Customer Reviews

The Rivalry: Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and the Golden Age of Basketball

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The funny thing about "The Rivalry," is that you don't have to be a huge basketball fan to really enjoy this book. You don't even have to like basketball. Although my dad (a huge basketball fan) gave this book to me (we spent years watching basketball on television and going to Knicks games when I was a kid), and I thought I knew all about Russell and Chamberlain (I didn't!), Taylor has written an amazing book of an important part of sports history. And "The Rivalry" is not just about basketball history, but about competition, winning and "the game." My sister will get the book next!

Rather than reading a biography of Red Auerbach, Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell, turn to this period book! Here you get everything: a complete portrayal of the situation of African American who were just starting to segregate professional sports outside of the Brooklyn Dodgers. But at the same time it is an introduction to a time, when athletes were not the superstars of today.

On top of that, you get enough biographcal information on Russell and Chamberlain, but also on Cousy, Auerbach and many others.

The book is very well written and starts right with information, no tedious introduction to plough through.

This book is hard to put down. Taylor goes beyond the Rivalry and relates all the history of the period and that's what I liked best about the book. The Rivalry is the main story but all the added information about the NBA, Coaches, Politics, Civil Rights really made this a great read.

BTW - my all time, all star team, best at each position:

Russell, Pettit, Bird, Robertson, Jordan.

This appears to be a thorough, thoughtful examination of the Russell-Chamberlain rivalry and what it did for pro basketball (much as Bird-Magic would do years later), but its sloppiness makes its accuracy on any given anecdote suspect. Given that some of the inaccuracy involves some of the better-known, most easily researched moments -- mistakes that literally jump out for their amatuerishness -- I went from initially being fascinated by Taylor's compilation of behind-the-scenes insights to wondering whether I could trust any of it.

Here are some examples that came to mind as I read The Rivalry:

* Taylor's depiction of one of the most celebrated shots in NBA history, Don Nelson's desperation foul-line set shot that bounced freakishly high off the rim before falling through the net just as the Lakers were making their Game 7 comeback in 1969, is available from many film sources, and yet Taylor gets it all wrong. He say Keith Erickson "blocked a shot" and Nelson "recovered" the ball, when in fact, Erickson clearly reached from behind Havlicek in an attempt to steal the ball and poked it loose. The ball went directly to Nelson's hands some 10 feet away as if it were a pass (yet another freakish twist to the play) -- Nelson didn't "recover" the ball, he had it plop into his open hands like a gift from the basketball gods.

* Taylor correctly depicts Sam Jones' rattling game-winner triple-pick jumper on the "Ohio" play that pulled out Game 4 for the Celtics in the first telling, but later in the book refers to it as having happened in Game 5. Did anyone edit the book or even proof it? This is basic stuff, folks, and if you can't trust the simple things to be accurate, can you trust Taylor's accuracy on the more sophisticated events described in the book?

* For instance, Taylor goes into great detail about the injuries and strategies of both the Celtics and Lakers leading into the 1969 finals, yet leaves out one of the most crucial factors and a pretty well-documented one: Although Havlicek had been the team's famed Sixth Man throughout his career to that point, Russell moved him into the starting lineup for that series because he felt the Celtics needed to get off to faster starts. That, more than anything, may have made the difference in the series because in most of those games the Celtics jumped out to early big leads and put the Lakers in the position of constantly having to play catchup. The psychological implications of this dynamic can't be overstated, as the Lakers (and Wilt, with the exception of 1967) had perpetually lost to the Celtics and to trail early in most of the championship games had to reinforce likely presumptions that once again the Celtics couldn't be beaten.

As I say, these are just simple, obvious things that jumped out as I read -- and things any reasonable student of the game should have gotten right. I'd like to think they're just minor dumb oversights, but I can't help but wonder if the rest of the so-called facts in this book are as dubious.

The book is a good read -- I just don't trust it.

As "old-school" fans cringe at the ever-increasing pyrotechnics of arena presentation and the changing style of gameplay in the NBA as unprofessional, Taylor uses the Chamberlain/Russell rivalry to tell the story of an early NBA that makes the recent theatrical release of "Semi-Pro" seem like a documentary and should set those "old-school" fans straight about the professionalism of the early NBA.

Taylor tells the story of a league that would make Slap Shot's Reggie Dunlop proud. The NBA of the 50's was - according to SI's Ray Cave - a "brawling, hustling, cigar-in-the-mouth and eye-on-the-till game." Mix in the Jim Crow south and league integration and kaleidoscopic changes in franchise names, cities and personnel, and you have a calamitous witch's brew.

From Red Auerbach sucker-punching an opposing owner on the court during warm-ups, to the incessant racism black players faced at games, in hotels, and restaurants across the league, "The Rivalry" seems early on to be the story of a failed pro basketball league that could not possibly have become today's NBA.

