DS: I’m different now. I’m 57 now, whereas when I wrote the book I was in my late 30s. Part of me now frankly loves Seattle, and part of me has a huge amount of distance toward the New York cultural style. I do think people who have only lived in one city tend to have different views. Right now, I just feel like people are people, that there are smart people and stupid people and aggressive people and passive people. I think it’s a very easy cartoon of different parts of the country. It still drives me nuts that people on the East Coast always say, ‘Out west.’ If you’re listening to ESPN on the radio, they’ll say, ‘And in scores out west.’ To me, it’s all just one country. It’s basically saying the East Coast is the absolute center, and everything else is quote ‘out west,’ do you know what I mean? If Black Planet is any good, it’s not really about race, per se, but it’s about how all human beings, including me, including you, have a tendency to not tolerate within themselves their own demons, and so they project those demons onto other people. Jews and WASPs, east and west, black and white, parent and child, spectator and athlete, coach and player. Some people who don’t understand the book say, “I don’t get it, why’s he talking about some discussion he had with somebody at Bartell’s? Why didn’t he focus in on the Sonics?” But that’s not the book, and the book isn’t even about race to me, per se. There will be a tiny moment between me and my wife that’s just as important as a blowup between George Karl and Gary Payton. And so to me, if the book works, it really opens up this interesting space between people, and you start to ask yourself, Why is it that you tend to demonize someone else? Isn’t it probably because there’s something about yourself that you either love or loathe, and that you’re projecting it onto someone else? That, to me, is the core of the book.

SLAM: One part of the book that really sticks out is when you talk about going running in Wallingford, and when you pass a black guy you start running faster, as if you want to impress him. Or you won’t hold the door open for white people, but you always do for black people. I do the same things. I had always kind of thought that was because I haven’t spent much time in the company of black people, but that doesn’t sound like it was the case for you. How much do you think familiarity matters with that sort of thing?

DS: Both of my parents were very politically involved. Growing up in San Francisco, they were hugely involved in desegregation of the schools and civil rights, things like that. My father worked for the poverty program, trying to help black people find housing or jobs. And sometimes we would have people who would live in our house for a whole year; they would live and sleep in our living room. That was a common thing for us. I grew up in a pretty white suburb of San Francisco, a little bit south. The kids on my basketball team were black. I feel like even though both of my parents were involved with that and perhaps I was around people of different ethnic backgrounds perhaps a little bit more than you were, I still grew up in a relatively white suburb. I do think that background is interesting, because I’m very interested in this thing: sort of a paradox I’m drawn to—that my parents were very devoted to love and truth and justice and all these things in the abstract, but in our actual lives we had trouble getting along; my parents weren’t very happily married and I feel there was a lot of tension between the parents and children in our family. I feel like my parents, and my mom in particular, were really good at loving strangers, giving them the living room for a year, but they really had trouble loving people in our actual family. I was really interested in the gap. There’s this great line of T.S. Eliot’s, which is, “Between the idea and the reality falls the shadow.” They were very good at the idea, because it’s really easy to love a stranger, in a way, because you’re sort of loving an abstraction, someone sleeps on your couch for three months and you get to give yourself 10 brownie points for being a good person. But it’s really hard to love a person who’s actually in your life permanently and who’s a very flawed human being. I was also sort of hugely aware of the Lady Bountiful aspect of it, you know, what was my parents’ true motivation? I think they were trying to do good in the world, and I think they did do good, but I think there was a huge amount of competition to see who could be the most righteous person. I remember at one point my mom was going to sell our house and we were going to move into the ghetto in order to just sort of be down with the people. It just seemed like a funny gesture to me. Someone had told her that the revolution begins when white people sell their houses in the suburbs, and so my mom sort of marched home and said we were selling our house. The book is both an ode to my parents’ politics and a critique of it. There’s this line of Montaigne, who says, “Every man contains within him the entire human condition.” I’m really interested in making myself complicit—basically to acknowledge that I’m capable of racism, too. The parts of the book I found hardest to write are the parts of the book that have got the most positive reaction from black readers, who say, “Thank you for writing this, because I hate it when white people pretend not to do that.” I gave a reading once in Chicago to a predominantly black audience, and I basically thought, what the hell, I’m going to read the parts of the book that are the most provocative. So I sort of chose the most uncomfortable passages, and people just loved it, because instead of trying to be some enlightened liberal, I was just owning it, trying to understand my own confusion. And I think people just thought, it’s so liberating to hear a white person acknowledge their own baffling, baffled guilt. And I just feel like the discussion begins there. I think there’s a pretense that we live in a so-called post-racial America, and that’s just nonsense. I’ve read many times and I’ve heard that Obama is largely the same person [both in private and public]. Unlike Bill Clinton, who in private is strikingly different from how he is in public;  in private apparently Clinton is unbelievably unhinged and angry, he yells at his underlings, has temper tantrums. I’m sure he’s mellowed with age, but he was apparently brutal in private. And Obama is just—supposedly, I’ve read many places and heard sort of tenth-hand—that he’s largely the same in private as he is in public, with one big exception: Obama is hugely aware of the ways in which race plays a part in the right’s hatred of him, and even I would say the left’s embrace of him. All of this he more or less refuses to acknowledge in public.

SLAM: Have you seen the clip of Obama greeting the Olympic basketball team? He goes up to the white assistant coach and gives him a real standard handshake, and then when he gets to Kevin Durant, Obama gives him this big, stylized, complicated high-five.

DS: I’m fascinated by stuff like that. That’s so loaded. At some point I was thinking about writing a book, and may still, about the infinite gradations and calculations of Obama’s body language, which fascinates me. And that clip is relatively recent. I just feel like Obama is constantly and fascinatingly calculating, almost to the nth degree, how much blackness to show. Do you feel that, too?

The post Planet Rock appeared first on SLAM.

by Sam Rubenstein / @samrubenstein

Carmelo Anthony, your assignment is to read Lord of the Flies by William Golding. The setting is a utopian island where there are no adults around to supervise and the inmates run the asylum. Much like the heart of basketball Mecca, Madison Square Garden, it falls into the most frightening of dystopias.

On the island, he who holds the conch (a big sea shell) holds all the power. Just like in your world, where the one with the ball in his hand runs the game. That one would be you at all times, but be careful: when your team goes full savage—and the potential is there—it won’t matter who’s holding the ball. All hell will break loose.

Let’s talk about some of the characters. There’s a happy, intelligent kid named Piggy. His fate is much the same as Jeremy Lin, a nerd who needs to be destroyed. Piggy uses his glasses to harness the power of the sun to create fire. Others believe in worshipping a decapitated pig. It’s like how some people believe in studying player-efficiency stats and others like a guy who can put the ball in the hole. We know what side you’re on there. There’s an enigmatic character named Simon who marches to the beat of his own drummer. If the book were longer he would change his name to Metta World Peace. He randomly appears and disappears much like your friend Amar’e. There’s a character named Roger who embraces the most violent impulses, which could be used to describe the pre-Metta Ron, or Kenyon Martin. Basically, there is a Knick for every child on the island. You are the leader of the Knicks, so you should read up on how to control these people. The key to the whole book is whether you side with Jack or Ralph. Is Carmelo going to be out for blood (and that free agency money!), or is he going to do what’s best for the team? Only you can decide.

These days, people are picking apart your financial plans and loyalty, not to mention your shot selection. What better way to tune all that out than this classic novel?

Previously:
Rajon Rondo x The Catcher in the Rye
Dwight Howard x Ender’s Game

The post Vaguely Literary: Carmelo Anthony x Lord of the Flies appeared first on SLAM.

by Motez Bishara / @thefrugalfan

PROLOGUE

I think it was Kurt Vonnegut who, in one of his classic novels back in the early 1960s, first coined the phrase “You get what you pay for.” I love the quote. It’s a punchy line, a saying that I borrow from time to time to sound clever when I’m discussing anything money-related.

The problem, of course, is that it’s a big fat lie.

Instead of getting what we pay for, most of us grossly overpay for things all the time.

Whether it’s everyday charges like $4.50 ATM fees and $4.90 venti caramel macchiatos, or travel expenses like $8 hotel bottled water and $20 valet parking, or fleeting fashion trends like $35 baseball caps and $320 ripped jeans…the list of rip-offs is long. Heck, Adam Sandler movies alone have wasted over $2 billion globally. If only Vonnegut were around to spend $12 on Jack and Jill he’d be singing a different tune.

But what people consistently overpay for is live entertainment: tickets to concerts, the theater, the opera, and especially sports. Game after game, year after year, Americans shell out more and more to watch professional athletes compete. At last count the figure stood at over $25.5 billion, or $82 a year for every man, woman, and child in the country. It’s a remarkable number. So remarkable, in fact, that we’re reaching a tipping point—and here’s where it gets interesting.

Enter Leonard and Yvonne Gionet of Portland, Oregon. The Gionets developed a successful real estate business and by the late 1980s decided to splurge on premium seats to the Trailblazers, just as they were making consecutive runs to the NBA Finals. Their season tickets started at a reasonable price, $200 a pop for floor seats in the very front row behind the basket. But when the Blazers moved to their new arena in 1995, their prices doubled even though they moved back a row. Not only that, but the team asked for a six-year commitment to secure the seats. Being hardcore Portland fans, the Gionets agreed to pay over $30,000 a year to lock up their new second-row seats.

And that’s when the problems started. “When we had front-row seats we had Clyde ‘The Glide’ Drexler and Terry Porter; it was their best team ever,” says Leonard. “And then we got something called the Jail-blazers.”

The so-called Jail-blazers were a bunch of underperforming athletes on the court, and minor felons off it, routinely getting arrested for speeding, drunk driving, drugs, and spousal abuse. “They were so bad, and they were so stupid,” Yvonne recalls. “Just to show you how stupid they were, this one guy, the little guy [Damon Stoudamire], he went through the metal detector at the airport with marijuana wrapped in aluminum foil.”

Oh dear. The Blazers slid from perennial title contenders in the 1990s to losers of sixty-one out of eighty-two games in 2006.

“We couldn’t give away our tickets,” Yvonne recalls. “People would be like, ‘Oh no, we’re busy.’ For a while they’d beg you for these tickets because they were great, but then when even our son didn’t want to go anymore…”

It’s a sad situation. Not to mention, a terrible waste of money. If you can’t give away your $800 pair of floor seats, then they’re not worth $800 anymore. They’re pretty worthless in fact.

How did the Gionets get into this mess? It’s simple: They agreed on a fixed price for the tickets years before knowing what their actual value would be at the time of delivery. And that’s how the vast majority of sports tickets are sold. In this case the transaction benefited the team, and it screwed its biggest paying fans.

And this is where I come in. I like buying tickets off the disgruntled, uninterested, or otherwise engaged. It presents golden opportunities; I’ve been to countless games where my seats were subsidized by the likes of the Gionets, who got stuck with forty-one pairs of tickets they no longer used.

Of course, not every team is mired in quicksand like the Trailblazers of the 2000s, but deals can still be had at just about every arena in the NBA on the right night.

Just follow me.

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK: DECEMBER 4, 2012
THUNDER 117, NETS 111
ATTENDANCE: 17,732 (sellout)

It’s 5:00 p.m., and the tipoff over on Atlantic Avenue is only two and a half hours away.

Ever since the Barclays Center opened with a Jay-Z concert in September, I’ve been desperate to watch the Nets play in Brooklyn. In fact, I’ve really been waiting twenty years for the Nets to be relevant, and this season marks their transition into the national spotlight.

In the past few years, the Nets moved from the swamps and ghettos of New Jersey to the rebirth of cool in New York City. Brooklyn is undeniably one of the hippest patches on Earth now, and having an NBA team grace the borough solidifies its status in the cultural zeitgeist.

My issue, though, is that along with their entrance into the world of cool, Nets’ ticket prices have more than doubled since last year. And because I’ve only just realized that this game against the slammin’ jammin’ Oklahoma City Thunder is on tonight, I’ve dropped everything in a mad scramble to get in without paying a fortune.

So I go into my online attack mode. I bombard ads on Craigslist, and I go through StubHub and eBay with a fine-toothed comb. I’m looking for prices outside of the price-gouging line of fire that marks New York as its bulls-eye.

I start by working two leads on Craigslist. The first from a guy who’s supposedly in Midtown Manhattan with a pair of seats in the lower bowl for $200 each. I offer $300 for the pair, telling him I’m near Grand Central Station until 5:00 p.m., and I wait to hear back.

In the meantime, I run a search with a ticket aggregator that finds all the listings floating around online before ranking their values. It’s like having an all-points bulletin out on the best deal in the house. So I repeatedly check out the deals rising to the top of the ratings system and bide my time, hoping prices keep dropping while wary of other eager buyers on the sidelines.

If this behavior pattern sounds familiar, it’s because it is a lot like stock trading. You see, for years I’ve been professionally managing a stock fund, patiently buying shares of companies like McDonald’s, Disney, and Nike when they trickle down to valuations that I think are reasonable. For sixteen years I’ve been investing in American companies while based in London, never losing sight of the Yankees, Giants, or Nets across the pond.

In England, I’ve adopted slick-passing Arsenal as my home soccer team. I bided my time for ten years on the waiting list before securing front-row season tickets, somehow priced as the cheapest seats in the house. Even when the Gunners disappoint, I reason that it’s a deal worth hanging on to. I may even be a tad spoiled by my seats, which offer me global face time at nearly every game as I wave my red scarf behind Mikel Arteta’s corner kicks.

So it stands to reason that once I’m back in the United States and craving some hoops action, I turn into the guy looking for the best ticket deal I can get my hands on. That usually involves playing a game of chance up until an hour before tipoff, hoping for a steal. Oddly, finding value on a ticket purchase poses a greater challenge than it does when buying a stock. That’s because tickets have a buying window that shuts. At some point the game starts, and time is up.

So, like Larry Bird anticipating an errant Isiah Thomas pass, or Warren Buffet buying a chunk of Goldman Sachs, I know when it’s time to act.

Up until that trigger point, there’s a feeling-out process with my potential transactee. Today, I’m haggling with Anthony Roth, who says there’s “an issue” with me being in Midtown—despite advertising his ticket location as “Midtown.” We then trade text messages, and he tells me he’s located up on 125^th and Park Avenue.

“That’s in Harlem; your ad said Midtown,” I reply, smelling something fishy. Everyone knows the internet is a cesspool of scams, and classified marketplaces like Craigslist accept no liability.

Anthony assures me his tickets are legit, and that he normally works in Midtown. I ask him to call me with a meeting point, but he never does. It’s just as well; I didn’t have a good feeling about him. You have to trust your instincts when you’re potentially exchanging hundreds of dollars with people you’ve never met before.

The other listing was also in Midtown, but he was taking too long to get back to me (no doubt involved in his own game of cat and mouse). In the meantime, I had one eye scrolling through e-tickets on StubHub until I found my Larry Bird moment, swooping in for the steal.

I nabbed two tickets in the fifth-row corner, which were going for nearly $800 on Ticketmaster. Instead I paid $445 for the pair of borderline “floor seats,” with access to the Calvin Klein lounge for free food and soft drinks thrown in. Glancing at the printout, I noticed that my price was only a marginal increase on the $205 each that Nets season ticketholder Angel C paid for her (or his?) seats.

With the barcodes in hand, my fellow New Yorker Ahmed and I hopped on the 4 train to the Barclays Center. The billion-dollar facility is a marvel; the lighting is just dim enough, the seats just steely enough, the screens sharp and huge enough, and the aisles wide enough to call it the most gleaming entry into NBA homes. Call it Jay-Z’s ultimate MTV Crib, with more B-boy-inspired characters in the crowd than all the other NBA arenas combined.

