When I left Eastern Michigan, I went to Pontiac, Michigan, to play for a semi-pro team called the Chaparrals. We played two games on the weekends. I got paid $500 every weekend while playing for a brotha named Roy Washington. And he got me a car so that I could make the games. That car was a Riviera. Emerald green. Beige interior. Big ol’ 8-track. It was nice. And this was in the Continental League, so I was playing against older men. I’m not going to say the Continental League was a bunch of has-beens; it was a bunch of guys who had their turn, and they were like me: coming from bad situations—they got hurt, bad timing, etc.—but they still loved the game, too. 

And I was the young buck. They couldn’t catch me back then. I played with them about six or seven months. I was playing well, averaging 30-plus points a game, and Johnny “Red” Kerr saw me. It was after a game against a Flint, Michigan, team led by Justin Thigpen. It was a good game. He and I battled. He was averaging 38 points per game, so he was a bad boy, too. I didn’t know Kerr from the next man on the moon. I don’t remember the conversation I had with Kerr, but somehow Sonny Vaccaro came into the picture, too. I met Vaccaro through Jackson Nunn, one of the football players I went to Eastern with. He introduced me to Vaccaro around 1972 when Vaccaro had the Dapper Dan Roundball Classic. Vaccaro came to meet Coach Merriweather at Merriweather’s house in Detroit. That’s how they hooked up. According to Vaccaro, Nunn reached out to him to help me because of what happened to me at Eastern. Vaccaro apparently had helped Nunn when he was having problems getting noticed and getting a scholarship to college. He was part of the reason Nunn ended up at Eastern. Still to this day, I don’t know why Vaccaro was interested in me. Vaccaro wasn’t an agent. I don’t know where he came from. Somehow, he had a friendship with Al Bianchi, who was then the Virginia Squires coach. From what I was told, Vaccaro made a call, and the next thing I knew, we’re in Virginia. 

Vaccaro, Merriweather, and I were in a gym in the Norfolk Scope Arena. Merriweather was talking to Earl Foreman, the owner of the Squires, and Coach Bianchi was up in the stands. And they didn’t know me. They took the word of Kerr who told them they needed to see me. I don’t think Kerr was even in the gym at all that day. He wasn’t even the scout for them. He was their business manager, but I think he had seen me play and knew where I’d fit in—and that was the ABA. I think he just told Foreman to meet me. 

And all I remember is they told me to start shooting. It was just me and a few kids on the court who were tossing the balls back to me. I had been warming up already, so when they wanted me to shoot, I started droppin’ ’em. Vaccaro has said that I hit 50 shots in a row, and I was shooting in my street shoes! But I don’t remember that. Knowing me, I ain’t gonna do that. I’m not shooting in my gators. But that’s what Vaccaro says. I don’t know if he’s embellishing it, but I do know that I made a lot of shots whatever I was wearing. Keep in mind I never thought about being a pro. I was pretty content with what I was doing. I was in love with Joyce, I got the game, I got a few bucks, I got a ride, and I’m rollin’. But back then, like Kerr said: I could flat-out score. And I loved that about myself. They said I shot 30 to 35 times, and I made 30 out of 35 or 30 out of 30. But whatever the number was, I heard someone say, “That’s good.” And I stopped shooting right then. After that someone instantly said: “We’ll take him.” 

They signed me to a contract. We went into trainer Bob Travaglini’s little office and signed the deal on a paper napkin. At the time they were losing Charlie Scott, who was a special player. I’m glad he got into the Hall of Fame. So again for me this was being in the right place at the right time. Scott was playing for the Squires before I came and I never got a chance to play with him. He went on to the NBA at midseason to the Phoenix Suns. And Scott was big for the Squires. He was like Julius Erving, who was already on the Squires. When I went into their front offices, they had a big picture of Scott on the wall. And I think that’s part of why they were looking at me. Dr. J was right. He said I might be the only person in the history of basketball to literally shoot for his contract, and I did.

