Is Basketball the Sport of the American Dream?
With talk of closing borders and putting up walls, Dirk’s story reminds us what it used to mean for an immigrant to ‘Make It in America’.
In 1868, a little known author named Horatio Alger published a book called Ragged Dick. It tells the story of a poor shoeshine boy who rises up through New York society by thrift and an act of heroism, and is rewarded with a job that finally cements his presence in high society and his distance from his former life as a vagabond. It was a comforting story, one that a nation still recovering from Civil War quickly embraced. It told Americans a myth that they wanted to believe, however far from reality it was — the idea that merit was the defining trait of the successful, and that success in American society was not predicated upon luck or heritage, but skill and ingenuity and worthiness.
Today, it’s an idea that’s easy to scoff at, but it’s an idea that made Alger one of the most successful American writers of his time. He was able to communicate what Americans want to believe about themselves and while there are numerous ways of disproving this thesis, it still has a tremendous hold over the American imagination.
There is another story we like to tell, a story that has become undercut by conservative, xenophobic politicians today, but a story that is nevertheless a part of the national fabric. And that is the story of America being a nation of immigrants, a nation made up of persons from a number of different cultures who are nevertheless all American in spite of the lack of any defining characteristic that binds them together apart from their American-ness. We say that we welcome the poor, the tired, the huddled masses and that all can make a home in this messy nation of ours, finding their own way to define themselves as American. This too exercises its own particular hold over the American imagination.
During the 2010–2011 NBA season, these stories played out in their own way, as a German immigrant who had originally struggled to adapt to the American lifestyle came to encapsulate the American ideal. Dirk Nowitzki was able to win his first NBA championship, leading the Dallas Mavericks to an unlikely title. It was the uplifting immigrant story we like to believe in microcosm — as well as the story of the hard worker who is able to earn his rewards through merit and skill — transmitted to millions internationally in the form of a basketball game. For many, it was a feel good moment, helping to encapsulate what makes both basketball and America the unique creations they are.
Is basketball truly the sports world’s best representation of the American dream? According to author Ian Thomsen in his new book ‘The Soul of Basketball’, it may very well be. While other sports privilege particular positions — football protects the quarterback while baseball has special rules regarding the pitcher — basketball is a true meritocracy where the dominant player on each roster largely determines the strategy and fate of their team.
The Horatio Alger stories we heard as children have since been exposed as myths, but there remains something fundamentally American about the idea of self-determination and success being determined by merit, even if the reality is often at odds with this ideal. Similarly, as it becomes harder and harder for immigrants to successfully become citizens, we still like to believe that we are an immigrant nation, welcoming and hope-giving. It is this struggle between messy reality and hopeful dreaming that defines much of the NBA for Thomsen who writes that the NBA is “a theater in which the values of America were meant to be thrashed out,” calling basketball “the game of freedom, equality, and merit.”
In the first episode of the Pros and Prose Podcast, I spoke to Thomsen about his thesis, and dove deeper into the stories and larger-than-life figures that came to define the 2010–11 season. We discussed the public versus private Pat Riley, the evolution of LeBron James, Doc Rivers’ thoughts on distractions, and the rise of basketball as a global sport.
Show notes:
- Why did you title the book “The Soul of Basketball?”
- Why tell the story of the 2010–11 season?
- Throughout the book, you seem to write about LeBron as if he is confused, unsure of how to live up to his calling as the ‘Chosen One’. Do you still see him that way, eight years after the Decision? What’s changed?
- A lot of the book focuses on off-the-court figures, most notably Pat Riley and Doc Rivers, along with a chapter on referee Joey Crawford. What was it about these figures that made you want to devote so much space to them?
- What resonance do you think that season has for NBA fans today, seven years later?
- The book focuses on Dirk and Holger, but was there anything about the other players on that Mavs team as a unit that stood out to year as you researched and wrote this book?
- Why do you feel that Dirk and the Mavs winning the title that year helped to cement basketball as the sport of the American Dream?
Notable mentions:
LeBron James| Dirk Nowitzki| Kobe Bryant| Paul Pierce| Pat Riley| Doc Rivers| Gregg Popovich| Joey Crawford
Additional Reading:
- “Ahead of His Class: LeBron James is the Chosen One” Sports Illustrated.
- “David Stern on The Decision: ‘I Thought the World Was Being Terribly Unfair to Him’. Yahoo Sports.
- “The Forgotten Dominance of Dirk Nowitzki.” SB Nation.
- “What James Can Learn From Nowitzki”. New York Times.
Micah Wimmer is a senior writer 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.
