{"id":321279,"date":"2025-10-21T13:45:18","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T13:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/321279\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T13:45:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T13:45:18","slug":"literary-hub-five-classic-books-every-basketball-lover-should-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/321279\/","title":{"rendered":"Literary Hub \u00bb Five Classic Books Every Basketball Lover Should Read"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1992, George Plimpton used the pages of the paper of record to share his theory on sportswriting: \u201cThe smaller the ball, the more formidable the literature,\u201d he wrote<\/a>. \u201cThere are superb books about golf, very good books about baseball, not many good books about football or soccer, very few good books about basketball and no good books at all about beach balls.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now far be it for me to challenge the opinions of the brilliant and trailblazing Mr. Plimpton, a man who, in the sports realm, deserves enshrinement in the Writing Hall of Fame. But, well, the man was clearly a fool. I love basketball books. And not just because I\u2019ve now written two of them (and, since you asked, my latest\u2014A Hollywood Ending: The Dreams and Drama of the LeBron Lakers<\/a>\u2014out now<\/a>), but because basketball books have everything you could possibly want in a piece of non-fiction.<\/p>\n

They have characters! They have drama! When they\u2019re at their best, they explore the intersections of race, politics, power, and fame! I\u2019m one of those people who believe that sports mirror society, and no sport, I\u2019d argue, reflects it more vividly than basketball. Sure, you can find some duds in the genre (no, we\u2019re not naming names), but there are so many classics, too, brilliant works by brilliant writers that embody all of these traits, that I find both riveting and inspiring.<\/p>\n

With that in mind, here\u2019s a list of five of my favorites. To be clear: this is not a \u201cbest ever\u201d list. Think of it instead as five books that moved me the first time I read them and have stayed with me ever since.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

David Halberstam, The Breaks of the Game\u00a0<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

You can\u2019t talk about sports books\u2014let alone basketball books\u2014without paying homage to Halberstam\u2019s masterpiece. On the surface, it\u2019s a standard \u201cA Season with Team X\u201d setup: Halberstam embedded with the 1979\u201380 Portland Trail Blazers, a team two years removed from an NBA title and trying to figure out what came next. Not surprisingly, though, Halberstam turns this story into so much more.<\/p>\n

Stuffed with sharp, brilliant and\u2014perhaps most important of all\u2014beautifully written portraits of unforgettable characters like Bill Walton and Maurice Lucas to the team\u2019s legendary coach, Dr. Jack Ramsey, The Breaks of the Game set the standard for all sports books. Halberstam brought the same depth and seriousness to his reporting on the NBA as he did into his investigations on the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War and, in doing so, turned what could have just been a simple story about a basketball team into a sweeping meditation on race, labor, class dynamics and power, but did so way in way that was both fun and easy to consume. This is probably the greatest basketball book ever written. It\u2019s also unlikely ever to be topped.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Jeff Pearlman,\u00a0Showtime<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

No one going right now is better at writing sports books than Pearlman and this one\u2014about Magic Johnson, Jerry Buss and the Showtime Lakers\u2014is my favorite of his many classics. I think there are two things that Pearlman does better than anyone else. One is his ability\u2014and, more than that, willingness\u2014to dig and dig and then dig some more all in search of one more either forgotten or previously-unknown detail. The other is that he makes his books fun.<\/p>\n

Combine those skills with his singular voice\u2014the kind where you can feel the joy he clearly takes in the writing and storytelling process leaping off the page\u2014and you get everything you could possibly want in a sports book. This one has it all. Sex! Cocaine! Throwing of punches! Also, a player hiring a hitman to take out his coach\u2014and then, after calling it off, offering the coach an apology! (Yes, you read that correctly.) But, like all great basketball books, Showtime is also a fascinating exploration of race, power, and what America, Los Angeles, and Hollywood felt like in the \u201880s. There\u2019s a reason Adam McKay turned this book into a TV show.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Scott Raab, The Whore of Akron<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

First off, Raab\u2014a longtime magazine writer for outlets like GQ and Esquire during their heydays\u2014is simply a brilliant writer, the kind whose stories I read multiple times and always leave in awe. This book, however, is the one he was born to write. What seemingly starts off as a a chronicle on LeBron James\u2019 final season in Cleveland (the first time around) and his move to Miami evolves into something deeper: a memoir and, more than that, a meditation on fandom itself.<\/p>\n

Yes, there are plenty of vivid, behind-the-scenes moments\u2014the kind that make you feel like you\u2019re eavesdropping on conversation you\u2019re not supposed to be hearing that, in today\u2019s access-driven world of sports reporting, rarely see the light of day\u2014 but the best stuff is when Raab, a lifelong Cleveland sports fan so rabid he makes your usual sports-radio caller seem like a casual, turns the microscope on himself (\u201cBeing Jewish and being a Cleveland sports fan have always felt to me like the same thing.\u201d). He\u2019s unsparing in his assessments, too. The Whore of Akron is full of tales of sex, drug use, and shame\u2014only here they belong to the writer, not the athletes. It\u2019s funny, raw, self-lacerating, and thought-provoking all at once. This book makes you think. It\u2019s also a blast.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Jack McCallum, :07 Seconds or Less\u00a0<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

This is one of those books that I still can\u2019t believe happened. McCallum, a longtime NBA writer for Sports Illustrated, and not only just one of the best to ever do it but one of those writers beloved and revered by his peers, somehow convinced Phoenix Suns head coach Mike D\u2019Antoni to let him embed with the team\u2019s coaching staff for the 2005-06 season. This may sound simple, and may sound common; it\u2019s far from both. The more sports have grown over the years, the more access has been limited, to the point where, around the turn of the century, reporters had to start fighting to hold on to the ability to talk to a team\u2019s star player after games. And yet here was McCallum spending a season in coaches meetings, team bus rides and player huddles.<\/p>\n

McCallum was the perfect writer for this, too. No one is better at mixing sharp analysis with simple, joyful and lighthearted prose. You can feel McCallum saying, Can you believe I\u2019m in this room right now?! and his eagerness to bring readers along for the ride. So many basketball books\u2014my own included\u2014pitch themselves as true windows into how that world operates. But none of us get anything close to the access that McCallum received, and no one was better equipped to take advantage of it all. Given how big the sports industry has become, and how guarded and corporate that world has become, I think :07 Seconds or Less will likely end up being the last of its kind.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Terry Pluto, Loose Balls<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve ever seen the (in my opinion) underrated Will Ferrell movie Semi Pro\u2014about a scrappy professional basketball squad from Flint, Michigan trying to hold on for dear life during the now-defunct American Basketball Association (ABA)\u2019s final season\u2014and thought, This stuff is just TOO ridiculous, well, you clearly haven\u2019t read Pluto\u2019s brilliant, hilarious and page-turning oral history on the league.<\/p>\n

It helps that the ABA, a professional league that tried challenging the NBA in the late 60s and early 70s before merging, provides the perfect backdrop for an oral history. So many of this book\u2019s stories seem too absurd to be real. But what elevates Loose Balls beyond its comedy is how Pluto is able illustrates what life inside this often-forgotten league was actually like for those dreamers, on and off the court, fighting for their professional lives.<\/p>\n

__________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A Hollywood Ending: The Dreams and Drama of the LeBron Lakers<\/a>\u00a0by Yaron Weitzman is available from Doubleday, an imprint of Penguin Random House.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Like this:<\/p>\n

Like Loading…<\/p>\n

\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 1992, George Plimpton used the pages of the paper of record to share his theory on sportswriting:…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":321280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1022,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-321279","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115412463476408562","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}