This last season, the BIG3 had its first All-Star Game. Dr. J and I were selected as coaches for the All-Star Game. I felt I had the best team, but I was a little disappointed because three of my players didn’t show up for practice for the game. So I told the ones who did show up that they’d be the ones starting in the All-Star Game. Now, from my perspective, the All-Star Game is supposed to be a special thing. At the end of the year, you are one of the 12 guys picked to represent the league, a league you chose to be in. So once I decided to start the ones who showed up, it wasn’t about the game anymore.

If you act like, “Well, I’m gonna show up when I want to,” well, not on me you won’t. And I don’t have to sit up and argue with you or explain myself. My sentiment was: “You might’ve led the BIG3 in scoring, but I led the big league in scoring four times! So, don’t get it twisted.” 

I’m the wrong guy to disrespect. But I’m also the same guy who you can learn something from if you want. And this maybe where sometimes the perception of being cool comes into it because of my reaction. I really didn’t care if one or two of the players may have been pissed. To me the game itself is recreation, but the league is something (Ice) Cube put together for the players to stay on stage and make a little money. You gotta respect that. This man done put up all this money to create this opportunity for the players, and that is how they were gonna treat it? I’m not going to yell and scream or disrespect anyone to make them understand that, but in my own way, I’m going to do what I feel is right to make sure a certain level of respect remains. 

We live and we learn. And preferably you live long enough to help somebody else out along the way. No matter how hard the lesson. And for coaching that’s when it’s more than basketball for that coach. That’s one of the things I learned from coaching in the ABA in 2000. I coached a team called the Detroit Dogs. I had a bunch of inner-city players. I knew it was very important to tell them in the beginning, “Look here, if I get on you, I’m not getting on you personally. I’m getting on your basketball character.” I wanted them to understand that this isn’t personal. Most of the times, they bought into it, and I didn’t have any issues. I was being upfront with them. 

Same thing in the BIG3. I told them, “Look here, this is 3-on-3. We grew up playing 3-on-3. If you forgot that, we not going to win any games. I ain’t coaching, I’m just taking you out when you get tired.” It’s a cool thing Cube is doing. I feel it’s part of my responsibility to make sure those, who are involved with it, respect that. I’m glad he called me to be a part of it. And we really didn’t know each other before this. We only really knew of each other. I remember I’d just got finished working out with Merriweather and got a text: “Hey Ice, it’s Cube. I got something I wanna talk to you about.” 

I texted him back, “Who is this?”

He texted, “Cube.”

Then I texted, “Call me.”

He immediately called and said, “Ice, I’m doing this league called the ‘BIG3’ and I want you to be a part of it.”

I said, “Cool, Cube. If you’re going to do it, I’ll do it with you.”

Notice I call him “Cube,” not “Ice Cube.” I told him, “I’m older. I was Ice first.” 

This excerpt from Ice: Why I Was Born to Score by George Gervin with Scoop Jackson is reprinted with the permission of Triumph Books. For more information and to order a copy, please visit Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, or TriumphBooks.com/Ice.

Photos via Getty Images.

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Order your copy of A History of Basketball in Fifteen Sneaker here.

The summer Nike signed Swoopes, MJ himself invited “the female Jordan” to work at his camp and challenged her to a game of one-on-one. Swoopes airballed her first three shots but went up 4–3, then down 7–4. He won the game; she got his UNC shirt. She felt good enough afterward to talk trash to his face on camera:  “He was tired. Old, out of shape . . .” Jordan interjected with a smile, “I didn’t see any challenge. I just wanted to cut it short before someone got hurt.”

More was coming. Nike designer Marni Gerber went to Lubbock to learn what made Swoopes tick and find out what she liked in a sneaker. The result was 1995’s Air Swoopes, the first-ever signature women’s basketball shoe—and one crafted to fit Swoopes’s narrow size-10 foot perfectly. Nike’s list of signature athletes in basketball that year was a short one: Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Penny Hardaway, Chris Webber. Swoopes was just the fifth. 

The mid-cut Air Swoopes featured a mid-foot strap, a pull tab on the heel that was long-fingernail compatible, and Swoopes’s own logo, a stylized “S” on the tongue. It even got one of Nike’s minimalistic print ads featuring a shoe and a 1-800 phone number that people could call to hear Sheryl talk about her own sneaker. The Air Swoopes was a serious hoop shoe designed by women, marketed by women, and marketed to women, with sneakers only in women’s sizing. It was something completely different. 