We scarf up some shrimp and noodles in the lounge before gliding around the Nets’ slick herringbone-patterned floor in time for intros. The game is a slugfest from the outset. Dueling Team USA Olympians Deron Williams and Russell Westbrook trade baskets at each end of the court. Scoring champ Kevin Durant nearly breaks his neck skying over headbanded parolee Andray Blatche for the missed dunk of the year. Kris Humphries has bulked up into a six-foot-nine Goliath, but his jump shot’s turned sloppier than Scott Disick at an open bar.

By the fourth quarter, the Nets have cut their sixteen-point deficit to just three, behind Gerald Wallace’s three consecutive three-pointers. As he sinks each one, his braids swing like a wind chime in a hurricane. Brooklyn’s going wild.

Ultimately, though, all the elongated “Brook-lyn” chants are wasted. The Nets can’t quite get the job done, losing on a hairline goaltending call on Humphries. But there’s an undeniable flame lit under the Barclays Center. The energy fuelled by that kind of intensity is infectious, which helps explain why I go through what I do to get the deals that I do.

Sadly, for a great swath of NBA fans, experiencing that energy in person is nothing more than a pipedream. But I can say firsthand that it should be far from a pipedream. It’s true that for years fans have been shut out of games by teams or gouged by ticket brokers. We either had to splash out a fortune, or get on a multiyear waiting list for a season ticket and wait for the dubious right to pay for an entire season in advance.

Today, if you play your cards right, you could be watching LeBron James and the Heat play for as little as $15. And that’s in the playoffs.

I’m here to tell you how to play your cards right. I’ve done all the hard work, gone to all the far-flung arenas, taken all the commuter flights, and spent an ungodly amount of time trolling the internet and streets of the United States. All in the name of providing my fellow sports fans with something they’ve been deprived of since the beginning of time: access to an equal playing field.

Join me on this wild ride across the continent; I promise to impart all the knowledge I’ve accumulated, and share all the laughs (as well as the funny-to-everyone-but-me missteps) along the way.

Back in the Barclays Center, during the game’s waning moments, a fitting Jay-Hova lyric bounces over the loudspeakers: I’m on to the next one.

PAID: $222.48
SINGLE-GAME FACE VALUE: $392.55
DISCOUNT ON SINGLE-GAME PRICE: 43%
SEASON-TICKET FACE VALUE: $205
PREMIUM TO SEASON TICKETHOLDER PRICE: 8.5%

***

ORLANDO: FEBRUARY 3, 2011
HEAT 104, MAGIC 100
ATTENDANCE: 18,945 (sellout)

“You want free? Go to Egypt, them is free!”

That was the reaction I got from an Orlando scalper after I told him I didn’t want to pay too much for a good seat. I was practically laughed off the sidewalk, guffaws, knee slapping, and all.

I knew LeBron was a big-ticket attraction, but just how big became plainly evident when I arrived at the Amway Center a full two hours before tipoff to find a line of a thousand people waiting for the doors to open. There was a DJ outside pumping hip-hop (“Straight from London, ya ya, alright geezer”), loads of food and promotional stalls, as well as a giant inflatable Mickey Mouse. There were also a dozen satellite vans parked outside with newscasters practicing their lines on the pavement.

Talk about intimidating.

I’d flown in for less than twenty-four hours just to see this game; I had no ticket and was working on a budget. Pregame figures online were $450 and up in the lower-tier center sections. Even the guy who checked me in at the Days Inn thought I was a little nuts.

So I cautiously made the rounds, sort of befriending a few of the characters working the street corner just to get a feel of what this would take. Their strategy is to ask how much I’d be willing to spend, and mine is to stay coy and throw down outlandishly low numbers ($30? $50?). I was quoted $250 for something in the lower-section corner and $125 in the upper (nosebleed) corner. Forget it, I thought, I can do better than that. I told them I’d grab dinner and be back later, closer to tipoff at 8:00 p.m.

I was very pleasantly surprised with downtown Orlando. It’s impressive, with rows of bustling cool bars sporting live bands, giant screens, and all kinds of food. There was a lot to choose from. I parked myself at a trendy tapas bar and ended up chatting with the guy next to me. He was a young businessman who does a lot of work in India and only has time to see a few games a season. He had plunked down $380 for a fourth-row seat in the center, buying off Ticketmaster Exchange.

I wolfed down my tapas and headed back to the arena with fifteen minutes to go till tipoff. Butterflies in my stomach. A guy tried to sell me his upper-tier ticket (face value of $120—really? To sit up there?) for $100. I offered $20, and he got offended. Whatever, to me they were worth $20 and no more.

I moved back to the corner where I’d made myself a familiar face. A fat guy who looked like he could be the brother of departed SNL regular Chris Farley recognized me and waved a ticket. “I got something for you! A single in the bottom section, man. Just what you wanted.” He showed me the seating chart, and indeed, it was a great seat. Eleventh row just off the center. Furthermore, the face value said $0.00 on it, meaning it was a VIP ticket that was comped, either by one of the teams or the league.

Now came the bargaining.

Me: How much?

Him: $150.

Me: $80.

Him: $120.

Me: $80. I got cash right here.

Him: $120. I paid a lot for this.

Me: How much did you pay? I have $80, and that’s my budget.

Him: Ok, just give me $100.

Me: $85. I can’t go over $85.

Him (sensing other guys swarming around me, perhaps ready to make other offers): Ok, fine, $85.

A quick exchange, and I was in! I felt a rush knowing I’d bagged a good seat for a freakishly cheap price, relatively speaking. Once I settled in, two tall black guys who looked like they jumped out of a J-Crew ad walked over to my seat. Before even sitting down, one asked what I’d paid for my ticket.

I thought that was kind of weird and direct, so I asked why he wanted to know.

“Cos that’s my ticket you bought,” he said.

He explained that his girlfriend didn’t feel like coming, so he sold his spare for $50. He’d gotten the tix comped by his cousin, who plays for the Magic.

“Oh, who’s your cousin?” I asked.

“Jason Richardson,” he deadpanned.

Ha! For $85 I was sitting in one of the Magic’s best player’s seats. A two-time Slam Dunk champion, no less! Fantastic.

Just to feel even smugger, I asked around to find out what face value was. The Indian guy sitting next to me with his daughter was a season ticketholder. His ticket said $265 (God, I’m nosey).

I almost forgot there was a big game to watch. And boy, did it live up to its hype. This was the most exciting basketball game I’d seen live in years. The place was packed to the rafters (the anti-Atlanta), and Magic fans are noisy.

LeBron, however, put on a clinic, as they say. In the first quarter alone he had twenty-three points. He simply could not miss, and the Magic had no answer for him. From the outset he played point guard. He is simply too big and too muscular for anyone to guard at the perimeter, allowing him to rain in jump shots at will.

I asked J-Rich’s cuz why they didn’t double him. It seemed obvious they should. “They can’t. Too good a passer.” And with that, LeBron whizzed a no-look assist to an open Chris Bosh.

He finished with a jaw-dropping line of fifty-one points, eleven rebounds, and eight assists. He played forty-three minutes and was seventeen of twenty-five from the field. I’ve seen some elite players live, including Jordan, Bird, and Kobe, and LeBron is right up there with them. It was an awesome display. He was toying with the Magic in the same way you pull yarn away from a kitten.

Yet somehow the Magic clawed back to within three points with twenty seconds to go. It added to the electric atmosphere, even though they couldn’t pull off the victory.

There’s a tall spire connected to Amway Arena that lights up in blue when the Magic win. My cabbie told me that he can tell what color it is without looking because of the jovial vibe on the streets.

Alas, the spire shined red last night.

Next stop, New Orleans.

FACE VALUE: $265
PAID: $85
DISCOUNT: 68%

***

MEMPHIS: FEBRUARY 7, 2011
LAKERS 93, GRIZZLIES 84
ATTENDANCE: 18,119 (sellout)

Maybe it was because of the subfreezing temperatures, but Memphis was distinctly lacking something. People maybe? Open stores? Cars? Everything seemed to be shut or in slow motion. I went looking for a winter coat, as I’ve been woefully unprepared for this cold front. I asked the concierge, shopkeepers, a bus driver, and a taxi driver where I could find a coat. I’d settle for anything—a flea market, Salvation Army, or outdoor store. I was finally dropped off at what was supposedly the nicest mall in town. There were only two stores open: a Victoria’s Secret and a discount women’s clothing store. Every other storefront was empty.

Instead, I ended up having to pile on the layers to protect me from the snow. So rather than pursuing a fruitless shopping expedition, I retreated back to my hotel to search for a ticket to the game. Surprisingly, there were a few on StubHub going for less than face value. One I had my eye on was priced at $89 in the center of the club tier, above the luxury boxes (it had a face value of $129).

Combing through Craigslist, though, I spotted an unbelievable deal: one floor seat with a face value of $200 going for $130. I immediately phoned the guy up, but he had just sold it. Dang! I couldn’t believe it. He promised to make some calls and try to find me another spare, but I was out of luck. I’ve become pretty spoiled with my seats as of late, so anything short of the first ten rows feels a little too far from the action. As such, I bagged on the idea of buying the StubHub seat and decided to hit the streets before the game. Besides, hitting the streets makes for a better story.

A cab driver told me that scalpers were scarce because of a police crackdown on them, but I ignored his advice. Braving twenty-five-degree weather, I took the ten-minute walk from my hotel to the FedEx Forum (with a pit stop to warm up over a beer at the Flying Saucer). The cabbie was way off (like he was with the coat store). There was a thriving secondary ticket market just outside the gates. I’m pretty sure the exact same club seat I saw on StubHub was going for $150. There was not much else worth considering, so I decided to wait it out at another bar that had windows facing the arena. It was bitterly cold, after all.

I watched as scalpers traded tickets to and fro while I downed local ale (it had the word “snake” in it). With fifteen minutes to go until tipoff, I got restless and joined the fray. Thankfully, I quickly found a guy who had a single in the middle section of the lower tier. It was twenty rows back, but it offered a quality view. I held my ground at $80, and he capitulated. Face value says $107, so I was still riding that 25 percent discount mark. Honestly, I had no patience to stick it out in that weather, or else I may have done even better. Oh, the guy also gave me his business card (gotta love it). His name: Robert LeCruise Johnson; I’m not making this up. And his company’s name? Cruise Enterprises, naturally.

Nevertheless, I got in with plenty of time to watch warm-ups and the line-up announcements. Those are always fun in the NBA, and the Grizzlies are the first team I’ve seen with actual fireworks and flares after each player is announced. Metallica must be making a fortune off the NBA. I’ve heard “Enter Sandman” in at least three arenas so far, and I’ve only just started.

Halfway through the first quarter, Snoop Dogg made a grand entrance with four burly bodyguards. He had a floor seat behind the basket and beside the Lakers’ bench.

The game presented some intriguing matchups: the giant Catalan Gasol brothers going at one another, Ron Artest harassing Memphis’ smooth jump shooter Rudy Gay, and Gay himself covering Kobe Bryant. The Grizz kept it close until midway through the fourth quarter when the Lakers pulled away. At one point Artest got poked in the eye by Marc Gasol and unleashed a burst of melodrama. He ran all the way down the court whining like a four-year-old. When the Lakers’ trainer came to assist him, he angrily pushed him off. Artest is a clown, but he is the swing factor for the Lakers. When he has his head in the game, they are very tough to beat. In the last two games, he’s been effective offensively and intimidating on defense, stealing the ball four times last night.

Zach Randolph had a terrible game for the Grizz, going only two for fourteen from the field with four turnovers. Zach was the source of much amusement a few years ago when he was spotted at a Portland strip club while on bereavement leave from the Trailblazers.

Hey, why not get a lap dance while grieving? And for good measure he left without paying his tab. Class act.

A note about the arena: It’s got the coolest luxury boxes I’ve seen. They’re close to the action, spacious, and with wide-open panes for viewing. They were more like terraces than boxes. But the fan base at the game was a good 40 percent Lakers. A lot of purple and gold was sprinkled into the crowd, something I did not see in New Orleans. Why are the Hornets a threat to move when the Grizzlies are not?

After the game I hit Beale Street. It is by far the coolest thing about Memphis, other than Graceland. Although it was a Monday night, the street was bustling, with blues blasting out of every venue. I had a fantastic meal at the Tap Room and chatted with a couple of guys at the bar who, like me, were in transit. One was busy sampling my plate of southern catfish. The other, who was driving through town on his way back from watching the Super Bowl in Dallas, insisted on showing me bikini pictures of his pregnant Eastern European girlfriend while a band cranked up the blues.

The one fairly lucid guy at the bar was the bartender, who revealed that he was once thrown into the back of a police car for engaging with scalpers. He had given the seller cash but didn’t yet receive the ticket. Sadly, he lost out on both. Buyer beware, because those discounts do come at a risk.

Next stop, Oklahoma City.

FACE: $107
PAID: $80
DISCOUNT: 25%

Want more? Motez Bishara’s Beating the NBA is on sale now.

The post Beating the NBA (BOOK EXCERPT) appeared first on SLAM.

by Eldon Khorshidi | @eldonadam

Henry Goss remembers it all. The extraordinary collection of talent, the sold out 8,000 seat arenas, the most demanding practice sessions one can imagine, and the realization that something special was unfolding with every day that passed. The no nonsense, cigarette-smoking-in-the-gym, father-figure coach whose retribution would certainly be swift, and in many cases, demoralizing. The outside expectation of excellence, and the ability not only to meet said expectations but to set the bar at unfair heights. The back-to-back state championships, the natural bliss of amateurism, the pride of representing your school—and your state—on a national stage.

The memories are vast and indelible, as they should be.

In his new book Duck’s Boys, Goss tells the story of the ’78-79 Southwest Macon Patriots, the story of the best high school basketball team in the history of Georgia, and quite possibly of all time. A team that averaged 85.3 points per game…without a three-point line. A team that went 28-0 and easily repeated as state champs. A team that shot 55 percent from the field, won by an average of 28.8 points, and finished with the No. 1 overall ranking in the country. A team loaded with athletes, sharpshooters and bullies, with the mental toughness of a military unit.

While the players put on the show, in Duck’s Boy’s Goss—who was the team’s backup point guard—explains how Southwest’s successful approach started with Don “Duck” Richardson, a skinny, mini-afro wearing, well-dressed African-American coach who, then in his mid-40s, was the harshest disciplinarian in all of high school basketball. Duck had no place for egos on his team, and he had neither the time nor the tolerance for self-pity.

“Duck wouldn’t push you in the back or physically hurt you,” Goss says. “But you could be rest assured that if you made a mistake, he would be within two inches of your face, and he would take you to church and undress you in front of G-d and country. If you couldn’t handle that, you weren’t tough enough to be on our team.”

Entering the ’78-79 season, every team in the state (and maybe even the country) was aiming at Southwest. Even still, the Patriots steamrolled through their national schedule. Led by three of the best players in Georgia history—Terry Fair, Michael Hunt and Jeff Malone—Southwest packed arenas across the East Coast and put on a show—a barnstorming tour if there ever was one.

A 6-8 physical specimen and McDonald’s All-American selection, Terry Fair could run like a deer and finish above the rim on offense, and roam the lane and alter shots on defense. Fair went on to play at the University of Georgia, where he set several scoring and rebounding records, and led the Bulldogs to the 1983 Final Four.

Hunt was the unquestioned leader of the Patriots. A 6-4 gritty swingman, Hunt was the coach on the floor and an extension of Duck, and he took extreme pride in his role. And Malone, a 6-4 wing who is perhaps the most well-known Southwest alum, would taunt opponents with his silky-smooth jumpshot, riding his automatic stroke to the NBA. Malone went on to break the all-time scoring record at Mississippi State University, was a lottery pick in the 1983 NBA Draft, and a two-time All-Star. In 13 NBA seasons, he averaged over 19 points per game, shot 51 percent from the field, 81 percent from the free-throw line, and was a certified lock-down defender.

