From Publishers Weekly
Years of behind-the-scenes reporting fuel this fast, funny basketball exposé from
Sports Illustrated writers McCallum and Wertheim, covering ground both expected (race, sex, the press) and unexpected (reality TV, PR, cars). When the Los Angeles Lasers recruit Yale whiz kid Jamal Kelly to replace their suddenly deceased director of public relations, Jamal finds himself struggling to keep a level head while managing the team brand and the hot shots behind it: players, execs, coaches and one very eccentric team owner. Shocked and seduced by a world of pro sports glitz (strip club lunches, exclusive parties in the Hollywood hills, etc.), Jamal finds support from sexy
L.A. Times sports reporter Jilly Forrester and slumping team captain Lorenzen "Lo" Mayne, as well as his own down-and-out brother, Zeke. McCallum and Wertheim take very funny jabs at corporate sponsorship, racialized posturing and professional entitlement. They also manage to cram in the stories of an impressively large cast as they try to deal with the conflicting spheres of team, families and lovers. When a secret that three players have been harboring suddenly surfaces, Jamal must choose between star power and what he knows is right. There's enough plot tension to keep things moving, but it's the insider details that give the book punch.
(Feb.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Jamal Kelly escaped the inner city with a scholarship to Yale, and as graduation approaches he is putting the finishing touches on a statistical-analysis program that he hopes will affect professional basketball in much the same way sabermetrics is changing baseball. His work lands him a position with the Los Angeles Lasers of the NBA. He's young, relatively wealthy, and livin' the dream. Or so he thinks. The league and its players soon prove an often-dismaying convergence of narcissism, greed, and cultural exploitation. McCallum and Wertheim, senior writers for
Sports Illustrated who certainly know the excesses of the NBA, have chosen "reality fiction" as a safe cover to avoid the legal tangles of naming names, a strategy they skewer in the book's last pages. There is some inspired humor here, including an All-Star event sponsored by an erectile dysfunction drug and dedicated to all the "ballers" out there. Most fans would rather have had the real names, but in the meantime, they can enjoy a fast-paced story while they try to match the fictional player with his NBA counterpart.
Wes LukowskyCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