“That [shoe] made everybody stand up and take notice,” said former AND1 and Nike exec Jeffrey Smith. “You mean the girl’s version doesn’t need to be just pink and light blue?” Quite to the contrary: The $85 release version was basic black with a white strap, and Swoopes got her own red, white, and blue makeup to debut as a member of the US National Team. And it wasn’t just any US National Team, but one with vengeance on its mind.

After third-place finishes in the ’92 Olympics and the ’94 World Championships, nothing less than gold would be acceptable at the ’96 Games in Atlanta. Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer stayed on as coach, and the week-long Olympic Trials began in Colorado Springs with 24 players in May 1995. By the time practices started, that 24 had been whittled down to 11, including Swoopes, former Virginia point guard Dawn Staley, and former USC center Lisa Leslie. UConn center Rebecca Lobo was the youngest player at 22, and the two oldest—31-year-old Teresa Edwards and 30-year-old Katrina McClain—were both from nearby in Atlanta. Swoopes was able to lace up her own shoe for the first practice—“That’s cute,” VanDerveer remarked about the signature sneakers.

Starting on Halloween, the squad embarked on a grueling, globe-spanning 52-game exhibition schedule. The primary goal was for the players to coalesce into a true team. But along the way, as they racked up win after win (after win after win after win), they accomplished something more. For starters, they showed just how much better they were than even the best college teams. Louisiana Tech lost 85–74, the closest that any NCAA squad would get. The next closest was Tennessee, who lost by 34. The Olympians beat Stanford 100–63, Kansas 101–47, George Washington 110–37, and Ohio State 118–49, finishing that initial leg of their tour with a 107–24 drubbing of Colorado.

From there they went to Russia, Ukraine, China, and Australia, with some more domestic sellouts in between. Fans kept coming and Team USA kept winning. There were a few close calls: a three-point win over Cuba in Ningbo, China, then a one-point squeaker against Russia in Chicago in their second-to-last game. But when they closed out the final game, an 86–46 victory over Italy before a crowd of 10,643 in Indianapolis, the Americans were 52-0. A little over a week out from the Olympics, they were more than ready. 

After all that dominance, the Atlanta Games were almost an anticlimax— except for the crowds. They had drawn well on their world tour, but this was something else entirely. Team USA averaged 25,000 fans per game, with nearly 33,000 packing the Georgia Dome to watch them dismantle Brazil in the gold medal matchup. Swoopes finished as the team’s third-leading scorer, averaging 13.0 points per game, shooting 55 percent from the floor, and ranking second in assists. 

She had already transitioned into her second shoe, the Swoopes II, by the start of the Games in 1996. The new sneaker featured off-to-the-sides lacing, a big Swoosh up front and a tiny one at the ankle, and a prominent shank plate in the middle of a thick midsole that was far ahead of its time. Maybe, like the first Air Jordan, Nike should have given the first Air Swoopes more time to breathe and let the legend build before releasing a next sneaker. Then again, Sheryl never even lost a game in her first shoe. Even Mike couldn’t say that. 

Talk had begun early in the world tour of forming a new women’s professional league called the American Basketball League (ABL), whose founders hoped to sign up as many Olympians as they could. Many tentatively agreed to join; with the new possibility of earning a real salary to play at home in the United States rather than finding a scarce spot overseas, the decision was a no-brainer. But before the pre-Olympics tour concluded, the NBA had announced a second professional option, one with even more solid backing. The best women players would have a choice of American pro leagues, something their predecessors had never enjoyed. 

Excerpted from “A History of Basketball in Fifteen Sneakers.” (Workman) by Russ Bengtson. Copyright © 2023

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In this excerpt, former SLAM editor Alex Squadron takes the reader inside the lead-up to the annual G League Winter Showcase, when all teams converge in one city to play in front of NBA scouts and executives.

‘Life in the G’ is available now. Get your copy here.

Film went longer than usual on the morning of December 16—way longer than usual. The Showcase was a few days away, and there was a lot to cover.

