A Season on the Reservation: My Soujourn With the White Mountain Apaches

Amazon.com
Nearly a decade after leaving professional basketball, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar decided to return to the sport he loved by becoming the assistant coach of the Alchesay Falcons--a high school team composed mostly of White Mountain Apaches. But in A Season on the Reservation, he may have actually learned more than he taught.

An outsider at the beginning, Abdul-Jabbar found ways to learn more about his athletes and the tribe. He discovered cultural traditions that made it difficult to coach the team (discomfort at being singled out for criticism, for example) and became more sensitive to the special challenges faced by young Native Americans. As Abdul-Jabbar notes, by working with the students he moved from a historical appreciation for the White Mountain Apaches as a people to an understanding of them as individuals. That said, Abdul-Jabbar can't quite seem to shake his romantic image of the young Apaches: "Sometimes I would glance his way and imagine him sitting astride a paint pony two hundred years earlier, ready to ride off into the mountains and hunt."

Through his players, Abdul-Jabbar finds himself getting caught up in the competition--his passion for basketball obviously rekindled. Readers may find the end of the Falcons' season rather abrupt, but perhaps that's the nature of high school sports. They also may be a bit put off by Abdul-Jabbar's occasional arrogance, especially when talking about his professional days ("The 1985 Lakers would have taken [Jordan's Bulls] in a championship series.") or when dissing later NBA stars such as Shaq ("He's publicly referred to the way I used to play as 'old man's basketball,' which it may have been, but it earned me six more rings than he's got so far."). Overall, however, A Season on the Reservation is infused with an obvious love of the White Mountain Apaches, their land, and the sport of basketball. --Sunny Delaney

From Publishers Weekly
More contemplative than action-packed, this is the account of a season Kareem spent working with the Alchesay Falcons, a high school basketball team on the White Mountain Apache reservation in Whiteriver, Ariz. Guiding the young men to the state tournament, Kareem reflects upon his own life and on the state of the game, as well as upon present-day professional players and aspiring youth ("Athletes need to stay in school until they have graduated from college"). Throughout the account, he explains basketball moves, but his focus is on more abstract matters, like his philosophy of teaching. The games themselves are straightforwardly recounted but lack dramatic punch, mainly because the season ends with a loss. But drama for Kareem lies elsewhere--in his learning about the social, cultural and economic hardships faced by the boys, who live in one of the poorest counties in the nation, and in the boys learning to push beyond the comfort zone of their community. As he has demonstrated in his previous books (Giant Steps; Black Profiles in Courage), Kareem has a passion for history, which he shares when, as part of his effort to motivate the team, he relates elements of the Native American past and attempts to link it to African-American history. At the end of the season, Kareem leaves with a feeling of having found a second home. TV and radio satellite tours. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
YA-The death of his mother, interest in a Buffalo Soldier named Glass, and a growing friendship with Apache Indian Edgar Perry all lead the former NBA star to White River, AZ, and the reservation of the White Mountain Apaches. He came full circle as he volunteered to help coach the Alchesay Falcons during their 1998-99 basketball season. After eight years of retirement, coaching was both frustrating and meaningful for the athlete. He saw the same desire in these players to run and gun in lieu of the fundamentals that he had seen in young professional players who want only the huge bonuses. Just as the former superstar has learned to step out of his own "comfort zone," so too did he want to teach that skill to these young men. This is Abdul-Jabbar's story and readers not only learn his feelings about cultural differences but also about his own need to find his center and have thinking time. Exciting replays of basketball games juxtaposed against a look at one facet of Native American culture from a minority's perspective add up to a solid book.Pam Spencer, Young Adult Literature Specialist, Virginia Beach, VA Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
It is not uncommon for ex-athletes to try their hand at writing on predictable subjects such as making sacrifices for the ultimate goal of a championship, or overcoming some adversity. Abdul-Jabbar, happily, goes beyond these subjects and instead writes about his experience coaching a Native American high school basketball team. The book centers on how both Abdul-Jabbar and the boys learn from each other both on and off the court. Native culture, Abdul-Jabbar writes, enriched his own life; likewise, the young ball players learned from Abdul-Jabbar's basketball savvy and his personal experiences. Although the book does tell the expected story of the team's attempt to win a championship, this is not its ultimate message. Instead, it's a book about how a team and its coach handle life's problems and attempt to achieve goals larger than winning a game. Recommended for all public libraries.---Patrick Mahoney, Kansas City P.L., Overland Park, KS Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The New York Times Book Review, Michael E. Ross
...the reader can witness to how a season on the other side of the stripe can yield truths about a world on the other side of one's experience.

