Five Classic Books Every Basketball Lover Should Read

In 1992, George Plimpton used the pages of the paper of record to share his theory on sportswriting: “The smaller the ball, the more formidable the literature,” he wrote. “There 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.”

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’ve now written two of them (and, since you asked, my latest—A Hollywood Ending: The Dreams and Drama of the LeBron Lakers—out now), but because basketball books have everything you could possibly want in a piece of non-fiction.

They have characters! They have drama! When they’re at their best, they explore the intersections of race, politics, power, and fame! I’m one of those people who believe that sports mirror society, and no sport, I’d argue, reflects it more vividly than basketball. Sure, you can find some duds in the genre (no, we’re 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.

With that in mind, here’s a list of five of my favorites. To be clear: this is not a “best ever” list. Think of it instead as five books that moved me the first time I read them and have stayed with me ever since.

David Halberstam, The Breaks of the Game

You can’t talk about sports books—let alone basketball books—without paying homage to Halberstam’s masterpiece. On the surface, it’s a standard “A Season with Team X” setup: Halberstam embedded with the 1979–80 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.

Stuffed with sharp, brilliant and—perhaps most important of all—beautifully written portraits of unforgettable characters like Bill Walton and Maurice Lucas to the team’s 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’s also unlikely ever to be topped.

Jeff Pearlman, Showtime

No one going right now is better at writing sports books than Pearlman and this one—about Magic Johnson, Jerry Buss and the Showtime Lakers—is my favorite of his many classics. I think there are two things that Pearlman does better than anyone else. One is his ability—and, more than that, willingness—to 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.

Combine those skills with his singular voice—the kind where you can feel the joy he clearly takes in the writing and storytelling process leaping off the page—and 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—and 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 ‘80s. There’s a reason Adam McKay turned this book into a TV show.

Scott Raab, The Whore of Akron

First off, Raab—a longtime magazine writer for outlets like GQ and Esquire during their heydays—is 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’ 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.

Yes, there are plenty of vivid, behind-the-scenes moments—the kind that make you feel like you’re eavesdropping on conversation you’re not supposed to be hearing that, in today’s access-driven world of sports reporting, rarely see the light of day— 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 (“Being Jewish and being a Cleveland sports fan have always felt to me like the same thing.”). He’s unsparing in his assessments, too. The Whore of Akron is full of tales of sex, drug use, and shame—only here they belong to the writer, not the athletes. It’s funny, raw, self-lacerating, and thought-provoking all at once. This book makes you think. It’s also a blast.

Jack McCallum, :07 Seconds or Less

This is one of those books that I still can’t 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’Antoni to let him embed with the team’s coaching staff for the 2005-06 season. This may sound simple, and may sound common; it’s 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’s star player after games. And yet here was McCallum spending a season in coaches meetings, team bus rides and player huddles.

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’m in this room right now?! and his eagerness to bring readers along for the ride. So many basketball books—my own included—pitch 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.

Terry Pluto, Loose Balls

If you’ve ever seen the (in my opinion) underrated Will Ferrell movie Semi Pro—about a scrappy professional basketball squad from Flint, Michigan trying to hold on for dear life during the now-defunct American Basketball Association (ABA)’s final season—and thought, This stuff is just TOO ridiculous, well, you clearly haven’t read Pluto’s brilliant, hilarious and page-turning oral history on the league.

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’s 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.

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