First, the new protocols. An impromptu mandatory meeting for all G League head coaches and athletic trainers had been convened the night before. In a Zoom conference call, league officials had mapped out a revised set of rules for Showcase due to the alarming spread of a new highly contagious coronavirus variant called Omicron. The first confirmed case of Omicron had been detected in the United States about two weeks prior. Research suggested that Omicron was more transmissible than previous variants and could be contracted by fully vaccinated and boosted individuals.

Amid this troubling next phase of the pandemic, the Showcase was going to be run like abubble. No fans would be permitted to attend. No guests would be allowed in hotel rooms. Masks were to be worn at all times, except when playing. It was strongly recommended that group meals, which could not exceed six people, be eaten outdoors.

“If you are seen at the craps table gambling, or at a bar or nightclub, the repercussions may be getting suspended through Showcase,” [head coach Ryan] Pannone said.

“No may about it,” [associate general manager Billy] Campbell chimed in. “They are looking to make examples out of everyone. There’s a huge outbreak going on not only in the NBA but also in the G League. If you don’t know, Windy City is not going to play at Showcase. They’ve had so many positives that they are out of Showcase. So all of the guys who have worked since training camp to get in front of NBA scouts will not be there.”

Oof. Just hearing those words made stomachs turn. Showcase undoubtedly presented the best opportunity for G Leaguers to impress NBA scouts. Squadron players couldn’t fathom the idea of it being taken away at the last second by something so largely out of their control. The team had undergone testing earlier that morning and fortunately received zero positives. Around the G League, however, the number of cases was climbing. The NBA was in even worse shape. Injury reports were starting to look like CVS receipts, with more and more players being sidelined by COVID each day. Coaches, executives, referees, and broadcast crews were also coming down with the virus.

The spread of Omicron was so rampant that Commissioner Adam Silver found himself scrambling for solutions to avoid a complete NBA shutdown. Should the league postpone games? Expand rosters? Impose stricter guidelines? Test daily? All of these questions were presently being floated. And the situation was trending in the wrong direction—fast.

In the meantime, as Silver puzzled his options, there was a silver lining to this period of chaos: an unprecedented number of opportunities were opening up for G Leaguers. NBA teams were in desperate need of reinforcements—rosters would be full one day, then down five players the next—and naturally turning to their minor league affiliates for relief. That was exciting for G Leaguers, of course, but also tremendously nerve-racking. Clearly, no one—not even a group of healthy, vaccinated, and boosted professional athletes—was safe from catching Omicron. Forward Stanley Johnson had been called up from the South Bay Lakers to the Chicago Bulls, only to test positive and be placed in the health and safety protocols immediately.

Around the Squadron was a noticeable shift in tone: less jovial, more intense; less distracted, more focused; less jokey, more apprehensive. COVID precautions previously unenforced were now being taken seriously. Players were hanging out less, wearing masks more. Johnson, a former lottery pick, had spent significant time in the NBA already; but for those who hadn’t, the idea of what happened to him happening to them was unthinkable.

At one point, Harper let out a soft sneeze during practice, and Cheatham instinctively leapt in the opposite direction. “Oh, hell nah!” he exclaimed. “Where my mask at?” He was half kidding, but the other half reflected a real concern growing among members of the team, particularly Cheatham and Young. They would not—could not—screw up a chance at the NBA because they caught Omicron.

According to the NBA’s COVID protocols, players had to be sidelined at least ten days or record two negative tests in a twenty-four-hour window before returning. Decimated organizations—such as the Bulls, who, with ten players and several staff members infected, saw two of their games postponed—had begun handing out ten-day contracts. Capitanes forward Alfonzo McKinnie was another to receive a deal from Chicago, shortly after his back-to-back dominant performances against the Squadron at Legacy Arena.

During a typical NBA season, teams aren’t permitted to issue ten-day contracts until January 5. The deals that players like McKinnie were signing required a “hardship exception,” granted to teams that had a player in the health and safety protocols or at least four players out with long-term injuries.

Though ten-day contracts generated little media buzz—especially in years unaffected by COVID—and didn’t guarantee even a second of playing time, G Leaguers cherished them. Signing one was a realization of the NBA dream. “To spend any time in the NBA is a blessing,” Cheatham had once said—even just ten days.