From AudioFile
While the author is a world-famous basketball player, this memoir is not really a basketball book. Yes, it's about one season for the Alchesay High School Falcons on the White Mountain Apache Indian reservation in Arizona. But the story really is about discovery, as Abdul-Jabbar comes to know the people of the tribe and is accepted by them. It's their story, not his. Carl Lumbly, a stage and screen actor, gives a clear reading. The author presents an introduction, so the difference between his voice and Lumbly's is striking. But after a short while, the listener won't mind. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
In 1998, in response to Colin Powell's call for volunteerism, basketball Hall-of-Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar became an assistant coach for the Alchesay Falcons on the Whiteriver Reservation in Arizona. Abdul-Jabbar's challenge was three-fold: to relate a lifetime of basketball experience to the skill level of the players he was coaching; to assert himself yet remain respectful of the permanent coaching staff; and to remember why being a teenager is so difficult. His challenges were compounded by Native American culture, which makes personal criticism difficult to mete out or accept, and by the social ills on the reservation. Abdul-Jabbar is a thoughtful, empathetic, and intelligent man who understands that social change comes about one individual at a time. His diary-style account of his year on the reservation chronicles a valuable learning experience for both coach and players. No mere sports autobiography, this is a fascinating and genuinely revealing look at Native American culture Wes Lukowsky

From Kirkus Reviews
A restless basketball legend coaches high schoolers on an Arizona Indian reservation and learns a good deal more than he teaches. Eager to put the tumult of Los Angeles behind him and ever in search of new challenges, Abdul-Jabbar packed his car in the fall of 1997 and headed to Arizona to serve as a volunteer coach/advisor at Alchesay High School in Whiteriver. Upon arrival at the White Mountain Apache reservation, the star felt out of placea sensation he was eminently familiar with as an extremely tall kid, and as an contemplative, bookish young man in the machismo-soaked world of pro sports. Gradually acquiring enough familiarity with Apache life to earn the trust and friendship of his players and their families, Kareem wondered why many of them seemed resistant to coaching. Over the course of the season, Kareem seized every opportunity to learn more about his players, their culture, and their environment. He discovered through his players experiences the many obstacles these boys facedalcoholism, lack of opportunity, the pressure not to succeed too conspicuously for fear of shaming others less fortunate. Kareem also began to think in new ways about his own life, especially about his failure to land a coaching job at a major college or in the pros. Although the Alchesay High Falcons never realized their potential as a team, they tested themselves and grew as individuals, on the court and off, and, by and large, enjoyed themselves in the process. Rather than wait in despair for a Falcon guard to score an improbable basket, or for the team to rally from another huge deficit, Kareem learned to share his charges enthusiasm for the gamea pleasure he had missed, and one he realized would be all but absent from coaching at the highest levels. Thoughtful, introspective, and candid, Abdul-Jabbar offers readers a refreshing departure from the usual Im-the-greatest tone of jock-penned tomes. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Book Description
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has always been fascinated by history-nineteenth-century American history in particular. Tired of L.A., restless and looking for new adventure, challenge, and discovery, he decides to go live among the Apaches he's read about. He encounters a complex reality. The kids on the Alchesay Falcons team don't easily embrace what he's trying to teach them on the court. Gradually they begin to learn from him as he begins to learn from them. He teaches them to push out of their comfort zone and try new things, both in sports and in life. They give him something he didn't quite expect: a way to reconnect with his passion for basketball. This is a story about the qualities we have in common and the things that still divide us in terms of race, culture, and history. Along the way, we get to know the kids, the coaches, the town of Whiteriver and Alchesay High, the tribe-but most of all, we get closer to Kareem, a man well into middle age who wants to pass along his knowledge and experience in basketball and life. Kareem gives something back, and in so doing receives more than he ever imagined.

About the Author
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar retired from basketball in 1989. The author of best-sellers Giant Steps and Kareem: Reflections from Inside, he remains a devout Muslim and an active, articulate spokesperson for African-Americans.


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Abdul-Jabbar makes clear the process taking place: we see these raw talents -- player and coach alike -- working to pierce their differences of culture and history. The straightforward exposition of strategy offers a view of the interior game, the mental chess match that is modern coaching. In Abdul-Jabbar's unabashed devotion to the place and its people, the reader can witness to how a season on the other side of the stripe can yield truths about a world on the other side of one's experience.


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