5.0 out of 5 based on 1 reviews. – Customer review on 18/01/2012

Fascinating book! It's a conversational history of the NBA until 1981, told through the lense of the 1979-80 season of the Portland Trailblazers. As the team's season touches on various characters and issues, Halberstam pauses to explore them. Great character sketches/bios of most of the great players up until that point, the most interesting discussions I've read of the defining issues of the NBAs early years (race, TV rights, team ownership etc), as well as plenty of basketball content -- team play vs one on one, coaching styles, some great comments into the nature of the game itself, some selective play by play at key moments. The 1979-80 Blazers are an intriguing subject for the book -- an underachieving disfunctional team of resentful stars (Maurice Lucas, Lionel Hollins), players looking for redemption (Kermit Washington), aging veterans and hopeful rookies (Billy Ray Bates, Jim Paxson). Bill Walton had left the team the previous year, but together with Coach Jack Ramsey he is the central character in the book. At the close of the book (1981), the overall outlook for the NBA is very grim -- a mostly forgotten context for the rejuvenation which came with the Larry-Magic rivalry, Michael Jordan and (for Portland) Clyde Drexler (neither Jordan nor Drexler is mentioned in the book).