The compensation made those ten days even sweeter. The value of a ten-day contract varied based on previous NBA experience, but most players were paid more than double what they received for an entire G League season, sometimes triple or quadruple. Stanley Johnson, for example, was guaranteed over $120,000 when he signed his ten-day deal with the Bulls.

Suffice it to say, the stakes at the annual Showcase were always exceptionally high. About a dozen representatives from every NBA team would be in attendance, and production on the court wasn’t the only factor they took into consideration. Somebody was always watching, lurking around the slot machines and roulette tables, taking mental notes.

“NBA teams are not looking for a reason to sign you. They’re looking for a reason to not sign you,” Pannone told the Squadron. “There’s a plethora of players.” More than three hundred were playing in the G League alone. It was difficult for NBA scouts to narrow down their lists, so they were constantly searching for an excuse to cross a name off, like college admissions officers combing through an endless stack of near-identical applications.

Instead of extracurricular activities, scouts nitpicked at factors like nutrition. At Showcase, it was unwise to be seen eating or carrying anything unhealthy. No Twix bars, which Harper liked to eat before games (a curious superstition since his college days at Auburn). No Monster energy drinks, which Young liked to use for a boost before practices. No Subway, Nathan’s Famous, Pan Asian Express, Bonanno’s New York Pizzeria, or Johnny Rockets, all of which were right outside the convention center where the games would be played.

“Somebody tell me what Travis Stockbridge looks like,” Pannone said.

Crickets.

“Somebody tell me who Travis Stockbridge is.”

“I assume he’s affiliated with the league?” Cheatham mumbled.

Stockbridge was the general manager of the Rio Grande Valley Vipers and a basketball operations coordinator for the Houston Rockets.

“It’s the perfect example of ‘You don’t know who the fuck these guys are,’” Pannone said. “You don’t know what they look like. You would have no idea he’s out there. You don’t know who the fuck he is. And you don’t know who any of these guys are from the NBA. Every time you think you’re not being watched, you’re being watched. Somebody is there. Somebody is going to see and watch everything you do. They are going to judge everything you do.”

“These are little things, but we talked at the beginning of the year about million-dollar decisions,” Campbell added. “At Showcase, all of those things are heightened. Every decision you’ve made from training camp until now has been a million-dollar decision. At Showcase, everything is magnified. Every single thing you do is magnified. They may be like, ‘Oh man, I remember Joe Young from the Pacers. Why does he have a Chick-fil-A bag?’ All those little things that you don’t think matter, they matter to someone else.”

And because of Omicron, there were far more “little things” to consider. Forgetting to wear your mask could cost you millions. Inviting someone to your hotel room could cost you millions. Playing a hand of blackjack could cost you millions. Having dinner with a large group of friends could cost you millions. Wandering aimlessly on the Strip could cost you millions.

“Any kind of infraction that they see is not going to be a slap on the wrist,” Campbell continued. He hated lecturing the team but knew, in this case, it was necessary. He desperately wanted to see Squadron players get called up in the ensuing weeks. To give them a chance, however, they had to hear this message. And they had to hear it clearly. “It’s literally going to be, you are out of the bubble. Period. There will be no, ‘Can you call Marc? Can you call the league?’ If they see you doing this stuff, there is no may about it, they will absolutely kick you out.”

The locker room was silent as players digested this new information. Showcase was going to look and feel a lot different than what they had anticipated at the beginning of the season. Some had questions. The protocols were vague, and guys were nervous about mistakenly breaking a rule.

“What about Uber Eats?” Cheatham wondered.

“They do not specify, but that should be no problem,” Campbell replied.

Harper wanted to know if he could go to a private gym—alone—to get shots up. His request was reasonable, especially considering that after practice in Birmingham today—a Thursday—guys wouldn’t have official court time until 5:00 p.m. PT on Saturday, when they would have merely an hour to go over their game plan for Sunday.

“We have asked about having a site for y’all to shoot,” Campbell said. “This morning—like, literally ten minutes ago—they said that they would strongly, strongly, strongly recommend that you do not have a team practice off-site.”

