one of them oral history/interview books (where it's minimal original writing, the content is all from involved subjects like the SNL/ESPN/MTV/etc. books) in semi-chronological but primarily topically organized, so like it'll start talking about the Celtics dynasty as that was early in the NBA but then cover a bit broader than that to talk about Red and Russell and Cousy a bit, it tries to cover the women's game semi-equally (and tries to compare it to racial issues) but like always it comes off as trying to push it too hard like literally asking the women and only women interviewees what they think about Title IX and all of them have some rote "uh yeah, it was good I guess" reply, but like all Nancy Lieberman wants to do is talk about all the men she idolized growing up and tried to steal moves from lol
Spensie Haywood is amazing, his stories are just absurd, I knew he was a "young, dumb, country boy" that fascinated others early on but not this much... also speaking of Lieberman, her stories are fun too because she's a little older than even like Cheryl Miller or whatever, she went to Rucker Park alone as an eleven year old because she heard that's where people played basketball in NYC and when kids were giving her shit for being a girl she asked them if "you Rucker?" and it always worked
lmao, the ABA wanted to patent/trademark the red, white and blue ball only they only did it with the ABA logo on it, anyone could still make a ball just couldn't stamp ABA on it, also they did no tests before hand, the first game they just painted a ball with regular paint
big chunk of the book is an ABA section because a huge chunk of the sources are people who had ABA roots, also related to that the now retired David Stern for the first time kinda actually admits what the NBA was doing in regards to that and other issues (Connie Hawkins, etc.) when he was just a lowly lawyer for the league, he didn't used to like to admit any of that when he was Commissioner and lifted up Larry O'Brien to heights
by comparison the entire section about the WNBA is five pages long...three if you remove Stern and Val Ackerman's comments about how amazing it was to start it...
also Bill Simmons is one of the interviewees because he's Bill Simmons and apparently that's legally required now even though he only has the same five stories about seeing the Celtics as a kid that he's told for twenty years, also he's the only person in the book to shit talk Wilt while like Bill Russell calls him the best player ever, others talk about how nice and understanding Wilt was to everyone or Larry Brown relays a story about when he was at UCLA and Wilt was in one of Magic's famous pickup games and Magic kept calling goaltends and fouls that Wilt did not feel were entirely accurate so Wilt got serious and wrecked everybody at age 45 or whatever and I may have fused that part of Simmons unnecessary contributions to the book to this simply to retell that story
here's Nancy Lieberman and Rashad McCants (edit: yes, I looked this up obv) on the Mavs D-League Team when she coached it
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