The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams [Paperback]

Darcy Frey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 3, 2004

It ought to be just a game, but basketball on the playgrounds of Coney Island is much more than that — for many young men it represents their only hope of escape from a life of crime, poverty, and despair. In The Last Shot, Darcy Frey chronicles the aspirations of four of the neighborhood’s most promising players. What they have going for them is athletic talent, grace, and years of dedication. But working against them are woefully inadequate schooling, family circumstances that are often desperate, and the slick, brutal world of college athletic recruitment. Incisively and compassionately written, The Last Shot introduces us to unforgettable characters and takes us into their world with an intimacy seldom seen in contemporary journalism. The result is a startling and poignant expose of inner-city life and the big business of college basketball.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Coney Island, Brooklyn, once New York City's playground, is now an archetypal ghetto, filled with high-rise housing projects and populated almost exclusively by African Americans. High schoolers there attend Abraham Lincoln High, known all around the East Coast for its outstanding basketball teams, where players see the sport as their way out of second-class citizenship. In his first book, Frey, a contributing editor at Harper's and the New York Times Magazine, has composed a sensitive account of a year in the lives of four exceptional players (three seniors and one freshman), their coach and their families, and he shows that the game can indeed be a means of escape in spite of their school's poor academic reputation. But the way out is fraught with difficulties. For instance, Frey offers devastating anecdotes about dishonest college recruiters and about the NCAA. This excellent book is not only about basketball but about realizing a dream, and its appeal should be very wide.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

For many adolescents on Coney Island, basketball is their only escape from the urban hell of poverty, crime, and drugs. The Last Shot chronicles a group of teenagers playing for one of the best teams in New York, the Abraham Lincoln Secondary School Railsplitters. These young males continually cope with circumstances beyond their control in a society that has failed miserably to provide a safe environment and, more importantly, a good education. The author, who won a National Magazine Award for the story upon which this account is based, also explains how those living in high-risk areas suffered the most when the National Collegiate Athletic Association raised the standards of acceptable SAT scores for athletes. The young men whose stories Frey so poignantly captures exist in a world of "mean streets and basketball dreams." Recommended.
L.R. Little, Penticton P.L., British Columbia
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; 1st Mariner Books Ed. 2004 edition (March 3, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618446710
• ISBN-13: 978-0618446711
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #265,125 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A true American tragedy, a post script, August 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams (Paperback)

The book is non-fiction, Corey, Stephon, Shipp are real life names, but the "Russel Simmons" (the book's central character) name was used by the author instead of Darryl Flicking (the real life Lincoln shooting guard). Flicking's mother refused to give the author permission to use her son's name (this was a money - NCAA rules issue just like Marbury's father's blackmail request of the author). Flicking was truly a great high school ball player, not just skill wise, but athletically he was a rockhard 200lb 6'3" man-child. Last year, after great success as a college player in California, Flicking was run over and killed by a train. Flicking's shot at immortality was ruined, only people who watched him play for Lincoln and in that small California college will ever know how great he was.

RIP Darryl Flicking

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A sobering and maddening look at college sports, May 6, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (potsdam, new york) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams (Paperback)

This book made me mad! Not at Darcy Frey, who writes a great book, but at the combined effects of wretched public schools, which pass along students able neither to read, write nor do sums; and at the NCAA's patronizing and exploitative treatment of "student" atheletes. "Last Shot" tells of four star black basketball players on the Lincoln High School (Coney Island) team. Despite horrible poverty, housing projects overrun by drugs and violence, ans a school system which cannot keep them safe (let alone educate), these young men are good kids. They are kept alive, and their hopes fed, by a combination of (1) amazing basketball skills; (2) a coach and mentors who believe in them; and (3) the dream of a NCAA Division I scholarship leading into the big time. Unfortunately, only one makes it, and he just barely. The other three cannot meet the Proposition 48 requirement of 700 SAT scores (even though their high school grades are good), and lose their shot at a Division I scholarship.

Juxtaposed against these hopeful young men, who do everything that is asked of them but are finally betrayed by abysmal schooling, are the Division I recruiters, many of them well-known coaches. They give new meaning to the word "smarmy." They are corrupted by the system. Darcy's title "Last Shot" has a (quite intentional) double meaning. He refers first to the excitement of a well-played game, when victor and vanquished hang in the balance. More troubling, he acknowledges that, for each of these boys, the chance to escape the ghetto through a basketball scholarship has become his "last shot" at a successful (or safe) life. To mix metaphors, what angers me about the situation Frey describes -- in fact makes me so mad I will have trouble watching the NCAA Tournament this year -- is that these young men have received a raw deal. It's not right!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just a Great book, December 26, 2002

By 

"brendan16" (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams (Paperback)

This is one of the best books I've ever read. It's not just another stupid basketball book -- it's really an in-depth look into the lives of 4 inner city kids trying to reach success by way of a basketball scholarship. The author follows their high school team around for about 9 months, and chronicles his experiences and conversations with each kid (one of whom is future NBA star Stephon Marbury). This book will fascinate you with true stories and inside looks at the often-crooked nature of amateur sports, but what I found most compelling was the way their own education system and support structure often failed them.