The Best Basketball Books to Get You Through the Off-Season
The games might be over, but that doesn’t mean your obsession has to be.
There’s an old adage about sports writing — the smaller the ball, the better the writing about it. Accordingly, baseball has easily the highest literary reputation amongst the major sports. Part of this is the fact that, until the 1960s, its preeminence as the American sport went largely unchallenged. While boxing and thoroughbred racing would capture the popular imagination in bursts, none were as perpetually meaningful as the Summer Game. Yet this saying neglects the fact that in recent decades many great books have been written about basketball — a sport with a much larger ball than baseball. Here is a look at some of the best.
Second Wind: The Memoirs of an Opinionated Man by Bill Russell with Taylor Branch
In Second Wind, Bill Russell writes insightfully and humorously about the Celtics dynasty, his relationship with his teammates, and the struggles that come with being a black man growing up in Louisiana. Many of the best sections though have nothing to do with basketball at all, but about his father and grandfather and their ability to maintain dignity in a society that was designed to strip them of it. This is not just one of the best autobiographies by a basketball player, but a tremendous and moving book about being Black in America, a book that deserves to be mentioned alongside The Autobiography of Malcolm X as a classic of the genre.
FreeDarko Presents: The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History
The FreeDarko Collective offers an idiosyncratic history of professional basketball, choosing to focus on the main topics that any history must cover, while also highlighting what makes these canonized teams and figures so unique and important. Rather than recount the fact that the earlier 70s Knicks won two titles and were much beloved, they write about why they captured the hearts of so many. Rather than merely rehashing the details of the career of Wilt Chamberlain, what he represented is highlighted, prompting the reader to see already well-trod topics in a new, and revealing way. The writing is superb, witty, and intelligent — it’s pretty much like if the smartest and coolest person you knew got really into the NBA and then wrote a book on it. If nothing else, in all the basketball books I’ve read, I have yet to encounter another that compares Red Holzman and Red Auerbach to Robert Altman and John Cassavetes respectively and it deserves recognition for that alone.
The Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam
After finishing his 1979 book on the American media, The Powers That Be, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Halberstam decided to tackle a more ostensibly light topic in the NBA, spending the 1979–80 season with the Portland Trail Blazers, a team in disarray despite being just three years removed from winning a championship. Halberstam does much more than chronicle the dashed hopes and unrealized potential of that Blazers team, profiling seemingly every major figure in the league at that time. Additionally, the book is also a history and analysis of the NBA up to that point, unflinchingly looking at both its successes and shortcomings. He captured the league as it was adrift, trying to figure out what it wanted to be as fans turned away due to concerns about the league being too drug-ridden and too black. The league’s lasting success was not yet assured and he helps show why it had fallen out of the casual fan’s favor while also showing what was worth cherishing and preserving. Breaks of the Game is pretty much universally hailed as the greatest book ever written about the NBA and it’s very easy to see how so many have come to see it that way.
Ball Don’t Lie: Myth, Genealogy, and Invention in the Cultures of Basketball by Yago Colas
Colas, a professor at Oberlin College, writes a history of basketball and the NBA in a way that I have never seen anyone else do. Yago does not merely recount notable events, but examines their significance, why they captured the basketball fan’s imagination, and how they continue to influence the way we think and talk about the sport today. In a way, it’s more of a meta-history than a history as Colas examines the discourse that surrounds the NBA, noting how racialized and essentialist it tends to be, while offering new ideas that may allow fans to enjoy the beauty offered by the game more than the predominant, and often limiting, ways of thinking allow. While Ball Don’t Lie is a tad more academic of a read than the others listed here, it is easily the most thought-provoking one listed, a book with the potential to fundamentally alter the way you watch the NBA for the better.