Along with the senior trio, 13 of 15 Southwest players went on to play college basketball of some sort. And yes, it all started at Macon, under the tutelage of Duck Richardson.

If you didn’t know much, or never even heard of the Southwest Macon Patriots before reading this, you’re not alone. In fact, that’s why Goss wrote Duck’s Boys—to shed light on a special team with a special coach, whose greatness predated ESPN, the AAU, recruiting services, social media, and the proliferation of influential sneaker companies who have a stronghold on youth athletics.

What Goss remembers, and often reflects on, is the amount of time, sacrifice and hard work required to make such history. Richardson worked Goss and the other reserves just as hard as the starting five, practicing up to seven hours every day in a hot and musty gym. This was not about boys maturing intro grown men. As Goss says, this was about “making us the most conditioned, fundamentally-sound, mentally tough, in-sync team in the history of high school hoops, by any means possible.”

Bold claim, sure. But Richardson, who at the age of 75 passed away in September 2011, dominated the competition. During 21 seasons at Southwest, he posted a 463-90 (.837) record, including six state and 10 regional championships. In essence, his teams put the then-recently integrated South on the athletic map. In the ’78-79 season alone, Macon defeated traditional powerhouses Oak Hill Academy (VA), St. John’s (DC) and Ocala (FL).

Duck used every tactic, fair and unfair, to mentally challenge his players. He would intentionally belittle his star players and ignite intra-team rivalries to get his players angry, motivated and focused. Again, there were no egos allowed. Regardless of which college coach was observing practice, Duck made his kids earn the right to compete every day. He was brutally hard and verbally abusive on many occasions, but the end result was not only winning, but also producing tough kids who understood the price of winning.

SLAM recently caught up with Henry Goss to try and capture the full scope of the ’78-79 Southwest Patriots, the inspiration behind writing Duck’s Boys, the impact of playing for Coach Don Richardson and much more.

SLAM: Aside from you being a part of the team, what was your inspiration behind writing this book, 30-plus years later?

Henry Goss: I thought we had a great, compelling story. We put Georgia basketball on the map. Our practices were legendary, and I think fans of the game can appreciate that. We traveled around the country and routinely blew out the best teams in their respective states. This was something special, and something I needed to write out to fully understand. The story of this team needed to be shared.

SLAM: When you refer to your practices as “legendary,” are you saying they were legendary relative to those times, or that they would be considered legendary even in today’s game?

HG: I think our practices rival any throughout high school history. Duck was focused first and foremost on fundamentals. We would start practice at 2:45 in the afternoon, with jump ropes and weight jackets and ball handling drills, and we would stay practicing fundamentals for hours. Our practices went from 2:45 until 8:30 at night. This was before practice regulations had been set, so there was no limit on how hard or long we could go. Our high school lives revolved around getting through Duck’s practices.

Some of the practices we had, we called them “ball breakers”, because we were trying to kill each other in practice. We wouldn’t take water breaks because in our minds that was a sign of weakness, and we’d get on each other for not being “tough enough.” Every one of us was good enough to play college ball, so our natural tendency to compete—along with Duck’s coaching tactics—made for some legendary times.

SLAM: How do you think the tough practice conditions translated into success during games?

HG: I think we were mentally tougher and better conditioned than everybody we played. We dominated teams. We bullied teams out of the gym. We just played at a higher level than other teams, based off releasing our aggression from practicing so hard throughout the week. We were in such good condition that we’d have just as much energy in the fourth quarter as we did at the start of the game. I honestly think our team is one of the best four or five high school teams in history.

SLAM: That’s a pretty bold statement.

HG: We were like the Harlem Globetrotters, Eldon. During pre-game, the music would be playing, and the entire crowd would watch me, Bobby Jones—the starting point guard— and Terry Fair. Bobby and I would do the globetrotter stuff, and Terry, who was 6-8, 215 pounds and chiseled, he’d do some of the baddest lock-and-pop moves ever seen. The crowd would just explode. Either they would go nuts over what me and Bobby were doing—handling and spinning the ball, and making crazy passes—or the dunks Terry was doing. You know who Jason Williams—White Chocolate—is, right?

SLAM: Absolutely.

HG: Our guards were the precursor to White Chocolate. Other teams would stop their warm-up drills, come to half court and just watch us do our drills.

SLAM: Wow. Is there any video footage I can watch?

There’s very limited videotape. I retrieved some from the school when they were tearing the gym down a number of years ago, and I donated it to the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in Downtown Macon. That’s the only footage I know of.

SLAM: I’m having a hard time grasping how good this team really was. It’s kind of hard for me to fully understand it, just because 1978 is such a long time ago.

HG: Well, I can say this: we were a high school with three of the top players in the country on one team. Terry Fair was a McDonald’s All-American, one of the top 24 players in the nation in 1979. And the class of 1979 is arguably the best high school class in history—Dominique Wilkins, Sam Bowie, Ralph Sampson, John Paxson, Byron Scott, Sidney Lowe, Isiah Thomas, James Worthy, Antoine Carr and others.

SLAM: As good as you guys were, it seems Coach Richardson was the driving force behind the success. As a player during those times, what were your thoughts on Richardson’s coaching style? That hard-body, no blood no foul intensity.

HG: It helped us win and it made us successful. It was very tough, but we all wanted to prove to Duck that we were tougher than him. Not one person on our team quit, and I think that speaks volumes. His style made us mentally tougher, particularly when we went on the road and played talented teams in hostile environments. Duck was absolutely the toughest coach, the most vocal coach, and the most physical coach there was.

He would get in your face, and back then you could smoke in the gym. And he smoked two packs of cigarettes every day. So he’d take a long pull of a cigarette, and he would get up in your face and drill into you until no end. And you would smell the cigarette, something you could never forget. He was extremely hard to play for, but it was all for our betterment.

SLAM: But how did you—and how do you—feel towards that kind of coaching? Some people are certainly averse to it. Did you always understand it was for your betterment, or were there times when you wondered if he was a little too harsh?

HG: We thought he was out of his mind, but we knew what to expect. With Duck, you had to hear the message but ignore the noise. Duck is going to be hard on you, yell at you, even curse at you from point-blank range. Duck wouldn’t push you in the back or physically hurt you, but you could be rest assured that if you made a mistake, he would be within two inches of your face, and he would take you to Church and undress you in front of G-d and Country. If you couldn’t handle that, you weren’t tough enough to be on our team.

We didn’t always like it, but we were good with it. I don’t think kids today could withstand playing for him.

SLAM: Interesting. Why not?

HG: I think kids actually want discipline, but they don’t fully understand how put themselves in a position to be disciplined. High school kids want to win, but most of the time they’re not willing to do the things to become a winner. What does that mean? That means you can’t be a drunk, you can’t smoke weed, you can’t be in a gang, you have to say “yes sir” and “no sir” knowing that doesn’t mean you’re subservient to someone. You have to be willing to trust a coach to do what’s right by you. You gotta hone your skill, you gotta work on your fundamentals, you gotta work on going left, you gotta work on going right, you gotta work on your jumpshot—until your fingers bleed. You’ve gotta run wind-sprints when nobody is telling you to run wind-sprints. That’s what was required to play for Duck, and I don’t think kids are doing those types of things to the necessary degree anymore.

SLAM: How did Duck’s coaching play a role in you and your teammates’ lives outside of basketball? Has the mental toughness aspect translated into other areas of your life?

HG: Absolutely. Like today, if I have a bad day at work, I will think to myself, “Henry, you can either throw in the towel, or you can suck it up, try to keep your focus today, and have a great day tomorrow.” That’s the way I think, and it’s all because of Duck. His lessons that each of us 13 young men went through, back in the 1978-79 season, I promise every one of those boys—even today—still holds onto them. It just makes you tough, and you learn not to quit, you learn to persevere, you learn that you can do things you never thought you could do.

SLAM: After you finished playing, you coached all across the world before transitioning into the corporate world. So, are you a writer, are you a coach who can write—how do you classify yourself? And I ask because this book was extremely well written.

HG: I’m a guy who took advantage of his athletic gifts that G-d gave me. I had to use my academic skills to get through college, but my athletic skills always played a role in my life. I love to write, it’s a passion of mine. But most of all, I loved my teammates. It was a story that I felt needed to be told, and my goal was to tell it, and to bring honor and satisfaction to my teammates.

SLAM: Do you still keep in touch with the guys on the team?

HG: I talk to Jeff [Malone] once every couple of months. Michael [Hunt] and I spent a number of years coaching together at the college level, but I haven’t spoken to him in a while. Bobby Jones and I talk every so often. The guys in Macon, when I see them it’s all love. I would love to get all those guys back together, because some of them haven’t spoken since high school.

SLAM: You still live in Macon right now. How do you compare the enthusiasm surrounding basketball in 1978 to the enthusiasm today?

HG: Back then, in the 1970s, just before integration took place, Macon was a football hotbed. But when Don Richardson became the basketball coach, when they integrated the schools and he was the only black head coach, that’s when the legend of Southwest was born. Southwest immediately became a basketball sanctuary. We regularly played in front of 5,000 fans, and if we had a game that started at 8 p.m., and you arrived at 6, you couldn’t get in the gym. At 17, 18 years old, we were the biggest show in town because of how dominant we were. Even to this day, everywhere I go, people in Macon still ask about our team. As a group, we were truly that special.

For the full story of the Southwest Patriots’ memorable season, be sure to pick up a copy of Duck’s Boys, available at amazon.com.

Following his time at Southwest, Henry Goss earned an athletic scholarship to Chattahoochee Valley Community College (AL) before transferring to Georgia College. After college, Goss spent 10 years coaching basketball across various levels, including Division I and II college basketball, the CBA and internationally in Kuwait City. He has worked for several Fortune 500 companies, and he currently resides in Macon, GA.

Photos courtesy of Henry Goss.

The post Duck’s Boys (BOOK REVIEW) appeared first on SLAM.

The question is as prevalent as ever: How do you justly compare one era of basketball to another? How can you prove who was greater: Michael Jordan or LeBron James? How can you judge George Mikan’s dominance in the paint versus that of, say, Shaquille O’Neal?

While these questions will likely go unanswered until someone far smarter than you and I comes up with a scientific formula to come to definitive conclusions, Dan Collins has come up with a way to fairly assess the many heroes of the 59 years of ACC basketball history in The ACC Basketball Book of Fame.

Collins served on the 2002 “blue-ribbon committee” that selected the 50 greatest players in the league’s decorated history. Although he had a vote, Collins wasn’t OK with the result and the voted list. In the Book of Fame, he has found a solution to appease his discomfort—a unique point system.

Essentially, Collins has assigned point values to post-season awards to truly consider how prominent players were in their respective eras. So, a player was given 425 points if he was a unanimous First-Team All-ACC selection, 400 points if he received the most votes of the members on any year’s All-ACC First-Team and the list descends by votes received for the post-season honors. He also assigns points to individual awards too, such as Player of the Year and All-American selections.

Now, you can still argue that Collins’ system is flawed. For example, post-season awards don’t often take individual players’ teams’ records into account. A player’s teams’ record might not have an impact on how media members view his particular season, but it certainly impacts how they view that player’s career.

Also, what about the guys who were stellar underclassmen but left college to pursue the NBA without a diploma?

Nonetheless, Collins does a pretty solid job.

After introducing this scoring system, Collins then proceeds to unveil his 50 greatest players in ACC basketball history via his method in reverse-chronological order. He leads off with North Carolina grad and current Cleveland Cavalier Tyler Zeller, who comes in at 1,200 points and works his way down the 1955 ACC Player of the Year, Wake Forest’s Dickie Hemric.

Following his countdown and depictions of each of his 50 greatest players’ careers, Collins takes a few moments to recognize the players who have the best arguments to belong in that category. Guys like Chris Paul and Walter Davis didn’t accumulate enough points to make the cut, but Collins does his best to give these players their spoonful of glory.

Overall, it’s a daunting challenge to try and create a definitive list about the history of anything, let alone a sport that so many fans, students and athletes alike are extremely passionate about.

Yet in his 300 pages, Collins manages to back up some of his controversial decisions and give equal recognition to the opposition.

You can get your copy of The ACC Basketball Book of Fame on Amazon.com.

The post The ACC Basketball Book of Fame (REVIEW) appeared first on SLAM.

The free throw is one of the most underrated and overlooked aspects of basketball. Poor foul shooting has lost countless close games and even been the source of embarrassment for many of the game’s all-time greats.

Imagine if Shaq made a career 62 percent of his free throws instead of his dreadful 52 percent. He may have well been the NBA’s all-time leading scorer. Even Michael Jordan admitted to not spending enough time practicing free throws. In his new book, Fifteen Feet For Free, Jim Lee highlights the importance of the free throw and gives game-changing pointers on how to improve your consistency at the line.

Jim Lee was a lights-out shooter his entire life. As a matter of fact, he still is. His shooting touch is what propelled him toward a scholarship to play under Roy Danforth and Jim Boeheim at Syracuse University. Lee blossomed as one of the best free-throw shooters at the college level, but his machine-like consistency didn’t come over night. He strove for greatness at the charity stripe at a young age, shooting 100 foul shots every single day starting in middle school.

It was his dream to be the best, and for a while he was. Jim held the Syracuse University record for the highest single season free throw percentage (88.6 percent) for 30 years. 

Jim sat down with SLAMonline recently to talk about the importance of free-throw shooting and why it doesn’t get enough love.

SLAM: What inspired your infatuation with free throws?

Jim Lee: I grew up in the country, my brother Mike was two years ahead of me, and we always played in the backyard, and he always whooped my butt at one-on-one. There wasn’t a lot to do in [Kirkwood, NY], and my father always used to say, “You know what wins and losses ball games is free throws.” So in elementary school I got in the habit of shooting 100 shots a day, and I was always able to beat my brother in shooting competitions.

SLAM: Your book is dedicated to your late father. Was there anything about your father that you tried to emulate at the free-throw line?

JL: My father was in a wheelchair from an injury he suffered as a Coast Guard, so we never played with him. But I always watched games with him on TV, and he would always say that if you’re gonna play, the free-throw line is right there, it’s simple, and the best free-throw shooters are always in the game late in games, so that always stuck with me.

SLAM: You mentioned that you had a stint with the San Antonio Spurs of the ABA in 1975, but you said you didn’t capitalize on the opportunity and your pro career ended shortly after. What exactly went wrong during your pro stint?

JL: You know I’m not sure if there is anything I could have done because no matter what, I was always 6-2, 160, so I knew I had to play the best basketball I was capable of, which I didn’t do in San Antonio. So I was traded to an expansion team in Baltimore.

SLAM: But there’s always room for a good shooter on any team.

JL: Well, I played pretty good [in Baltimore] because I knew what to expect. Baltimore already had three other guards so I didn’t fit their needs, so I wish I played as well in San Antonio. I knew I could shoot as well as anybody in the NBA, but it came down to getting your shot off, and because of my lack of size and quickness, I was limited. But I gave it my best shot, and I’d like to leave my mark on the game of basketball with this book while also donating the proceeds to disabled veterans.

SLAM: What type of impact did your professional playing career have on the life and career that you carved out for yourself outside of basketball?

JL: It’s not really the shot I had at a pro career, but everything I learned from playing sports growing up. It gets harder at every level, but it always comes down to a team effort. And that’s what I always tried to carry over to in life, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And people don’t realize how good these NBA players are. People always say that [NBA players] never play any defense, but they don’t know how it feels to have that hand-check on you. I always considered myself an overachiever because I was so undersized.

SLAM: You interviewed a number of great players regarding their philosophy on free-throw shooting, such as John Stockton and John Havlicek. Which one, if any, had the biggest impact on your technique and playing style?

