Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Adventure FROM OUR EDITORS
The Barnes & Noble Review
When Lithuania came within a three-pointer of beating the United States Dream Team in the 2000 Olympics, many saw it as a harbinger of things to come. In Big Game, Small World Sports Illustrated basketball expert Alexander Wolff proves that the international future of the sport is now. Part scrapbook, part basketball scripture, this work covers the four corners of the globe, dispensing nuggets of basketball wisdom that would make Confucius smile.
Wolff begins his globe-trotting, appropriately enough, in Almonte, Ontario, the birthplace of modern basketball's inventor, James Naismith. From Canada he follows the bouncing ball to Lithuania, Poland, and 27 other basketball hotbeds at home and abroad. While the levels of competition and the gravity of the games vary, each locale has its own hoop dreams. In Peoria, Illinois, Wolff learns why the crossover dribble is a more coveted skill than the dunk: "Sometimes a dunk is just a dunk, but there's no such thing as an uncontested, breakaway crossover dribble. The crossover is the bomb because it's always laid on somebody." In China, Wolff meets with Big Xu and a girl who pledges her love for Michael Jordan: "I will marry someone like Qiao Dan!"
Wolff's essays combine acute observations of global sport with moments of basketball holiness, such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar discussing his first ever sky-hook and the origins of basketball. Wolff reports from a miraculous Penn-Princeton game at the Palestra in Philadelphia, and he himself scores off a back-door feed from legendary coach Pete Carril in a pickup game at Princeton. In praising the globalization of the game, Wolff goes so far as to suggest that the sport could bring about greater geopolitical harmony. That may be a stretch, but then again, Naismith would be awfully surprised that his gym class diversion has made it this far. (Brenn Jones)
FROM THE PUBLISHER
In Bhutan the king has his own hoops tutor -- and basketball helped ward off a war. In Florida a three-on-three tournament draws the best schoolyard players in America. And in Brazil they play the game to a samba beat -- and two remarkable women have become known as the Magic and Larry of their nation. From China to the American Midwest, from the playgrounds of New York to the gyms of Europe, the quaint little sport that James Naismith invented in 1891 has leapt over boundaries and swept across language barriers around the globe. To capture this amazing phenomenon, Sports Illustrated senior writer and New York Times bestselling author Alexander Wolff traveled the world and chronicled the personalities, histories, tragedies, and comedies spinning around the sport of basketball -- and shows how its ferocity, power, and grace appeal to the human passions in us all.
FROM THE CRITICS
Book Magazine
Sports Illustrated writer Wolff took a year off to investigate just how widely and deeply the American game of basketball has penetrated. Wolff watches the Afrobasket tournament in Angola, the women's game in Brazil and the European championship in France. He interviews players in China and Japan, talks with an Israeli legend and witnesses hoop mania in the Philippines. His most exotic and humorous trip is to Bhutan, where he just misses getting into a pickup game with the king of this tiny African country. Wolff's best chapters are about the former Yugoslavia and concern conflicts among former national teammates such as the NBA's Vlade Divac and Toni Kukoc. Other highlights include a three-on-three amateur tournament in Celebration, Florida; a midnight league in Kansas City; the crossover dribble school of Peoria, Illinois; and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar coaching on an Indian reservation in Arizona. Wolff always personalizes the large theme he pursues, revealing how the game brings different races, cultures, ethnic groups and eccentric individuals together. By touring outside the NCAA and NBA, Wolff has written one of the richest, most varied basketball books out there. —Tom LeClair
Publishers Weekly
In his newest, Wolff (coauthor of Raw Recruits) sets off on his international tour of "the country of basketball" 16 different nations and eight states with his thesis: "Basketball is quick-cutting, digital, and perfectly adapted to... manifestations of American cultural power." And fortunately for fans, he's also a stylish reporter (for Sports Illustrated). Basketball is now stepping on the heels of soccer as the world's game (Wolff claims that 71% of middle-class teenagers worldwide play or watch, including "two of every three girls on the planet." In the middle of a 1998 Princeton game, Wolff had an epiphany: he would become a roundball anthropologist. His first expedition was to explore professional basketball culture in Europe and to record indigenous versions in Japan, the Philippines, Bhutan and Brazil. He proves that the game's essence transcends national boundaries, and he turns up dozens of dedicated, delightful even tragic basketball stories and characters in what will seem unlikely places to an average Kansas State fan, for instance. He doesn't neglect U.S. homegrown teams, however, and includes familiar interviews in Chapel Hill, Kansas and Texas but it is the new comparative basketball culture that excites his best writing. (Jan.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
Basketball's popularity worldwide often goes beyond the bounds of recreation, business, and entertainment. In some countries, its impact is political and even cultural, as Sports Illustrated writer Wolff makes clear in this enlightening sports travelog. The author explored the game's international reach by interviewing some of the best and brightest players, coaches, and observers in 16 countries. He starts his research in Ontario, Canada, birthplace of James Naismith, who is credited with inventing the game in Springfield, MA, in 1891. Europe was Wolff's next destination, and he presents many colorful anecdotes from stops spanning Poland, Italy, and Bosnia. Back in the United States, Wolff traveled widely and asked players of numerous ethnic backgrounds about basketball's influence on their lives and aspirations. More trips to Brazil, Japan, and Bhutan demonstrate the myriad differences in how various countries approach the sport, but it's quite evident by the end of the book that there are more unifying elements than divisive ones. Wolff's knack for finding fascinating people to interview goes far in humanizing basketball in a global context. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries. Will Hepfer, SUNY at Buffalo Libs. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Home