King of the Court: Bill Russell and the Basketball Revolution by Aram Goudsouzian
Few NBA players deserve a comprehensive biography of this quality as much as Bill Russell does and Aram Goudsouzian, chair of the history department at the University of Memphis, is uniquely qualified to write it. Goudsouzian’s background as a historian who has also written on the Civil Rights Movement means that he is able to do more than just recount Russell’s achievements as a basketball player, but is able to place them in their proper context, showing their significance on a sociopolitical level as well. Also, by tracing Russell’s career from 1956 to 1969, he’s able to show the league’s transition from a small mom-and-pop operation to a significant fixture on the national sports scene. Russell continually defied attempts to categorize or define him, and apart from reading Russell’s own writings, this is the best way to get a relative grasp on this great and important man.
Wilt: Just Like Any Other 7 Foot Black Millionaire Who Lives Next Door by Wilt Chamberlain and David Shaw
Considering that Wilt Chamberlain was one of the most unique and outsized personalities to ever play professional sports, it should come as no surprise that his autobiography is as distinct as any ever written by an athlete. Chamberlain recounts his life and his athletic career with the hopes of setting the record straight, hoping to absolve himself of every loss that has damaged his reputation and show that he deserves to be seen as the greatest basketball player ever. It may not convince many readers, but it should cause them to reconsider things they thought to be certain about the Russell/Chamberlain rivalry. If nothing else, it is one of the most supremely revealing and entertaining books a basketball fan could ever hope to read.
Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association by Terry Pluto
The importance of the ABA in understanding the development of professional basketball can hardly be overstated, yet it remains a shadowy presence that little is known about due to the lack of video footage and the fact that many of the teams operated in obscurity or on the verge of bankruptcy. Or often, both. Loose Balls, Terry Pluto’s oral history of the league, helps to remedy that by capturing the magic and messiness of the league in equal measure, in the voices of the players, coaches, broadcasters, and executives themselves. The extensive anecdotes that fill this book give it a conversational feel, one that is both informative and hilarious. Loose Balls is the definitive book on the ABA, so good that in the nearly three decades since its release no author has even attempted to better it.
From Cages to Jump Shots: Pro Basketball’s Early Years by Robert W. Peterson
The pre-Russell years of professional basketball are often a bit murky, and few authors have shown themselves to be very interested in the years between the invention of basketball and the beginning of the Celtics dynasty. It’s this gap that Peterson fills, as he tracks the game from Naismith’s 1891 invention of the game up until it became the sport we know and love today. While there was a surplus of leagues and barnstorming teams that would seem to prevent an author from finding a tidy narrative, Peterson is able to streamline it so that the chaos of the early twentieth century basketball world can make some sort of sense to the reader. If you want to understand basketball’s strange infancy and adolescence, you’d be hard pressed to find a better guide than From Cages to Jump Shots.
Basketball: Its Origin and Development by James Naismith
James Naismith, in his lone book, attempts to describe his life in brief with a focus on the situations that led to his invention of basketball and its subsequent spread throughout the world. Perhaps more than the information contained within it, what strikes the reader is Naismith’s authorial voice for what it lacks in prosaic beauty, it more than makes up for with warmth and sincerity. While the origins and development of basketball are indeed described in a way that is both detailed and delightful, what is most apparent is Naismith’s convictions and principles, his desire to leave the world a better place than he found it — a goal he undoubtedly fulfilled.
The Last Shot by Darcy Frey
This 1994 book has Darcy Frey spending several months with four high school students from Coney Island as they try to win a city championship and find a way to garner collegiate scholarships, which appear to be their only way to escape poverty and a life with predefined limitations. While The Last Shot is primarily a profile of these young athletes, it also doubles as an account of institutional racism and the corruption that plagues amateur athletics, making it an often gut-wrenching read. Also, one of the high schoolers profiled is a young Stephon Marbury, and after reading this, so much of what was to come in his life will make immediate sense.
Micah Wimmer is a senior writer for Grandstand Central, whose primary interests are sports, literature, and popular music. He’s also the host of Grandstand Central’s newest podcast ‘Pros & Prose’ — the book club for sports fans. You can follow him here.