JL: Well, I have to thank my brother for my technique, because he was always blocking my shot, that’s why I shoot it way over my head. But John Havlicek was always my favorite player. I only wanted to interview guys that I knew and played against, but a friend of mine was able to get me in touch with John, so I jumped at that opportunity. I was actually about to head into a meeting when he called, but I said to hell with the meeting.

SLAM: John Havlicek is clearly ahead of work in the hierarchy of life. Were you nervous talking to your favorite player?

JL: I have to admit I was a little nervous. I told him that he was the only player I ever had a poster of growing up and that I loved the way he was able to move around without getting tired, and that I always tried to play with that intensity. So I tried to emulate that.

SLAM: Was “Hondo” always a great free-throw shooter?

JL: Well, that’s the thing. He improved over time, shooting 72 percent in college and 82 percent in the NBA.

SLAM: How did you develop your technique?

JL: Playing with my brother helped a lot, but it ultimately comes down to just shooting and shooting and shooting. And that’s what I did, and I can’t even remember how many times I’ve hit 100 in a row as a result. I do remember the day I hit 423 consecutive though.

SLAM: Did shooting all of those shots in your backyard help you psychologically as well?

JL: Absolutely. When I was at the line in games I would just visualize myself in my backyard. And that’s why I held the record for most consecutive free throws until it was broken by Gerry McNamara years later. I was comfortable. And when kids I teach go in games and miss free throws late in the game, they’re upset, and I understand that. But [improving] doesn’t start at that point, it starts long before that point, by practicing and just shooting as many as you can.

SLAM: Let’s say someone’s technique is so ugly it’s insulting. Of course practice makes perfect, but she has a game tomorrow. What advice would you give that person in order to make a slight, overnight improvement at the line?

JL: I would tell them to just get to the line, bend your knees, and follow through so that your index finger cuts the net. But kids that I teach, when I’m standing there telling them what to do and fixing the little things, they’ll make 10 out of 10. But in games, when I’m not there, they miss a few. I tell these kids that it comes down to practice, because I’m not going to be there to make sure you’re doing everything the way it’s supposed to be done.

SLAM: What’s most important in becoming a successful free-throw shooter?

JL: Practice, practice, practice. And then balance. You need to stay squared to the basket with your head and shoulders. After balance, it would be eyes on the target, and follow through.

SLAM: But there are a lot of small technicalities within those broad compartments of free-throw shooting…

JL: Exactly. The little things fell into place come game time because I practiced them so much. So when I would head to the line in a game, all I would have to focus on is bending my knees and following through, and my reflexes would take over.

SLAM: Why can’t guys like Dwight Howard and DeAndre Jordan get it right? They’re around basketball 24/7 with some of the best shooting coaches the world has to offer. It can’t be a size thing because Yao Ming is 7-6 and he was so efficient that he used to shoot the technicals for the Houston Rockets, while Ronnie Brewer is a foot shorter and he can’t buy a free throw.

JL: And also Nowitzki, who was a 90 percent free-throw shooter when Dallas won the title. But it seems that Howard is too quick on his release when he shoots, but when he sets up it looks real good. But when he bends down before he shoots it’s just a train wreck. He has no arc on the ball at all. But with Nowitzki, you can tell he practiced shooting all of his life. He’s a jump shooter. I don’t think Dwight Howard ever practiced shooting.

SLAM: What about the notorious “granny style” shot that Rick Barry rocked back in the day? He was a 90 percent free-throw shooter over a 15-year NBA career—why has nobody used it since? Shaq was considering it, would it have helped, or lost cause?

JL: I always wanted to get in touch with Rick because I could never get it right. It has to have its own art to it, its own philosophy to it, and I always wondered what that is. I do know it’s a two-handed follow through, but I could never figure it out. Shooting as well as Rick did is nothing to sneeze at. And Shaq said he didn’t do it because it’s “not cool.” But how often did Shaq, or Wilt for that matter, even practice free throws? That alone would have helped.

SLAM: We’ve all seen games that have been blown at the line. Why do free throws magically become more difficult—even for great players—with the game on the line?

JL: What you have to do when you go to the foul line is do the exact same thing every time. How you shoot the ball 15 seconds into the game should be exactly the same when you shoot it with five seconds left in the game, regardless of the circumstances. When I stepped to the line in games, the mindset was that it was just me and the basket, in my backyard. The end result was the ball going in the basket.

SLAM: The free throw is an oft-overlooked aspect of the game, why is that?

JL: Again, we grew up in the country, so we couldn’t walk down the street and go to the park to play five-on-five, like you can do in the city. I think that’s why the rural kids go to the park and play on their own.

SLAM: I never thought of location as a reason for different players’ games developing the way they do.

JL: Absolutely. If you’re in the city and there are no open courts, you need to play five-on-five in order to play. And kids go on ESPN and see dunks and threes. When I go to high school games and watch the kids shoot around at halftime, that’s exactly what they do. They’re not out there practicing free throws or 10-footers. Dunks and threes. And from now until the end of time, free throws will remain the deciding factor of games. Most NBA players are good foul shooters, because that’s their job. From elementary school through college, it’s up to the kids to find time to practice.

SLAM: And to read your book.

JL: [Laughs] Yes, and of course, read my book.

To learn to shoot like Jim Lee, or just improve your effectiveness from the line, purchase Fifteen Feet For Free at fifteenfeetforfree.com/purchase.

The post Fifteen Feet For Free appeared first on SLAM.

Being an assistant coach at a Division 1 school, as Steve Pytel says in Make It, Take It, “is not the greatest job, but still…”

Pytel is right.

On one hand, he—in concept—does what he loves for a living, and enjoys certain benefits that guys his age in other professions don’t. There’s the glamour of TV, the opportunity to directly impact—for better or worse—the lives of young, gifted, often less fortunate teenagers, free apparel and the possibility of escalating into a head role, a position where autonomy is the norm.

On the other, more common hand, the assistant job is fruitless, if not conducive to misery and affliction. There’s the countless hours spent recruiting, time spent away from your wife and kids to chase 17-year-olds. There’s the lack of job security, the boss who’s always looking over your shoulder, the internal struggle of self-worth and the unwanted familiarity of being forlorn. On this hand, look no further than Steve Pytel.

In Make It, Take It, coach-turned-writer Rus Bradburd tells the tale of Pytel, an assistant at Southern Arizona State University who is fighting to keep his job, family and composure in one piece. Pytel has been an assistant for a decade, but in the nothing-is-ever-promised world of college hoops, he is still waiting for his big break. As Bradburd eloquently states, Pytel “wishes he could recapture a feeling about basketball that he hardly remembers.”

We all know the basics of a college basketball program—recruiting, rule bending, money, pressure, politics; the list goes on—but Bradburd, who spent 14 years coaching at UTEP and New Mexico State (Yo, he recruited, and essentially discovered, this guy!), delves deeper, giving readers a fictional yet incredibly authentic and revealing glimpse into the game behind the game.

Bradburd’s first work of fiction, Make It goes through a wild season of basketball, seamlessly interweaving narratives of struggle, triumph, exhaustion and uncertainty. The book explores the affect of hotel rooms, rental cars and “promises,” and captures the essence of the 40 minutes of catharsis a coach experiences a few times each week. If you have even the slightest interest in the inner-workings of the high-stakes, roller coaster ride that is college basketball, Make It, Take It is a must read.

We recently caught up with Bradburd—who is currently an English professor at NMSU—to dissect his new book, and, as is to be expected when chopping it up with someone of Rus’ experience and caliber, we gained invaluable knowledge and insight along the way.

SLAM: You’ve already written two books, but they were both non-fiction. This is your first work of fiction; why now?

Rus Bradburd: I’m actually trained to write fiction, so I was always “supposed” to write fiction, but I got distracted along the way and wrote two non-fiction books.

Originally, I was studying and writing fiction at NMSU, but then after I graduated, I went over to Ireland to coach, and in Ireland my writing kind of got derailed. Which is ironic, because my original plan was, “I’ll go coach in Ireland where it’s easy, and I’ll have time to work on my book of fiction.” But it was such a strange place to coach—the gym was horrible, like wooden backboards and tile floors horrible, and it was just so weird and different to me—that I instead began keeping a diary, and it just got away from me, where I couldn’t focus on the fiction for awhile. So instead I kept a manuscript which eventually became my first book, called Paddy on the Hardwood.

After Ireland, I unexpectedly put off the fiction writing again. I was at my summer camp in El Paso and Nolan Richardson stopped by, and I immediately felt the need to write about Nolan and his story before somebody else jumped on it. I thought it was a good idea for a book because Nolan is such an interesting character and he had so much social significance.

After finishing Nolan’s biography, I finally settled down and delved into my novel. I’ve been working on Make It, Take It since 1997, but to say it’s been 15 years in the making isn’t quite accurate because I went two or three years without touching it.

SLAM: Aside from the obvious—you’re a basketball coach—what inspired this particular book?

RB: For me, what’s always interested me and gets me going about basketball are the stories behind the scenes, and not so much just listing a bunch of statistics. And I think basketball fans are also fascinated with this aspect; we all want to be “in the know.” For instance, with ESPN’s 30 for 30, fans love those programs because they take you behind the scenes. But what I was trying to do was get even behind that, into the inner-workings of how coaches and players think.

And often times I think fiction gets at a truth that non-fiction can’t get at. I think there’s great baseball fiction, but there hasn’t been much basketball fiction. One of the things that sports does, and particularly basketball, is that it puts players and coaches in a pressure cooker, and under pressure character gets revealed. I don’t think sports build character; I think they reveal character, and personality, and weaknesses.

SLAM: Are the players and coaches and events and experiences in the book—whether it be the arduous recruiting trips or the struggles of family life—based at all off of true experiences?

RB: Oh yeah. I won’t name the names, but I’ve combined and condensed people. There’s four coaches in the book, and people have come up to me and asked me, “Are you Steve Pytel?” And the answer to that is, yes and no. I think I’m all four of the coaches; I have traits—good and bad—of each coach in the book.

As a coach, when things are going badly, you wind up disliking the players in a way that sort of becomes ugly. And I guarantee you, when coaches are losing games, they wind up really disliking the players. It’s happened to me a bunch of times, and the feeling of not liking a kid sucks, because deep down you know he’s trying his best, and after all, he’s just a college student.

SLAM: The format of the novel is very interesting. Each chapter is like a story or an event, and it’s told from the vantage point of a specific character, which essentially gives the reader each character’s perspective. Why did you decide that format? I personally thought it was very effective.

RB: Originally the book was supposed to be a collection of short stories, but then I came to realize I was using the same characters over and over again, so I decided to turn it into a novel. So it’s like a novel-in-stories. It’s holds up as a novel, but it’s really a collection of stories.

SLAM: In the book you convey the harsh realities that people of different races often experience and endure. For instance, there’s a buffer between Steve Pytel and the players he recruits, and even the guys on the team don’t respect Pytel because he’s white. You’ve written about race before, but is that something you’ve experienced? I imagine you’ve been to recruiting tournaments where you were one of the only white guys present, and I’m sure you’ve had to pitch UTEP or NMSU to an African American family, who may not welcome you with open arms at the beginning…

RB: Yeah, I was often The Outsider, but being The Outsider is a great advantage for a writer so I think those experiences really helped bring my writing to life. A lot of great writing has a “stranger comes to town” theme to it, and so I think I got great stories out of that.

But also, I’ve always been interested in how whites and blacks communicate, or don’t communicate. And I think I had an advantage—I grew up around African-American kids, my roommate in college, who I’m still friends with, was African-American. Looking into that culture always interested me.

But even more than how they communicate, I tried to explore the power dynamic between White coaches and African American players. I’m sort of stunned by the politics of a lot of white coaches, and their relative tone-deafness to African American culture. Race was a huge issue when I was coaching, and it’s still a huge issue today. And I think those sort of ideas are constantly colliding in the book.

SLAM: One thing that was really interesting for me was how you included personal essays from the players on the team. It’s one thing to tell the story through the eyes of the players, but why did you do it through class essays?

RB: As an English teacher, now I’ve seen those essays. I’ve had athletes in class, and what’s sort of heartbreaking and beautiful is their voices in these essays, and I thought that I could capture their voice. I think there are a lot of things going on underneath those essays. The reader understands things—whether it be Jamal Davis’ girlfriend having an abortion, Leonard Redmond’s drug charge—and with a book about college basketball, it just seemed like an organic way to get the players’ voices down on the page was to have them write sophomore or freshman level essays for their English classes.

SLAM: Most, if not all, the personal relationships and marriages in the book are quarrelsome and end badly. Pytel’s wife divorces him; Jack Hood’s wife leaves him. In the real world, is that really how it works? Can being a high-profile basketball coach be such a divisive career? It seems like with all the emotions involved, it’s very difficult to maintain a healthy family life at home.

RB: Yeah I think so, and there’s tremendous pressure just time-wise because you’re gone all the time. I worked for two pretty odd guys in the business—Don Haskins (UTEP) and Lou Henson (NMSU)—who were statistical anomalies because they remained happily married over the years.

There’s a lot of families that get torn up by it; there’s a lot of divorced coaches out there. I don’t see how married coaches do it; you’re gone for a month or two every summer, and you’re gone every weekend. For me, that’s the part that I’m most selfish about. I wouldn’t want to commit that kind of time to college basketball anymore without the guarantee of rewards, and of course no one can guarantee there will be rewards at the end.

SLAM: In the book, Jack Hood (head coach) and Steve Pytel (head assistant) don’t have great camaraderie and aren’t like-minded individuals, which may or may not have translated to poor on-court performance. In real life, is the relationship of the head coach and his lead assistant vital to the health and success of a program?

RB: Yes, I think that’s very much true. But that’s also another complex dynamic because I’d say most, if not all, lead assistant coaches think they know better than the head coach. They think they know how to run things and know how to coach the team, so there’s always sort of that odd sense of tension behind the scenes that you’d never see by watching the game on TV.

SLAM: Is it like that in real life—that one guy can put in so much work , sacrifice so much to recruit players, put his whole family life on the line to move the program forward, be right on the cusp of breaking through and then just never get a chance to be a head coach?

RB: I think it’s very true, and it’s sort of like a boxer near the end of his career, where if you take a tough loss and suffer a severe beating, it’s probably over for you at that point. And I think the same thing happens in Division I. If it doesn’t happen for you by the time you’re in your mid-40s, it probably won’t happen. There aren’t a lot of head coaches getting their first crack when they’re in their 50s. Some of them are happy to stay as assistants, where there’s less pressure, but for some guys it tears them up that they never got the chance to have their own program. And I won’t name names, but there’s been a lot of great assistants who never got a chance, and a lot of mediocre assistants who did get a chance. So I think a lot of it has to do with luck and timing.

SLAM: The book obviously is near to your heart, as you’ve experienced a lot of what you write about. From a flow standpoint, did that make it easy to write?

RB: Well, for one thing, I had to confront a shit-load of demons. This book has a lot of “me” in it, so my thumbprint is definitely on the book, but it was also a learning experience for me as well.

SLAM: You left coaching in 2000. Was the book a way to still tap into your love and passion for the game? This seems like a great way to intertwine and connect your passion for writing and basketball.

RB: Yeah. Basketball has been the backdrop of all three of my books, and it’s funny because initially I started to write the book because I wanted to explain to the world what it’s like to be a college basketball coach, but I think it evolved into not explaining to the world but trying to understand what happened to me in my 14 years of college basketball, and trying to come to grips with it. By telling my story, I think I understand what happened to me.

You know, well before either of us were born, Eldon, there was a presidential candidate named Adlai Stevenson, and he’s probably the smartest, most intellectual guy to ever run for president. Someone asked him once, “What do you think about this issue?” I can’t remember what the issue was exactly—the labor movement or something like that. And he said, “I don’t know, I haven’t written about it yet.” And that feels very true to me. Make It, Take It is my attempt to sort of understand college basketball more so than explain college basketball.