“If you go individually to shoot . . .” Pannone shrugged, implying that it shouldn’t be an issue. “I know some of you guys have got connections to get into a gym. It’s like going out to eat. From my understanding, as long as you’re not at a bar or a nightclub, going out gambling, going to a concert where there are a bunch of people, that’s on you guys. But from today at 2:00 until 5:00 on Saturday, that’s a lot of time without getting in the gym and shooting—just so you guys know that.”

It was a big adjustment. Given the significance of Showcase, it was a frustrating one too. All the players liked to get up extra shots outside of practice. In Vegas, that wouldn’t really be possible. For stars like Harper, who was already on the radar of multiple NBA teams, having to change routines now seemed unfair.

Everyone was having to adjust, though. By the morning of December 16, the whole world was adjusting to Omicron, and the G League was no exception. Showcase would create an environment about as anxiety-inducing as imaginable, but if players adhered to the rules, stayed out of trouble, and took care of business on the court, it also presented the best chance they would ever have to reach the NBA.

“You gotta know what’s at stake,” Cheatham said after practice. “My mindset going into Showcase is just consistency. I want to stay with all the things that I’ve been doing. As a team, stay with all the things that we’ve been doing. Don’t get out of character. Don’t try to do too much. Just play the game I’ve been working hard at damn near my whole life.”

Such was the cruel irony of the G League. A damn near lifetime’s worth of work could come down to three days—three very unusual days—at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.

Excerpted from Life in the G: Minor League Basketball and the Relentless Pursuit of the NBA by Alex Squadron by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. ©2023 by Alex Squadron.

Shop here to order your copy.

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I walk by a basketball court, any court, I stop. Full stop. If they’re playing, I’ll hang out for a while—just to watch, to hear basketball sounds. Lose myself. Forget time.

Merely seeing the word basketball—anywhere, in any format— heightens my senses and raises my level of engagement.

With the object in my hands, I’m like Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone. I am transformed. I am someone else, somewhere else. And in that space, the space of basketball, life is somehow more and I am better.

You think this is all a bit much? Let me go further. I don’t see basketball simply as part of my identity. I see it as an existential matter, as if without it I’m not really even here.

So many understand this. Yet it takes one to know one. And when we meet, it only takes a moment before one of us asks the other: “Do you still play?” This is our handshake. This is our measure. It is our check against whether and how, and how much, we really are still here. We ask because we know the value of playing.

We know what’s at stake when you stop playing. And now, as old as I am, I know I’m getting closer to not playing. And that possibility brings fundamentally important things into sharp focus: basketball, my life. Whether and how I remain cosmic. Whether I am still free.

Basketball is an “ever since” thing for me. Ever since my dad put a twelve-by-twelve-foot blacktop in the backyard before I was born. Ever since I spent thousands of dusks on that blacktop practicing, which always ended with the same plea: “Just one more shot, Mom!” Ever since CYO and Summer League championships. Ever since varsity, coaching, and countless public courts from Alphabet City to Shanghai, Nashua to the Negev, Toronto to Las Terrenas. From wherever I could find some decent run. Later, off the court, as a person in the world, celebrating the game in classrooms, boardrooms, and back rooms with league commissioners, power brokers, producers, present and future Hall of Famers, sneaker executives, playground legends, and cultural tastemakers. All this time, basketball and I have never let go of each other.

Basketball stays with me. It’s what I return to. It’s where I feel my whole self integrated, where I find balance. Where the world makes sense, where my relationship with other people gets right. It is my sanctuary. My truth. It is a lifetime pass to a universally shared space and consciousness, bonding me with all who know, have known, and will know what I know. And I know I’m not alone. 

Many, including Franklin Foer in his excellent How Soccer Explains the World, have used sport as a lens to view culture, conflict, and social conditions. But what if basketball could actually save the world by helping us think differently about solving world problems?