SLAM: After you left coaching, you did color commentary for New Mexico State, and now you’re a professor of English at a Division I school. How is it being on the other side of the curtain? Do you see things differently?

RB: Yes. One thing I’ve particularly noticed, and felt, is the overemphasis of athletics within a University. For example, in the English department here at NMSU, we have to scratch and claw for pennies, while some athletic coaches make a ton of money every year. And it seems to me to be terribly overemphasized, and we’re not even one of those schools where athletics completely hijack the university. The truth is, most Division I programs are losing money, yet they aspire to be one of the best, so schools keep flushing dollars into the system. But it’s not only the school; it’s also the parents and the community, and that’s something the book tries to get at. The book isn’t about condemning college basketball; it’s more about the idea that when human beings are involved, people are willing to go to great lengths to achieve a certain goal, and interesting stories are going to come out of this strange, pressure-cooking system.

SLAM: Your former recruiting buddy and co-worker Tim Floyd is now back at UTEP. Do you still keep tabs on the program?

RB: There hasn’t been a day since I quit coaching that I don’t think about Don Haskins or Lou Henson. I’ve learned a ton from them about how to deal with people, and how to look at the world. So I keep a close eye on Tim Floyd, even though I’m not at practice every day, because we worked together for a long time and we have a great relationship. Most of what I’ve learned about recruiting comes from Tim. He’s a remarkably talented guy; Tim is one of those guys who could do anything. He’s an ultra-talented guy who would be successful in any field.

The post Q+A: Rus Bradburd appeared first on SLAM.

In his new book, Make It, Take It, Bradburd gives readers a fictional yet incredibly authentic and revealing glimpse into the game behind the game. He tells the tale of Steve Pytel, an assistant at Southern Arizona State University, who is struggling to keep his job, family and composure in one piece. If you were to throw all the elements of a college basketball program—recruiting, reputations, money, bias, rule bending, juvenility, pressure and politics, to name a few—into a cauldron, add in deft storytelling and a handful of different, seamlessly intertwined perspectives, and sprinkle on the backdrop of a high-stakes, everything-is-on-the-line season, the result would be Bradburd’s novel.

While we can’t post the whole book here—you can purchase it on Amazon—thanks to Rus and the good folks at Cinco Puntos Press, we’re able to post the first chapter below. Check back later this week for a book review and Q+A with Rus.—Ed.

THE KING OF SIAM

A FLAT TIRE on Jack Hood’s car stalled them.

“Join me over here,” Hood said from the narrow shade of a telephone pole. “Yesterday I laughed at a Mexican lady hiding like this at a bus stop. Today it’s not so funny.”

The peaceful cool of the April desert had burned away by 10 a.m., and when the wind blew, the heat intensified. Wasteland spread in every direction—creosote and cactus, a graveyard of dead mesquite trees. Occasionally a car would zip by.

Hood had recently moved to town as the new basketball coach at Southern Arizona State University and soon he’d be deciding Steve Pytel’s future. Since Hood’s arrival, several candidates had been close to accepting Pytel’s job—the assistant position that he was clinging to—but one by one, he’d learned, they’d declined.

The college’s administration had appointed Pytel to temporarily lead the transition to the new regime, but since then he’d hardly been alone with Hood. How could he keep his job if he couldn’t even get face time with the new boss? Pytel tried to make it clear that he was anxious to remain on staff, had suggested lunch, coffee, whatever, knowing he might not get another paycheck after the first of May. It wasn’t fair to be led on, yet he suspected that that was exactly what Hood was doing.

Pytel held hope for the first time that morning when Hood offered to show him his new house, five miles beyond the city limits, in the shiny silver Audi. Pytel saw this little trip as The Interview, a chance to shine. Although Hood hadn’t used the word “interview.”

The telephone pole’s shadow did provide relief, Pytel noticed. He and Hood were nearly the same height but Hood was bigger. Thicker. They stood back-to-back, as if help might arrive from somewhere off on the horizon.

PYTEL HAD LIVED in the Southwest for years and knew the sun could push you out of bounds. He had developed strategies to deal with the heat—white shirts, short sleeves, all cotton, a freezer full of water bottles, and ice in his beer at night.

Pytel’s wife Stephanie teased him about his routines. She was comfortable in town. A transplanted Californian, her skin held a deep tan, whereas he turned pink or blistered at the slightest exposure. She wasn’t thrilled about the peculiar ethics of college basketball, or his desire to remain in the business now as an assistant coach. “You’re slogging around knee-deep in this shit,” she told him. “And for what?” Their salaries were not so different, and she claimed her own job teaching kids was “noble.” Stephanie wondered why he couldn’t just get his high school teaching certificate. Why not get out today? Hadn’t the door been left open when Pytel’s previous boss was dumped after another average season?

If things didn’t work out at State, but he got an offer from another university, he’d planned to ask her to try a new location, but she was now suggesting she would not tag along if he left town.

Like many coaches, Pytel wished he could recapture a feeling about basketball that he hardly remembered. Of course he wanted to keep his wife, yet he wasn’t ready to leave college ball. He was pushing, instead, in the other direction—he’d been an assistant coach far too long, and he deserved the chance to run his own college team. He could name coaches who’d gotten that shot who weren’t nearly as qualified. If he could have convinced Stephanie to discuss it at length, he’d have admitted the appeal of the huge salary a head coach commanded.

Weeks earlier, before Hood was hired, Pytel had made some inquiries about the head job on his own behalf, tested the waters, but was told twice that the team was not doing well enough—no universities promoted assistants from losing teams. Most schools didn’t keep them around at all. Pytel now believed that being attached to a winner remained as one of two prerequisites to his promotion anywhere.

The second was this: Pytel had learned, after his own informal survey, that the percentage of head coaches without children was miniscule, nearly as small as the number of single head coaches. He was now convinced that completing the trinity with Stephanie would increase his marketability. Having a baby, of course, would also keep her on board, or maybe even keep her at home temporarily.

He had been to the fertility clinic on the day Jack Hood was named to the position Pytel coveted. For two hours he waited to be called by a nurse, which gave him plenty of time to retrace his steps, figure how his career had broken down at this crossroads. A decade earlier, as an assistant at another college, he’d come close to being selected as head coach. Just thirty-two years old at the time, he’d been derailed by what he now understood was the kiss of death: the black players had publicly endorsed him. That wouldn’t happen again—lately they seemed to speak a new language, one he no longer had the patience to learn.

This was Pytel’s basketball resume: practicing his long-range shot religiously as a boy on the graveled driveway, a euphoric ritual. Next, a scholarship to a school called Morehead State. After graduation, it was weekend coaching clinics while he taught American history at a Detroit area high school. Then an entry-level job back at his alma mater, where he’d gotten too friendly with the black guys. Finally, the assistant coaching job at State. And this was the sum of his knowledge: a college program’s success hinged simply on one thing: the prospects you could lasso for your team. Pytel’s job was to hunt down good players and keep them eligible.

Now, in order to advance his career, he had to keep his job, help put a great team on the court, and a family in his home. How difficult could that be?

Stephanie had been through lengthy medical sessions and the tests had proven her capable, which only raised Pytel’s level of anxiety. He’d gotten kneed in the nuts once in college, was black and blue for weeks, and he suspected he was sterile. The fertility clinic was an exercise in humiliation. Before he left, he instructed the nurse to call him with the results. If the news wasn’t good, he could figure a new plan of attack. He’d been waiting ever since, waiting to learn if he was to blame.

“You think a person has to love his job,” Pytel said to Stephanie when the regime change was announced, his job jeopardized.  She was lucky, he said, because she indeed loved hers. “Your job, though, is a soul-killer. It’s got you thinking like the older teachers I work with.” In the faculty lunchroom, she said, her colleagues had the hundred-yard stare. They couldn’t wait to get away from their students and thought Stephanie was weird because she ate with her class, traded sandwiches and knock-knock jokes.

Pytel said he used to love his work, although he hadn’t for years. “But if I thought you were correct,” he added, “I’d quit today.” How could a game become a soul-killer, anyway? He liked basketball, liked kids, and that used to be enough. Pytel was going to ride this out, see if Jack Hood would retain him. Hood would not have been Pytel’s first choice, but naturally nobody had asked him. He couldn’t imagine he’d really have to choose between a wife and a job in college ball.

“You’re sinking,” she said. “This is your time to get out of an awful business. This could be a life raft, not a fresh start.”

AS THEY’D EXITED campus, Hood had asked Pytel his opinion of the new Audi. Local car dealers supplied the basketball and football coaches with freebies.

“It’s the same model they issued to Jerry Conroy,” Pytel said.

“That pink coach?” Hood sniffed. He was already deriding the man he’d replaced—Conroy had led the “Tough Enough to Wear Pink” campaign for breast cancer awareness. “No, it’s not the same model,” Hood added, patting the leather seat. He explained that this was the second Audi he had been given as the “courtesy car” perk. The first model didn’t have leather seats and so it never left the show lot.

Hood drifted around the road, couldn’t seem to stay between the lines, and the weaving pulled Pytel gently from side to side. Hood announced he had a story to tell.

“This was back East, as everyone around here calls it,” he said. He’d been at a private university before State, where he’d earned an NCAA tournament bid for the first time in that school’s history. His first year there he’d given a scholarship to a player named Willie Norfolk, a nice kid but a mediocre student. Hood said he’d been in the Norfolk’s home to recruit him, consoled his mother, who cried while she detailed the hardship of raising a teenager in their crumbling North Philadelphia neighborhood. He was impressed with the lady—despite the Ritz crackers and grape Shasta sodas she’d welcomed him with. The mother was the key when recruiting black kids, but there was a corollary, Hood said. “An over-attachment to a strong-willed woman screws up a guy’s head.”

Hood learned after Norfolk enrolled that he’d made a mistake: “Norfolk couldn’t play dead in a cowboy movie,” he said. Like any coach, Hood grew to resent him and needed to take away Norfolk’s scholarship, use it to attract a better player. A kid could quickly prove to be a bad investment, a mistake, and that left the coaches wishing he would get the message and go home, go anywhere. “You’re nodding your head,” Hood said, “so I know it’s happened to you, too.”

Pytel had, in fact, delivered the bad news of a withdrawn scholarship on two occasions. The first time he was overcome with guilt. The second time it felt good, taking a knucklehead down a notch.

“Like all our challenged students,” Hood continued, “Willie Norfolk developed a close relationship with the lady in charge of tutoring the team—a real slut, but that’s a story I’d need a few beers to tell. Anyway, by the time I realized we didn’t want Norfolk around he was already banging this lady, who actually had the same first name as the kid’s mother. Leah. That’s something that would keep most guys from bedding down an older woman.”

That spring, Hood gave Norfolk’s scholarship to another prospect, a much better player. Norfolk was not yet aware his full ride was gone though, and Hood needed him to drop out on his own accord: school policy handcuffed Hood, wouldn’t allow him to revoke a scholarship, unless a player had been arrested. He met with Norfolk, told him he didn’t fit into their plans, and although Hood cared about his future, he’d be better off at another college. Which was probably true. “If you try to fit a round peg in a square hole, you just fuck up the peg,” he said. But Norfolk said he wanted to stay, even if he had to ride the bench.

Almost on cue, as Pytel and Hood reached the city limits sign, miles from any service station, the driver-side tire on the Audi blew. Hood jerked the car onto the gravel shoulder and cursed. He had no idea, he admitted, how the car’s scissor jack worked.

Pytel could feel Hood’s resentment as his story was put on hold—going from boss to supplicant. Pytel immediately recognized it as an opportunity to show his resourcefulness. He popped the passenger door open and got out. “Want to unlatch the trunk?” he said, arms draped over the car’s roof, peering in.  “I can change this thing, pronto.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Hood said. “It’s not our problem.” He found a business card in the visor. “Royal Motors,” he snorted, and punched a number into his phone. “Put the owner on,” he said. He would not leave a message. Hood explained their situation a minute later, but sputtered over the specifics. “My location?” he said as he got out of the car. “It all looks the same to me.”

Pytel told him the name of the road, which Hood relayed before clapping the phone shut. That was when Hood noticed the shade of the telephone pole and invited Pytel to join him. He decided not ask Hood why they couldn’t simply wait in the car with the air-conditioning blasting. Instead, he figured he’d get to the point, his point anyway, although Hood had not concluded his story about Willie Norfolk. “What kind of person are you looking to hire?” he asked.

“It’s simple, really,” Hood said. “We can’t expect ghettoized players—overgrown children, really—to be loyal to anything. And a college’s loyalty goes only as far as a legal contract. But human loyalty, man to man—” He paused, stepped out of the shadow to face Pytel. The sun glistened off his slicked-back silver hair and momentarily blinded Pytel. “Loyalty, that’s all anyone in this business can cling to.”

Hood scowled, taking in the desolation around them. “Where the hell is that tow truck? Five minutes, my ass.”

Pytel pivoted and the two men faced the same direction. Without a word they inched sideways to remain in the long narrow shade.

“We’ve been stuck ten minutes,” Hood said moments later. “Still no fucking help.”  He trudged back to the car, where he kicked the offending tire. “We’re outta here.”

Pytel followed, assuming Hood would lock it up and they’d call a taxi from the side of the road.

“You’re driving,” Hood said, and he lofted the keys to Pytel, who nearly flubbed the simple catch. “What a piece of shit this car turned out to be, huh?” Hood added. He slid into the passenger’s side and jabbed the flashers on before Pytel understood what he was being asked to do: possibly damage a car that simply needed a flat tire fixed. For a moment, he wondered about a confrontation—he could say he would not drive, would not screw up somebody else’s vehicle. He could toss the keys back. That would have ended the interview, he knew. Anyway, Hood looked so confident, relaxed. The car was, after all, his responsibility.

The low rumble of the flattened radial agitated the steering column immediately, and the tighter Pytel gripped, the more his arms shook. What about the rims he almost said, but understood this must be some sort of test, that Hood wanted to see how he’d react to the reckless stunt. He shut up, kept his speed down. Two passing cars beeped while their passengers pointed out the crippled car’s front tire.

“German engineering,” Hood said. “It’s an all-wheel drive. Now, back to my story about Willie Norfolk.” He reclined his seat. “I didn’t want to hurt him. But word came back that his eligibility hinged on a sociology paper due at the end of the semester. It was an evening class, one that half of our team enrolled in each year.”

The professor was a stickler for attendance and punctuality, and his class was the only hurdle in an easy major. If Norfolk didn’t screw up, he’d be fine, and he’d at least pull a “B.” Hood knew what was going on—Leah the tutor was writing the paper. Norfolk only had to sit by her side and try to comprehend what the words meant in case anyone got wise and started to ask questions.

“You see my dilemma?” Hood asked. “I wanted Norfolk to fail. I was hoping a good kid would flunk out.”

The grind of metal rim against the road began. When they ran over a small pothole, the jolt caused Pytel to bite the tip of his tongue. He struggled to keep the car straddled over the dotted line. The steel rim was digging a rut into the hot asphalt.

Hood shouted now over the grating noise. “We were in the last week of school, and our guys still played in pickup games. That Monday afternoon I had to interrupt them to tell a different player to get his sorry ass to the student health clinic before he infected any more coeds. On my way back up to the office, I saw Norfolk’s backpack on a seat. I knew it was his because it had his self-proclaimed nickname, The Duke, in gothic letters. Can you believe that? Duke Norfolk? Duke, my ass. The imposter. Just below his nickname was his sociology paper in a clear-blue plastic binder. I remember the title. Cultural Relativism and Values.”

Hood had hurried back to the office and called Leah the tutor, but just as he’d hoped, the call went instantly to her answering machine. Her office was closed for the day and there’d be no way for Norfolk to get another copy before class.