On an intuitive level, I feel that it can. But on a deeper level, I also know that it can. Basketball is just so different from other sports. Its basic playing space, fifty feet by ninety feet, is much smaller than a soccer or football field, which can be up to four times as long. Basketball players, like people in the world at large, must navigate shared space. In so doing, they must closely observe and successfully understand each other. With no equipment and playing basically in undergarments, they are exposed to one another—teammate to teammate, teammate to opponent, and participant to spectator—up close and clearly. And in basketball, all participants do all things. No one is prohibited from going to any particular place on the court, or doing more or less than anyone else. Not so in football, where player positions and functions are strictly defined, specialized, and differentiated. Baseball is ultra-positional, particularly when it comes to the pitcher. Even in soccer or hockey, where the principles of movement somewhat approximate basketball, defensive players typically don’t spend much time in the offensive area, and the uniquely positioned goalie has radically different powers than the other players. In basketball, players switch between offense and defense in an instant; there’s no separate unit to do one or the other.

In life, as in basketball, we often must change our position—fluidly and without warning—to meet changing circumstances. In other large field and court sports, it’s possible that over the course of the game, certain players may never even come near one another. That’s not possible in basketball. In basketball, everyone on the court is intimately—in a relational and spatial sense—tied to everyone else.

I’m not saying other sports don’t teach us wonderful things. I’m saying this sport is particularly good at showing us how to be in this world with each other and make it better. I’m making an objective observation: The game is more human in size, interaction, structure, and participatory experience. As a result, applying basketball as a worldview would be a lot more apt to solving the problems of humanity.

In 2019, I finally got the opportunity to test the idea of basketball as a philosophy with a course I began teaching at New York University called “How Basketball Can Save the World.”

The genesis of the class took the form of a question: Isn’t it time to look to new systems of thinking, leadership, problem solving, efficiency, fairness, and equality? For thousands of years, the world has been led by the same kinds of leaders—monarchs, generals, clergy, politicians, economists, lawyers, and captains of industry. Those leaders and thinkers created societal practices and schools of thought—isms, like capitalism, socialism, communism, nationalism, isolationism, utilitarianism, theism, and so on—to manage and make sense of the world. Century after century they based their policies and plans on these great isms believing they made the world more just, more efficient, more productive, more meaningful. The result, after millennia of the same kinds of leaders continuing to employ the same kinds of thinking, is a world more broken, more confused, and more conflicted than ever. Why not look to a ubiquitous global phenomenon that has continued to grow faster in popularity, relevance, influence, and impact than almost any other human activity over the past century: basketball. The 13 Principles that underlie this book are a numeric homage to the original 13 rules of basketball devised by James Naismith. They are distilled from what Naismith intended the game to be, how it has operated globally ever since, and what the world has told us the game means. I explicitly wanted to elevate the study of basketball to the same plane as political science, history, music, or any other academic major.

In the years since the class began, I have been honored to host a revolving congregation of Naismith Basketball Hall of Famers, award-winning filmmakers, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalists, bestselling authors, global tastemakers, peacemakers, playground legends, anthropologists, sneaker mavens, league commissioners, artists, photographers, urban planners, entrepreneurs, leaders of indigenous peoples, and even a former star player turned globally acclaimed mezzo-soprano. The very first class met on the court at Nike’s New York City headquarters, every student holding a ball. We visited the legendary Dunlevy Milbank Center in Harlem and “The Cage” at West 4th Street, and we enjoyed VIP access to the 2019 NBA Draft at Barclays Center. We helped sway the Vatican to recognize the first ever Patron Saint of Basketball! With each guest and each experience, we analyzed, validated, elucidated, and enlivened those 13 Principles.

Now, in this book, I state my case. How Basketball Can Save the World proposes a new story, a new frame through which to see our meaning, a new ism. This world—our world, right now—needs new inspiration, new paradigms, new foundational principles. Therefore, we must look to a new source of ideas for fairness, problem solving, sustainability, and growth to meet this new era. I insist we look at basketball.

Modern government is broken. Competing worldviews of democracy and authoritarianism are ferociously, irreconcilably at odds. The economy is broken. We are now seeing the greatest dis- parity in wealth, throughout the world, since the Gilded Age. Brokenness abounds from eroded trust in the media to right- before-our-eyes climate destruction, to the vanishing of privacy, to the deterioration of our social fabric, now threadbare. So many feel increasingly desperate and alone, and the great many stand divided.