“I returned to the arena, to the power switches at the top row,” Hood said. “With my hand on the light switch, I gauged the distance down to the backpack. Then I killed the lights.”

Pytel imagined Hood creeping down the steps of the basketball arena in the dark, the players cursing.

“Willie Norfolk did not turn in his paper that evening,” Hood said. “So he flunked the class. We had our scholarship back. And I’ll tell you this, which might surprise you. He came to my office the next week to tell me he was going to fail, and we wept very real tears together. It was my duty to phone his mother, the other Leah, and let her know her son wasn’t going to succeed. I was sorry about what I’d done in every respect.” Hood powered down his window and spat. “Do you understand what I’m telling you, Pytel? I had to do the wrong thing for the right reason.”

“Got it,” said Pytel, although in that moment he wondered if he’d be liable for damage to a car he wasn’t supposed to be driving. He forced himself to focus on Hood’s story, which seemed to be mostly a device for Hood to show off how maniacal he was. Did he expect Pytel to agree, to say damn right? Admit to doing the same thing? Pytel had made complicated ethical decisions before, like any coach. But he’d never stolen a player’s homework and damned his future. Yet he sympathized with Hood’s choice—it only took a few non-players and soon enough you were losing games. That was precisely what doomed Jerry Conroy in the last few years—he’d gotten more concerned with philosophical issues than recruiting. Players who could not produce had to be weeded out, and that was why the real game being played was often the coaches against their players.

“The point,” Hood said, “in case you haven’t figured it out, is that I should have had an assistant coach who I trusted to take care of this. That’s where the loyalty part comes in.”

“Got it,” Pytel said again. This time he really did get it. And this drive was indeed a test. Hood was asking him, in effect, to demonstrate his devotion to putting together a good team.

“Would you have done that for me?” Hood asked dreamily. “Or, wait. Better yet. Would you have killed Norfolk’s chances without me even asking?”

Pytel wasn’t sure if he was expected to answer this time.

“You think about that,” Hood said, and he pointed out his own driveway. “Jesus, watch out, be careful of our new cactus. By the way, my wife is at home. You’d better make sure you’re able to deal with her, because you and I won’t get along if you can’t make peace with Vicky.”

IT’S A McMANSION, Pytel thought. That’s what Stephanie used to call houses whose garages were the prominent feature, places desperate to convey class with their gaudy bluster. Pytel had initially been enamored of their own historic home, a place that didn’t even have a garage, but it must have been cursed. The first of many problems was a busted irrigation system that left a slimy lake around the place. Stephanie had taken to stating their address as 2650 Misery instead of Missouri.

“This is my starter-castle,” Jack Hood said, leading him inside. Stained glass, vaulted ceilings, marble hallways. At the arched doorway, Hood handed him a phone. “You talk to the car dealer. It’s ringing. Tell them our new location.”

Vista del Rey Road, Pytel knew that much.

“The end of Vista del Rey,” Hood said, as if reading Pytel’s mind. “You might say we’re the only first-rate house with a second-rate car.”

Pytel stood in the doorway, his back to Hood, and asked for the service department. The mangled Audi was in full view. The belts of the tire had spanked and dented the paint on the fender’s panel. The tire, of course, was totally gone.

While on hold, Pytel could feel Hood move closer. “Put it on speaker phone,” Hood said. “I want to hear this.”

Pytel did, explaining their location to the service manager.

The man was irate. “What’s with you?” he shouted. “My best guy is going up and down Mesa Street searching for an Audi. What did you do, call Triple A?”

“We drove it home,” Pytel said. “Coach Hood had an important interview.”

“Oooh, good one,” Hood whispered, and Pytel instantly felt Hood’s hand on his shoulder.

The manager said they’d redirect the tow truck.

Someone was clacking down the stairs. A woman’s voice—and remarkably nuanced whistling. Pytel recognized the jazz standard, “Someday My Prince Will Come.”

VICKY HOOD BROUGHT smoked salmon sandwiches into the shade on the back patio, where a ceiling fan wobbled at high speed. Was she older than her husband or younger? Hard to determine because she kept her sunglasses on, indoors and out. She was thin but not athletic, her short blonde hair a dye job. They should go ahead and eat without her, she said. She was on a diet. When she returned with iced teas, Hood insisted she make him a Bloody Mary.

“For Chrissake,” she said, sitting down. “It’s Monday and it’s not even noon.”

“Come on,” he grumbled. “Can’t you do something around here besides spend my money?”

Vicky twisted to face Pytel. “Isn’t he grand? Tell me about Steve Pytel. Are you married?”

Hood grabbed his wife’s tumbler and took a sip.

“That’s water, Jack,” she said. “I can get you one, or you’re welcome to share mine.” Then to Pytel, she said, “It’s hard to believe that a woman with all I have to offer is still in love with Jack Hood. Let’s pretend he’s not here.”

Hood pushed back in disgust, the wrought iron chair grinding against the cement as the tire’s rim had earlier. He called Vicky a bitch and went inside.

“Who are you again?” she said. “I mean, why are you here?”

Pytel told her of his role on the previous staff, and how he’d been in charge of the program’s transition before Hood was hired. “I hope I can stay on with Coach Hood,” he added. This had been true an hour earlier, although now he wasn’t so certain. Stephanie would have plenty to say about his first assignment, driving five miles on a flat tire. He was, for the first time, aware there was now a chance he would be offered the job, but there wasn’t yet a single thing he liked about Jack Hood.

“Coach Hood,” she said. “Everyone says coach like he’s a doctor or something. He’s not, you know.” She gulped at her drink as if it really were liquor. “You could be our son’s age. If we had a son, I mean. You didn’t answer my initial question.”coach

“My wife teaches at Desert Crossing Elementary,” he said. “She enjoys her job, and she won’t leave.” He was trying to communicate his wife’s love of the town, but it came out more like a plea for sympathy, and Pytel wished he could answer again.

“So it’s not just your career that concerns you,” she said. “It’s understandable then, why you’d be groveling. Listen, I like to make it clear to everyone Jack interviews, just so there won’t be any surprises.”

Pytel inched forward in his seat and studied her dark glasses.

She said, “He is the worst person I know. If it wasn’t for the fact that he so dreadfully needs me, I’d have left him years ago. Years!” She laughed as if this was the funniest thing she’d ever heard.

“I’m sure you’re joking,” Pytel said.

“Jack told me that if he keeps you, you’d make a lot more than your previous salary. How about that? It makes him look common to have a staff with pathetic salaries.”

“That could make me happy,” Pytel said, knowing a sizable increase was likely impossible. The lead story in the latest campus newspaper detailed a faculty senate resolution complaining about Hood’s new salary.

“I’m going to change the subject, sweetie,” she said, and she lifted her sunglasses. “Do you see these bruises under my eyes?”

Pytel could not make out any bruises in the shadows of the patio, and he said so. She stood, nearly toppled, and gained her balance on the solid chair. She let go slowly, as if experimenting. Pytel wondered if Hood’s hunch was correct, that she had been drinking. As she stepped out of the darkness into the sunshine, she spun back to Pytel like a runway model. “Look,” she said, and turned her head from side to side in the direct light, as if she were being slapped. There were indeed bruises just to the outside and below each eye, above her cheekbones. Pytel imagined the sound of Hood backhanding her. He felt sick.

She walked back to the table in a straight line, as if sobered up by the slaps, or the noonday sun, and she put her hand over Pytel’s. He halfway expected her to begin weeping, but she smiled. “It’s not what you think,” she said. “That’s twenty grand for plastic surgery by the same doctor who fixed up Ginger Spice, and it was worth every one of Coach Hood’s dollars. He’ll be making that each week now and I’ll be a new woman by the end of the year, with all new parts. You go to a new job, you might as well be a new person, right? But we’ll be stuck with the same Jack Hood.” She sighed. “Eat, there’s no telling when he’ll be back.”

THE HUM OF the tow truck seemed to shake the patio’s tile. With that deep sound came a rumbling of dread in Pytel’s gut.

“Pytel,” Hood called from inside, “your tow truck is here.”

The living room held only the couch, a large-screen television, and an enormous portrait above the fake fireplace of Hood in a white suit. The new coach was sprawled out on the couch in the living room, his feet propped up, Bloody Mary in hand, reading an old sports section that Pytel recognized: one that announced Hood’s own hiring. Ten years ago Hood had been one of the hottest head coaches in the country until his program crashed amid a transcript-fixing scandal. His next job in the East, and his eventual success, was his rebirth. The article quoted a Dean at that school as saying they were glad Hood was departing.

“Go down and deal with this guy,” Hood said as he swung his feet to the floor and folded the paper neatly into his armpit. “I’m going to observe your people skills.”

Pytel paused at the top of the steps for a moment before descending. The tow truck driver walked around the car, scratched his head and mumbled. He had on a red work shirt with “Royal Imports” embroidered above one pocket, and a patch that read “Larry” above the other. He was squat, barely five feet tall, muscled like a rugby player—the kind of guy who might resent tall people—and his ears stuck out from under his matching red cap. On his left forearm was a tattoo of crossed swords. “You Jack Hood?” Larry asked.

“He’s in the doorway up there,” Pytel said, and offered his handshake as a consolation.

Hood was leaning in the door’s arched frame, twenty yards behind Pytel. He didn’t wave or speak. Halfway through one drink, he had a second one in his other hand, at the ready. Pytel was near enough to the house that Hood could see they were talking, but far enough that he probably couldn’t hear everything.

“What the hell happened?” Larry asked. “This is a fifty-thousand dollar car. Do you know the cost of just one of these wheels?”

Pytel spoke softly. “We had an important meeting,” he said, “we had to get here for a conference call. He couldn’t wait any longer.”

Larry lowered himself, chest down, to the place where the tire used to be.

“Did you bring a new tire?” Pytel said. It was a stupid question, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Yeah, right, a new tire,” Larry said. “You guys ruined the rim. There’s been a helluva lot of damage.” He push-upped himself to a kneeling position and looked to the house for some kind of explanation, but Hood was gone. “Not only is the rim ruined,” he said, “and the axle bent, but the entire hub assembly has been destroyed. Not to mention the axle bearings, which are likely shot. This is going to cost you a fortune to fix.”

Pytel knew he couldn’t exactly apologize, so he launched into a sort of these-things-happen doublespeak.

Larry cut him off. “What’s the matter with you people?” he said, dusting off his knees. “Why would you do something like this?”

Pytel thought the guy might want to fight, the way he was shaking his arms out. He realized instead that Larry was close to weeping, as if the car had been his own Christmas present. “Listen,” Pytel said, “I know how you feel, but I’m not really responsible. Jack Hood is, the guy who was in the doorway a minute ago. Money doesn’t mean anything to him, he can easily afford it.” In that moment, Pytel understood that Hood would never pay for the damage. He’d expect the dealer to cover the cost. Hood came back in the doorway, just one Bloody Mary in hand, Vicky behind him. He raised his glass in a silent toast.

“You shouldn’t worry about it,” Pytel said, louder this time. “That’s all I’m saying.”

“That’s not the point, the money,” Larry said. “It’s a senseless way to treat an automobile. It’s criminal.”

“Get that piece of junk off our property!” Vicky yelled. Hood shooed her back into the house. He reappeared alone.

“He’s our new basketball coach,” Pytel said.  Vicky screamed something else from inside but it was muffled.

“I don’t care if he’s the King of Siam,” Larry said. “What an asshole.”

Larry returned to car, and he began hissing what an asshole, as if that might somehow patch and inflate the tire. He returned to all fours and shortened his chant to asshole as he crawled around, occasionally rising and dusting off his pants again before he resumed the angry mantra.

“Come on, stop saying that, okay?” Pytel said. “This isn’t your car, and it’s not coming out of your paycheck.”

Larry ignored his request, shook his head as if trying to decide his next step.

Hook the Audi up and tow it away, Pytel thought. Simple. He finally suggested as much.

“I’m going to have to flatbed this vehicle,” Larry said with an air of importance that irritated Pytel. “I’ve got to call in for a bigger truck and get all four wheels off the ground.”

“We’ll be here,” Pytel said, and then quietly, “You’re taking this too hard.”

Larry started in again with the chant, and he slowly rocked his head in time to the word before he paused to eye Pytel. “You’re no better than him,” he said. “You could have stopped him. The flunky of an asshole.”

Larry lumping him in the same dumpster as Jack Hood made Pytel sweat. This is what he got for being the peacemaker. And all this for a man who probably was an asshole. Pytel would go home, tell his wife what happened, and admit he was out of a job. Maybe he could convince her to let him go on the job market. That meant talking her into leaving town. He couldn’t see himself taking classes to get a teaching certificate. Vicky Hood had called it groveling, and she was right. And groveling for what? To hook on with a guy he couldn’t stand.

The sun was behind the front porch now, or Hood had stepped deeper into the shadows so Pytel could no longer clearly see him. It was getting hotter by the minute. Larry was on his feet now, still repeating that word. Asshole. He turned over his shoulder to say it again. When Pytel shoved him—with both hands on his back—he hadn’t planned to knock him over. But Larry tried to pivot and his heel caught on the edge of the driveway. He stumbled to get his footing and spun, as one arm circled wildly for balance. He fell backward onto a clump of cacti.

Pytel immediately knew his own coaching career—at State, or anywhere else—was dead. That might have been a relief, but when this incident made the newspaper, he’d have to leave town in disgrace. Even a high school teaching job was out. They couldn’t continue their house payments on one salary. His realization of what would transpire over the next month stunned him: he’d apply for coaching jobs that he couldn’t get if this story got out. If he left town, Stephanie would remain, and she’d move into a townhouse alone. But where would he go, now that he was done with both Jack Hood and maybe even with college basketball?

He stepped gingerly over the jagged rocks to pull Larry up, but Hood appeared somehow and slid in front of him. It was only then Pytel understood that the tow truck man was impaled on a cactus and couldn’t move.

“LET’S CELEBRATE,” Vicky said as she closed the front door and locked it. “Who wants a drink?” she asked Pytel.

“Victoria, please shut up,” Hood said.

They stood together at the edge of the picture window and watched two grim-faced Hispanic men lug a massive chain and hook it to the rear axle of the Audi. The men had not beeped or bothered to ring the doorbell to get permission from anyone in the house. Larry had refused Hood’s offer of an ambulance and was waiting in the second truck. The tow truck dragged the Audi onto the back of the new and larger truck. “I wanted a gold one anyway,” Hood said.

Vicky handed Pytel a Bloody Mary. He took a slug and thanked her. The drink was more vodka than tomato juice. “I’m screwed now,” he said to nobody in particular. “That guy will probably have me arrested or sue me,” he added, and nodded at the window. He didn’t expect an answer, and he didn’t know whether to walk home or call a lawyer. Or toss the rest of his drink in Hood’s face.

“We saw him try to punch you first,” Vicky said. “Didn’t we, Jack? And you ducked, right? That was clearly self-defense.”

Pytel’s cell phone rang and he was about to switch it off when he saw it was the fertility clinic. He excused himself and retreated to the back porch with the wobbly ceiling fan.

“Your sperm count is normal,” the nurse said. Pytel thanked her. This was important news. “And they’re good little swimmers,” she continued. “It’s like I told your wife. When you’re ready, it’ll happen.”

“I’m ready,” Pytel said, although it was none of her business. He and Stephanie could proceed, his embarrassment about the entire procedure now behind him. He started back towards the front of the house. Not that he was about to share this good news with Jack Hood.

“Well,” the nurse said, “I mean when you’re both ready.”

Weeks later, though, going through the medicine cabinets, Pytel would find her birth control pills, check the prescription date, and remember the nurse’s choice of words. Stephanie must have had doubts at the clinic, told the nurse that she was not yet prepared to commit to a child with him.

“Finish your drink,” Hood called.

Pytel returned to the picture window in time to witness the trucks drive off with the damaged Audi. Hood told his wife to fetch the keys for her sedan. “I can drive,” he said. “I’ve got work to do at the office. Hurry up.”

“You drive?” Vicky said. “Isn’t that how you got into this mess?” She dangled the keys in front of him, but snatched them back when her husband reached. Hood grabbed her sunglasses off her face instead and tossed them across the empty tiled room. He said, “I was not driving that damaged vehicle.” He pointed his drink at Pytel. “He was.”

“I’m on my first vodka,” she said, “and you’re over the limit. Every limit.” She reached for Pytel’s arm and pulled him out the front door.

Vicky’s sedan was in the massive garage; the backseat was jammed to the roof with moving boxes. She got behind the wheel. “You sit in the middle,” she said to Pytel. “He is an asshole,” she added in a whisper, as if she’d heard every word the tow truck man had said.

Remains of the tire, shards and strips, were strewn across the road like a trail of clues in a fucked-up fairy tale. A buzzard was pulling at one piece and didn’t move even as the sedan whizzed by. Hood said how disappointed he was in the way the episode had turned out. “Pytel, you’ve got to learn to keep your cool,” he said, “even if you never coach another day. I don’t care what sort of names the tow truck driver was calling you. Your reaction was unacceptable. What kind of coach loses his head like that?”

Pytel nearly told him to fuck off.

“Restraint, that is what I’m talking about,” Hood said, as if in response to Pytel’s thoughts. “You’ve got to learn restraint.” Hood had surprised Pytel with the tenderness he displayed in lifting Larry off the cactus.

“Just offer Mister Pytel the goddamn job right now,” Vicky said, “or are you waiting for him to inflict more damage in your name?”

“Victoria, for the love of God, I’m trying to teach this man something about life. And throw that drink out the window.”

“Make the offer,” she shouted. “Double his salary.”

Pytel couldn’t stifle a sarcastic laugh.

Vicky pressed down the power window and tossed the entire tumbler out, but not before winding up, so most of her Bloody Mary splattered on Pytel’s neck and chest, coloring the front of his shirt a weak red. Ice cubes from her drink began melting at his beltline.

“Oh, take that shirt off right now,” she said. “We’ll stop for a bottle of club soda to make sure it doesn’t stain.”

Hood grabbed his dripping forearm, as if Pytel might indeed disrobe. “Who’s doing the damage now, my dearest?” he said.

“I apologize, Mister Pytel,” she said. “Send me the cleaning bill, okay? But did you know that tomato juice is the only remedy to get the smell of a skunk off you? Think about that for a minute.”

“Do you see what I mean?” Hood asked him. “Restraint. Keep your composure. Look at me. I will not shove her ass-first onto a cactus like you might, although it’s certainly tempting. And I’m not telling her the precise place on her person that she should have shoved her tomato juice. Instead I take a deep breath and remind myself who’s in control here. Why don’t you do that with me now? Let’s draw a slow deep breath together.”

There was no harm in that, so Pytel did, in unison with Hood, exhaling at the same instant. He imagined himself blowing out his anger.

Hood no doubt thought Pytel had flunked his big test. Things would get awkward for Pytel when he got home. Stephanie would be thrilled he wasn’t coaching, but that joy would evaporate if he told her he’d decided he still wasn’t ready to walk away from the game. Maybe he’d wait a day to bring that up, see if the guy from Royal Motors had called the police. And exactly what would he do then for work?

“I want Mister Pytel on your staff,” Vicky said.

Hood ignored her. “That’s where we were stranded,” Hood said, a new happiness in his voice. “That’s where it all began.” He pointed at the tracks, the sandy gravel of the shoulder where they had first veered off the road, what felt like weeks ago. The afternoon sun was even hotter, and the shadows of the telephone poles spread across the arid landscape. Hood asked his wife to pull over, but Vicky refused. “Jesus, Victoria,” he said. “That was our stop.”

“Are you kidding?” she asked. “I’m not going to leave you there like a couple of fools. You wouldn’t be any better off than you were four hours ago. Just offer him the goddamned job before we get to school.” Then to Pytel: “Your seatbelt isn’t buckled. Buckle up.”

Pytel obeyed, struggling to find the loose ends. His throat was parched, the price of drinking liquor in the desert. He felt cramped, wedged between Hood and his wife like an overgrown child, knees together. His feet, balanced on the hump, had gone dead, and the sensation, or lack of it, crept up his legs.

“Jesus, that sun is powerful,” Hood said, dickering with the visor. “This was a productive day. I’m really impressed by your sense of loyalty, Pytel, although I don’t agree with your crazy methods. You’ve got potential.” He crossed his arms and appraised Pytel. “I guess the job is yours.”

“Oh,” said Pytel.

“Thank you,” Vicky said.

“Whatever your salary was, count on getting twice that.” Hood slapped him on the leg. “You’ll have your house paid for in ten years,” he said, somehow doing the math before Pytel could.

Pytel had practically walked away from the business minutes before. He’d tell his wife he was certain he could again some day. And he’d share the good news about his fertility.

“Congratulations,” Vicky added. The car slowed, and Hood put his hand on Pytel’s reassuringly, a fatherly gesture.

“We’ll be good together,” Hood said.

The post Book Excerpt: Make It, Take It appeared first on SLAM.

Very seldom do the worlds of basketball and economics intersect. Sure, the NBA, like any other business, is directly affected by economic underperformance. Attendance falters, TV deals decrease and team owners lose money. And when total revenue—or Basketball Related Income—takes a hit, the salary cap lowers and player incomes decrease, too.

But in a general sense, GDP growth or the unemployment rate or the state of the housing market isn’t usually associated with sports. Over the past few weeks, as Barack Obama and Mitt Romney’s economic policies have been discussed ad nauseum, not once has basketball been mentioned. Not as a reference point, to connect any set of imaginary dots, as part of a larger narrative or otherwise.

That’s why Ralph Baker’s new book, Shock Exchange: How Inner-City Kids From Brooklyn Predicted The Great Recession And The Pain Ahead is so unique and, to those who have an interest in both finance and basketball, refreshing.

In Shock Exchange, Baker—a former standout D-III point guard who holds an MBA from the University of Virginia —uses basketball as a tool for financial literacy. In 2006, while working as a day trader in New York City, Baker founded a mentorship program/travel AAU team called the NY Shock Exchange, which essentially taught middle schoolers the basics of analyzing the economy and the stock market. Before and after practice, Baker would hold learning sessions, and through PowerPoint presentations and simplified readings, the kids gradually learned the fundamental principles of economics.

Within a few months, Baker noticed that his players—cognizant of it or not—astutely recognized trends before the outside world caught on. When the coaching staff would be discussing stocks amongst themselves, the kids would increasingly interject their own two cents, and it didn’t take long for Baker to realize his players were onto something.

“It all started with one of the kids coming up to me and saying, ‘Hey Coach, you should invest in Apple. I love my iPod!’” Baker recalls. “And I just laughed him off because, well, at that point I thought Microsoft was going to put Apple out of business, like they did with everybody else. But soon enough, Apple became one of the largest companies in the world, in terms of market capitalization. And it turned out that a lot of the stocks they were telling me about were doing really well—probably better than the ones I was investing in myself.”

Combining the wisdom of his middle-school roster with his own research and knowledge, Baker started to invest real money in real stocks. And lots of it. Along the way, he not only exploited undervalued companies, but also noticed that key economic drivers were faltering, and the U.S. economy would soon fall victim to one of the worst recessions in the country’s history.

“There was severe stagflation everywhere, and a recession was clearly on the way” Baker says. “But no one seemed to notice.”

To get the word out and forewarn anybody who would listen, Baker began writing weekly blog posts on the Shock Exchange’s website. The posts contained stock tips, observations on the economy and also policy ideas to counteract negative growth. By the time Paul Krugman and other notable economists caught on, though, it was too late to remedy the situation. The housing bubble had already burst, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had already defaulted on their securities and loans, and the only option left, as Baker says, was to “strap up and endure the pain ahead.”

In short, Shock Exchange attempts to explain the complex causes of the ’08 financial crises in layman’s terms, while seamlessly interweaving anecdotes and experiences from Baker’s travel basketball team.

SLAMonline recently caught up with Baker to discuss the concept of the book, the storyline and lessons within, his motivation for writing it and more.

SLAM: In a nutshell, what is Shock Exchange about?

Ralph Baker: I think the book can be broken down into three different sections.

1) My background — About my family and how I grew up, and what makes me qualified to talk about this stuff.

2) The team — How the New York Shock Exchange was formed, and how we kept it together despite the AAU game changing from a family-friendly environment to a booster-dominated, the-ends-justify-the-means organization. I detail the cutthroat New York City AAU scene that I wasn’t prepared for. Because in Connecticut, where I first started coaching, youth basketball was very laid back and went by the book. But when the NBA began expanding and college coaches started doing most of their recruiting in AAU, the game sort of became a bidding war for these kids. You’d have strangers befriending the kids and trying to take them from our team, and I just wasn’t prepared for that. So, the stories from the Shock Exchange are real interesting and intriguing.

3) How the kids predicted the great recession, and how we were talking about this stuff before anybody cared — How I was noticing trends that people either didn’t realize or neglected for a few years. I wrote a post back in April ‘08, about how the economy was heading toward a severe recession, and even included some steps we could take to turn it around. I said we needed to invest in infrastructure, figure out a way to reduce the cost of college, and I spoke on healthcare reform and so on and so fort. But it wasn’t until August ’08, when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac failed, that [then-Presidential candidates] John McCain and Barack Obama and the rest of the country finally began to take notice.

Also, towards the end, I discuss “the pain ahead.” As in, the steps taken during the Bush and Obama administrations, and how their respective policies affected the economy. So, at the end of the day, it’s a cool way to learn about the economy as well.

SLAM: Besides Apple, what are some other stocks the kids brought to your attention?

RB: Well, Apple was the biggest one, because we rode that for a long time. Another big one was GameStop. It’s funny because the kids were onto GameStop before everyone else, and then they were the first to realize GameStop was going to fall apart because people were shifting to buying and playing games online. The kids would tell us about every stock they thought would do well, and we usually narrowed it down to two or three of their best stocks.

SLAM: But it had to be a little more complicated and thorough than just taking the kids on their word, right?

RB: Yeah, of course. We would first have detailed conversations with the kids and try to pick their brains, and then the team would take trips to stores to examine and experiment with the products in person. We’d take a look at the products, but we’d also talk to employees. And it was crazy, because almost always it was clear the kids realized and recognized trends before adults did.

SLAM: Did your players understand all the economic jargon, such as GDP to debt ratio, unemployment rate, marginal propensity to consume, etc.?

RB: Yeah, we explained all of it to them.

SLAM: Wasn’t it hard to simplify those terms into a way the kids could understand it, though?

RB: At first it definitely was. But we just took it slow, and put in a lot of time with the kids. We explained it, like, ‘This is what’s going on with auto and housing sales, and this why it’s important.’ Obviously, we used a lot of theoretical and real-world examples, and not a lot of mathematical ones, because that would’ve been too much for the kids to grasp. Naturally, some kids were interested and got it, and others were like ‘Why are we learning this’ and were either bored or disinterested.

SLAM: What would you say is the tone/mood/voice of the book? Is it more of an I told you so story, or a What to do now story, or The future is about to be even harsher story, or what?

RB: The tone of the book, I guess, is simply teaching economics through the eyes of the kids. Not in an authoritative tone, but in an informative one. Like the title says, it’s how inner city kids from Brooklyn predicted the great recession and the pain ahead. It’s more of a story, and a journey of how I came to learn economics and teach the kids, and how we began to see what was ahead.

SLAM: Who’s your target audience?

RB: It’s written for anybody who wants to be informed, really, but I do think it reaches a few specific groups. African Americans will probably be interested because it goes into African American history. Basketball people will be interested because of the actual stories about the kids, and I also make references to the NBA and the NCAA, examining how supply and demand trickles down through college and the League. I think SLAM readers would love it. I break down complex terms in way that someone with no background in economics can comprehend and follow along.

SLAM: Why did you decide to write this book now? What makes it relevant at this moment?

RB: In 2009, when the stock market came down, I decided I was going to write the book. So I went back and looked at deals I did in ’93 and ’94. and tried to do extensive research. I procrastinated for a bit, but from February ’11 until March of ’12, I was up till like four in the morning every night just putting in work, doing research and typing away.

SLAM: Is the book solely a work of historical non-fiction? Or are there some main characters, protagonists, and subplots woven into the story?

RB: I go real in depth on several of my anecdotes, and use real scenarios, so there is definitely a sense of a storyline in there. I changed the names of the kids, but everything in the book is from real life. For example, I tell the story of how our AAU team was on the cusp of a national title until it started to get picked apart.

SLAM: How did the cover art come about? It’s a pretty eye-catching image.

RB: That’s the logo for my website. I wanted a symbol for what the NY Shock Exchange stood for, which is youth basketball and economics. So I took my son, who is 17 now, and had him spin a ball on his finger while wearing a suit and gripping a briefcase. I think it captures the essence of it all.

Shock Exchange: How Inner-City Kids from Brooklyn Predicted The Great Recession And The Pain Ahead is available now, both digitally and in print. You can order a copy here.

The post Q+A: Ralph Baker appeared first on SLAM.

As he writes in his book’s introduction, Tony Meale has a lot in common with LeBron James: Both are Ohio natives who graduated from Catholic high schools in 2003. Beyond that? “I’m only 5-9,” Meale laughs. While he and LeBron were peers of a sort, Meale, like most Ohio high school students at the time, was watching the young king’s exploits as an awestruck fan.

As a Cincinnati kid, Meale took a bit more interest in 2002, when LeBron’s St. Vincent-St. Mary squad made it to the state final against Cinci’s Roger Bacon HS. LeBron was two-for-two in state title games at that point, and St. V hadn’t lost to an in-state foe in his three years with the program—a run that included a nine-point win over Bacon the previous December. There was little reason to think this time would be any different.

But it was.

The story of the Roger Bacon squad that upset St. V that day in Columbus is told in a new book, The Chosen Ones: The Team That Beat LeBron. It’s Meale’s first book, and one he quit his job as a newspaper sportswriter to complete. Reading it, you get a sense of how passionate he was to tell the story of a coach and a bunch of kids he didn’t even know, but whose historic victory he felt deserve a broader telling. We talked with Meale recently to find out how the project came together.

SLAM: So what is your connection to this story?

Tony Meale: Well, I went to one of Roger Bacon’s rival schools, St. Xavier, and one thing that struck me about them was that, even though they were a smaller school, they always played our school really tough. So I was always impressed by them, and then LeBron being my age, I knew of him when he was this state-wide wonder. Going into that season, ‘01-02, I knew Roger Baron was going to do well, but I never gave them a chance to win that game. When I read in the paper the next day that they’d won, I was stunned.

SLAM: You weren’t the only one. But why, 10 years later, did this story justify a book?

TM: I was always kind of enamored with Roger Bacon, and a few things kind of led to this. Last March, I came across this newspaper story in Pennsylvania on the 15th anniversary of this team, Cathedral Prep, that almost beat Kobe Bryant’s team for a state title in 1996. Reading that, I thought of Bacon, and I found myself researching that game. I wondered whatever happened to those players. Eventually, I came across a story USA Today did on Bacon in 2007, and I thought, The 10-year anniversary is coming up. If anybody’s going to do it… Almost literally, one day last March, I went from killing time on Facebook to deciding I was going to quit my job and do this book.

SLAM: You talked to everybody you could from that team. How’d you pull all that together?