We live in a world of intense division. From the derisive social critiques of Gen Z–Millennials to the taunts of “OK boomer,” the generations share little but mutual contempt, blame, and condescension. The #MeToo movement powerfully exposes the brokenness in gender relations. And what of racism and othering? What of hate? What of the vulnerability and unchecked persecution of stateless ethnic groups: Kurds, Rohingya,Yazidis, Uighurs? What of homophobia, Islamophobia, xenophobia, transphobia, and the resurgence of overt, normalized, global anti-Semitism?

These conditions result from old prevailing isms, recycled century after century. All of it is systemic.

Young people in particular sense this. Jia Tolentino, in her essay collection Trick Mirror, writes that her generation suffers from an inescapable “ethical brokenness,” which she describes as a Millennial’s Hobson’s choice: “I have felt so many times that the choice of this era is to be destroyed or to morally compromise ourselves in order to be functional—to be wrecked, or to be functional for reasons that contribute to the wreck. It’s a powerlessness that makes us complicit.”

Philosopher-historian Yuval Noah Harari calls this moment an “age of bewilderment.” It is forcing us to reexamine all of our fundamentally held assumptions: “When the old stories have collapsed, and no new story has emerged so far to replace them. Who are we? What should we do in life? What kinds of skills do we need? Given everything we know and don’t know about science, about God, about politics, and religion what can we say about the meaning of life today?”

Today, basketball is a global force sui generis that continues to fascinate and unify. It opens closed worlds. It gives sanctuary to the outsider and the other. It appeals equally to the urban and the rural. It has been and continues to be compelling, operative, and influential in major societal discussions of race, access, gender, immigration, culture, and commerce. No other pastime sells more footwear, activates more social media, and interests more young people. The game flourishes nearly everywhere on every continent.

Basketball’s capacity to do all that it has done—and its potential to do even more—traces directly back to the intention and foresight of its inventor, James Naismith. Naismith was a right- place, right-time, free-thinking individual in the world of 1891, who had a particularly special mix of personal qualities and lived experience. He was a Canadian immigrant in the United States, an orphan from a young age, and an intellectual misfit-wanderer. A divinity school graduate who forsook the ministry in search of a higher calling, leading him to create an eminently physical manifestation of his spiritual aspirations. He just wanted the world to be a better place.

Employed at Springfield College, a gym teacher’s academy in Massachusetts, he was tasked with coming up with a nonviolent indoor physical activity to occupy “incorrigible,” violence-prone students in the winter months. Naismith’s challenge in the fall of 1891 was a microcosm of the challenge facing the world. The brokenness that Naismith saw in the tumultuous, conflicted, inequitable Gilded Age looks an awful lot like the brokenness that we face today.

Basketball was Naismith’s vision for society as he wished it to be—for those incorrigible men in his gym class and for the world at large spinning out of control. Naismith looked at that gym, at those men, and knew he had to create something new. Old ideas would not fix that brokenness. And thus, his 13 original rules became the framework for a new way of play. Basketball worked.

The 13 Principles presented in this book are inspired by and deeply connected to Naismith’s vision, and to the phenomenal impact that has sprung forth from that vision. My hope is that these principles, though not explicitly stated in any rule book, codify what is inherent to the game.

Meg Barber, the coach of the NYU women’s basketball team, once said to me, “What you’re trying to do is make the word basketball mean something else.” That’s right. That word—and the game it signifies—has always meant something else to me, and to so many others. And to Meg. For those who experience the game, we hold these truths to be self-evident. They just needed to be said out loud. This book and these principles give those truths language and voice.

The 13 Principles are not complicated. They’re not hard to understand. It’s simply time for new thinking and a new consciousness to take action to fix things and move us forward.

No more of the same old mistakes, from the same old thinking, by the same old leaders. No more being trapped by old definitions, limited by old meanings and old vocabulary. Those systems have demonstrably failed. Basketball has given us a nearly century-and-a-half proof of concept.

Basketball works. 

David Hollander is the assistant dean and clinical professor with the Tisch Institute for Global Sport at New York University.

Photos via Getty Images.

Excerpted from HOW BASKETBALL CAN SAVE THE WORLD Copyright © 2023 by David Hollander. Used by permission of Harmony Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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