TM: The first step was contacting some of the people, like Roger Bacon’s current coach Brian Neal, who was an assistant with the 2002 team—he knew me from covering local sports. I was like, I’m working on this project… I was kind of vague about it, in case it didn’t work out for some reason. I didn’t want to let people down.

Then I contacted some other writers and authors to get their opinion, and I got the same message from everyone: If you can write it halfway decent, this will be something people will care about. Then instead of trying to get a book deal, I started my own company, Press Box Publishing. Writing the book was not easy by any means, but it was the easiest thing I did in the past year. Hiring web designers, lawyers, it was like, What am I doing? But my goal from day one was to write something that people would care about, and that the Roger Bacon community would be proud of.

SLAM: The foundation of this story in a lot of ways is Bill Brewer, the coach who built Roger Bacon into a great program, then died five years ago of a heart attack at just 42. Why do you choose to build the book around him?

TM: From what I gathered from the players and other coaches, Bill was a very tough coach—the kind of coach who had the power to make his players hate the sport. But with maybe one exception, they were very glad that they did play for Bill. Once they graduated and got some perspective, they realized how special he was. There’s certainly some sadness for a lot of the guys, now that they see Bill in a different light, that he’s not around to share in all this.

SLAM: Beyond being a great motivator, you write that he also had the foresight to schedule a regular-season game with St. V during that season—he knew Bacon might be good enough to get to the state final, and even though they lost, that experience was huge for them. What can you tell us about that Roger Bacon team?

TM: Their best player was probably Josh Hausfeld (who went onto play at Miami, OH). They had a lot of seniors on that team. I think a lot of the players were kind of quiet and unassuming, just good basketball players who talked no trash. I think the two guys who gave that team that aura, that moxie, were Beckham Wyrick (UNC-Wilmington) and Frank Phillips. They would both talk trash—they’d initiate the trash talk. But all five starters ended up playing a sport in college.

SLAM: One thing you do in the book is recreate, in really impressive detail, both of the St. V-Roger Bacon games that season.

TM: Originally I only intended to do it for the state final, but I really wanted to give people a sense of what happened in the first game. LeBron didn’t even jump for the opening tip, and Bacon got called for a lot of fouls, so there was a lot of motivation for them after that game.

And that state final game, I had to watch tape of that probably nine or 10 times. I just wanted to make sure I captured all the key plays, and decided which quotes to use from the commentators. But I truly enjoyed it. Every time I watch it, I’m blown away by the fearlessness of those players. They kind of knew if they stuck together, they could pull it off.

SLAM: The book’s release obviously coincides with LeBron’s third trip to the NBA Finals. Everybody knows the narrative around him not having won a title yet, and there’s a key play late in the state title game where he passes instead of shooting. What did you learn about him from all these interviews and watching these old game tapes?

TM: Knowing what happened in that state final game in detail, knowing some of the reflections those guys had on LeBron, I certainly think his pro career to date makes a lot of sense. One thing I discovered in reading a lot of the books on him, there were a lot of times in his AAU career when was asked to take the game-winning shot, and had a lot of misses. Maybe that explains why he passed.

SLAM: You write that a couple of the Bacon players ran into LeBron a few years later.

TM: Yeah, they said he was very cordial, very polite. I don’t think LeBron’s a bad person at all. People might assume this is an anti-LeBron book, but I don’t feel I wrote this book with any bias for or against him. Some people were just like, “You should reach out to Skip Bayless and Scott Raab for endorsements.” I wish LeBron would’ve stayed in Cleveland, and I didn’t like the way he left per se, but I don’t have anything against him. I think this book is going to appeal to people regardless of what side of the LeBron argument you’re on. Once people read the book, I think they’re going to see a guy who was probably a little too cocky for his own good, but given what he’s said about that game, and how tough that loss was, I think he’s a more humble person. I think it really has changed the way he looks at basketball.

SLAM: I’m sure a lot of people are going to see this book in the mold of Hoosiers. What’s your take on that?

TM: I think there probably is a Hoosiers feel to this, but I didn’t realize until I talked to the Roger Bacon guys, they didn’t feel it was an upset. That’s why I say in the preface, Hoosiers is not a bad analogy, but it’s not perfect, either. Personally, and I know I’m biased being from Cincinnati, but if you look at the national schedule St. V played while LeBron was there, and only losing six games—one by forfeit, and four to nationally ranked teams from out of state—I truly feel this is one of the great underdog stories in sports.

You can order The Chosen Ones here.

The post The Chosen Ones appeared first on SLAM.

by Tzvi Twersky | @ttwersky

I remember the first time I met Jack McCallum. It was Fall 2009, and Sports Illustrated was hosting a basketball game in Manhattan, NY, in celebration of senior writer Chris Ballard’s then-recently released, The Art of a Beautiful Game.

The gym—located just off the Hudson River in a space called Chelsea Piers—was choice, with freshly polished hardwood floors, regulation backboards and sturdy rims. And the game, the game was choice too, filled with plenty of talent. Well, maybe not basketball talent, but writing talent.

At one point in the game, SI’s Ballard and Chris Mannix, ESPN’s Henry Abbott, NY Times’ (now Grantland’s) Jonathan Abrams and TheBigLead’s Jason McIntyre were all on the floor at the same time. The MVP of the scribal talent, though, the MJ of writers on the court was Jack McCallum, a long-time SI staffer who covered the NBA from 1984 until late in the Aughts, and authored the acclaimed Seven Seconds or Less.

To be honest, I don’t remember what McCallum’s game was like—though I recall one particularly difficult mid-range bankshot—but I do remember that after the game, dehydrated and disgustingly sweaty, we all headed upstairs to a dinner and drinks reception.

What we consumed and imbibed that night is lost to time. But, again, I do remember that McCallum, older and more established than anyone else present by a longshot, held court for the better part of the night. He reminisced about his own basketball-playing days. He reminisced about covering Larry Bird. He reminisced about the ever-changing NBA. As McCallum spoke, the group encircling him grew larger and listened closer—intent on not missing a single sage story.

Now, with the upcoming July 10 release of his book, Dream Team: How Michael, Larry, Charles and the Greatest Team of All Time Conquered the World and Changed the Game of Basketball Forever, McCallum is set to hold court for a much larger audience on a subject he knows better than almost anyone: the USA’s 1992 Olympic basketball team—the Dream Team.

McCallum has so much insight—he was on the Dream Team beat in ’92, and covered it from roster formation in the States to Gold medal in Barcelona—and info—while preparing the book, he interviewed every single player, from Christian Laettner to Michael Jordan, as well as almost anyone remotely connected to the team in any way—that his first version of Dream Team came in at 140,000 words. Eventually, through rewrites and edits and, amazingly, more interviews, he was able to chop it all the way down to 36 chapters and 330-plus pages. (Additionally, he built a website to host some of the outtakes and better moments that didn’t make the final cut.)

Recently, we had the chance to catch up with McCallum to discuss the writing of Dream Team: How Michael, Larry, Charles and the Greatest Team of All Time Conquered the World and Changed the Game of Basketball Forever, a must-read for any real basketball fan.

SLAM: Aside from the obvious—it’s the 20th anniversary of the 1992 Olympics—why write this book now?

Jack McCallum: I’ll tell you the truth, it wasn’t my idea. It was an editor’s at Random House. He said we’re coming up on 20 years and it would be a good look back.

I mean, (a) there’s a whole host of people who don’t really remember that much about it; (b) there was a lot of background as to how the team was selected; (c) not to mention, you fast-forward 20 years and a lot of these guys are still in the headlines. Michael [Jordan] owns and manages a team. Magic [Johnson] is all over the place. Larry [Bird] is running a team. [Charles] Barkley is more prominent than ever. None of these guys have really disappeared from our consciousness, so you could have a broad canvas. You could bring back to life 20 years ago, but you could also write about what they’re doing now.

SLAM: At the time, way back in 1992, did you ever think about writing something substantial then?

JM: I did. In fact, I was going to do something but it just kind of fell apart.

Now, for that reason, it’s confusing. When you google it, it shows up that I had written a book back in 1992 when I hadn’t [laughs]. I didn’t do it then, but for some reason this report that one was going to be done shows up in connection with me.

So it did occur to me, it just didn’t work out. When we got back from Barcelona, as I write in the book, it almost seemed like the end of an era. Larry retired; Magic subsequently retired; Michael played one more year; and I was just kind of tired of the beat and wanted to do a little something else because it seemed like my guys were sort of gone. The Dream Team, as I wrote, sort of brought an end to an era, and I guess for a while I didn’t want to write anything more about it myself.

SLAM: So I guess you had a lot of old notes and notebooks to fall back on when you finally sat down to write this book.

JM: Oh, yeah. Fortunately, I’ve always saved my articles. So the first thing I did was go back and read everything I had written about these guys going back to 1984. That’s when Michael came into the League. Clyde was already in the League, and obviously Magic and Larry were. That’s also when I began covering the League.

I just began by reading. Then I found my notebooks from Barcelona. The hard part was the written record of that time—remember, there wasn’t an internet, there wasn’t an SI.com. There weren’t stories about these guys every day. Can you imagine now, how closely this team would be covered? So the written record isn’t as large as the 2012 written record will be of the Olympic team this summer.

SLAM: I know getting guys to sit down for interviews is a tough task—especially these guys. How’d you go about getting all the info and interviews you needed for the book?

JM: There were two challenges: the first challenge, as always, is trying to get the guys. If anything, at the beginning of the project the intimidating thing was trying to get the guys. I became obsessed with trying to get all of them, and—I don’t have to tell you this—but people don’t understand how difficult that is [laughs]. They’re all over the place. They’re busy. They have people in front of them. And even though I know all of them and they know me, it’s hard to get that block of time. That was the No. 1 challenge.

The No. 2 challenge was, everybody started telling me—and it’s been written 100 times—that there was no video of that magic intrasquad scrimmage in Monte Carlo, when Michael’s team went up against Magic’s team. I became convinced that I wanted to try to find that. The problem was, I didn’t really want to contact USA Basketball and the NBA because I didn’t think they’d give it to me—and I didn’t want to alert them to the fact that I was sort of doing this [laughs].

Eventually I found the guy who shot it for USA Basketball. I went to his house to try to find this magical intrasquad game. It sort of became the holy grail. There, amongst a pile of 100 VHS tapes, I finally came upon this game between Magic and Michael. I really felt good when I got that, like, Hey, man, this is something that nobody else has.

Getting back to the first challenge, the hard thing was, one by one, getting the guys to interview. The hard one is always going to be Magic/Michael/Larry, for different reasons. It took a long while, but I finally got everybody. I interviewed them all person-to-person, and they all were incredible. Whether I talked to them for five hours, as I did some of them, or whether I talked to them for an hour, they all remembered stuff very vividly. This was a very important part of their life, so they were all very into the Dream Team. That really helped a lot.

SLAM: It’s such a mythologized game and event—that scrimmage in Monte Carlo—I sort of feel like reading about it is enough and it shouldn’t be aired. It can only be a letdown.

JM: The game itself does not live up to the mythology. It was more—I think [Mike] Krzyzewski had the best take on it. It wasn’t the actual basketball that was played. It was how seriously these guys took it. That doesn’t exactly come across in the video. It’s not the most compelling game. If you watch four minutes of the Oklahoma City Thunder run up and down the court, you’ve seen better basketball. This thing has sort of a ragged scrimmage feel to it.

On the other hand, as a historical document, it’s sort of like you have some sort of moving picture of the Declaration of Independence being signed. And even though it’s not very interesting, it’s interesting simply because of the people who are in the photo.

SLAM: A few weeks ago you wrote about Mike D’Antoni, and about how it’s tough to report on people you’re close with because the lines are so blurred. Did you feel that way at all about any of the Dream Team guys and about writing this book?

JM: Well, you know, these guys are a little more distant. I know them and they know me, and they were incredibly important for my career. The fact that I was able to cover these guys just did everything for me. Let’s face it, I’m not trying to give false modesty, but you’re only as good as the guys you cover—and I happened to cover them. So I owe a great debt to them.

On the other hand, they’re not my close friends. I don’t call up Larry, I don’t call up Michael [laughs]. I don’t call these guys, and God knows they don’t call me up. They respect me—I think—and they like me, but they’re not my friends.

So in answer to your question, it was always easy to keep them at arm’s length. I probably said some stuff in there that Magic won’t be the happiest [about], probably Michael also, but I would say that’s not hard to do. A guy like D’Antoni, we’re sort of on the same wavelength. We’re the same age basically, we talk about family, and we’re a little bit of the same plane. But I would never say that I couldn’t write honestly about these guys; there’s certainly enough distance between us.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I liked some guys on the team more than others and felt closer to some guys than others. But honestly, at the end of the day, every one of those guys—except for [Christian] Laettner, who I didn’t know very well—I really liked. I can’t say that there wasn’t one guy who I didn’t have some kind of affection for.

Covering those guys, it was the luckiest gig I ever got.

The post ‘Covering Those Guys, It Was the Luckiest Gig I Ever Got’ appeared first on SLAM.

Come September 4, William Morrow will publish A Father First: How My Life Became Bigger Than Basketball, DWade’s memoir of childhood, growth and fatherhood. Wade spent much of the lockout working on the book, a process that the Heat guard described as “therapeutic” and filling “a need.” The book talks about Wade’s custody fight for his two sons, his difficult upbringing in Chicago as well as his role as a single father now. Check out the details from William Morrow:

In A FATHER FIRST: How My Life Became Bigger than Basketball, Dwyane Wade, a current co-captain for the Miami HEAT and eight-time NBA All-Star, shares insights on his life both on and off the court with a large focus on fatherhood, a topic of deep personal significance. Wade reveals his thoughts on fatherhood, detailing his personal experiences as a parent, and tracing his transformation from being the child of a single parent to now serving as one himself.

In the book, Wade opens up and reveals for the first time the intimate and traumatic details of his growing up and also the prolonged battle with his ex-wife for sole custody of his two sons, touching on:

· His mother’s struggles as a drug addict, and his growing up in Chicago among gangs, drug dealers and police raids (including a gut-wrenching story of young Dwyane finding a dead body in a garbage can)

· How he pulled himself up from such a life, thrived through basketball and maintained his devotion to his mother

· He has never talked about the prolonged battle with his ex-wife over sole custody of his two sons and why doing so was the most important thing in his life; and how the constant media attention has affected him and his boys

· His advocacy for fathers taking a strong role in their children’s lives; his main reason for writing the book is to help fathers see how they can do this and to see that they and their children can benefit from it enormously

· His childhood hero, his sister Tragil, who got him out of the mean Chicago streets, placed him with their father, and in many ways rescued him from a life that could have gone the wrong way

· The coaches who served as role models and father figures through high school, college and the NBA and how much they meant to him

· The HEAT’s successful 2006 NBA Championship, with Dwyane being awarded Finals MVP, and his gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics

In March 2011, in a landmark legal decision, Wade earned sole custody of his two young sons, effectively setting a new precedent for professional male athletes. Most recently, Dwyane teamed up with President Barack Obama to support his Fatherhood & Mentoring Initiative, a national parenting program geared toward encouraging fathers to become more involved in the lives of their children.

“As a child, I grew up with aspirations to one day be a professional basketball player, and I am living that dream every day as a proud member of the Miami HEAT,” said Wade. “However, the daily role I play in the lives of my two children is the single most significant undertaking of my life, and the job I take most seriously. While my basketball career has brought me many rewards – including an NBA Championship in 2006 and an Olympic Gold Medal in the 2008 Summer Games, my children are the two greatest gifts of my life.”

A FATHER FIRST also highlights Wade’s phenomenal basketball career—from his early days shooting hoops in Chicago, to training at Marquette University, to emerging as an unheralded draft pick to receiving MVP honors in the 2006 NBA Finals. In a narrative that spans two generations of the Wade family, Wade’s book encourages parents to lead by example and make being a caregiver the top priority.

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