Then, marketing gold arrives in the form of two world-class athletes of titanic proportions who would go on to wage a bigger-than-life rivalry that would span almost two decades and eventually take on - literally - a Hollywood aura of bi-coastal bad blood that continues to this day. And, along the way, Taylor gives some really enjoyable insight on these two athletes, their teams and cities. Further, in some really wonderful asides, Taylor gives the reader a glimpse at the depth of thought and research he put into the subject (i.e., a great - if too brief - discussion of the rise of TV as a driver of NBA popularity, and the effect of commercial jet travel on the league's expansion).

The book is paced well and is among the finest long-form sports writing I have read. A jacket quotation acclaims Taylor's work to rival "anything by Halberstam or Feinstein," and I would agree that it compares very favorably with their best stuff; and, really surpasses some of their weaker efforts.

Taylor's access is startling. There are moments in the book where his omniscient narrator crawls inside the heads of his subjects and it isn't until you cross-check those moments with the handy footnote system at the back of the book that it becomes clear just how much research Taylor compiled and how many interviews he was able to complete.

As a weak point, I would say that Taylor does a cursory job of getting inside Russell's head and finding an explanation for some of the great center's thoughts, actions and opinons both from the 60's and into the mid-90s. A lot of the well-trodden ground (i.e., Boston as "the most strictly-segregated city in the country") is just taken for granted and not explored any more deeply. And while - unlike Russell - it doesn't feel as though it wants for digging, the portrayal of Chamberlain is stark and unflattering. And, even while focusing on these two greats, Taylor does reserve plenty of space for thoughtful and often flattering portraits of other stars, including Jerry West, Tom Heinsohn, Elgin Baylor, Bob Cousy and Alex Hannum.

I highly recommend the read and look forward to picking up some of Taylor's non-sports stuff too.

JAW

A lot of times, these nonfiction books about games and scores and statistics and so on are packed full of information but are dense and not very compelling. John Taylor, however, does an excellent job of presenting a ton of information in a fun and interesting way. The book is easy and entertaining to read, and you'll probably learn a lot about Russell, Chamberlain, and the period during which they played basketball. I'd definitely recommend this to anyone who enjoys well-written nonfiction, whether or not he is a basketball fan.

Having read many basketball books, I find this as one of the best. Well-written, thoroughly researched, it captures the era of the 50s and 60s from the perspective of two of the greatest players ever, Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain. Thankfully, Taylor does not go into play-by-play detail of games, instead captures the flavor of the era, everything from coaching, basketball styles, management, to racism. It is fascinating and truly an outstanding read. I highly recommend it.

* I usually stay away from blasting another review, but the one below that says it is poorly written and that the author does not know basketball is so off the mark, I would say it is a complete lie and fabrication. Ignore that review and get this book.

Growing up if you loved the NBA like I did, you either love Wilt or Russell but not both! I was a Wilt fan so never bothered to learn much about Russell because I always had to see him win title after title. Got to understand Russell the man and human side of what he dealt with living in Boston. Furthermore got to understand the selfish side of Chamberlain. Wilt was the greatest to ever play basketball, but not a great team player!It was all about Wilt! Russell was a great team player that brought out the greatness of a team.

There have been many head-to-head rivalries in professional sports, but perhaps none has been so compelling as the NBA rivalry between Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain. In "The Rivalry", author John Taylor examines the battles between the two superstars that helped put pro basketball on the map of American sports.

The book recalls the paths that Russell and Chamberlain took to the NBA, and details how different the league was in the 1950s and 1960s. Stars in the league had different lives than pro basketball players do today, and Taylor recounts developments that in time changed the league, such as the civil rights movement, television contracts, and conflicts between the players' union and the owners.

Taylor describes Chamberlain's 100-point game, the many playoff battles between Russell's Boston Celtics and Chamberlain's squads, and some of the playoff battles that the Celtics had with some of the other noteworthy teams of the era such as the St. Louis Hawks and the pre-Wilt Los Angeles Lakers. Chamberlain was notorious for feuding with his coaches, and the author recalls many of those incidents. Russell, on the other hand, had a positive force on the chemistry of his teams, and won many more championships.

This well-researched book is a first-rate history of the NBA of the Fifties and Sixties.

What I most appreciated about this book was the objectivity of the author John Taylor. You don't find this often this day: a totally unbiased account of people. Here, we see the good and bad of Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Red Auerbach along with other notables of the 1950s and 1960s NBA.

Taylor simply points out the things that happened to Wilt, Russ, Bob Cousy, Jerry West, Tom Heinsohn and others, letting us - the reader - make up our own minds about these people. One thing for sure: you never get a boring account of anything that happened or was said by guys like Chamerberlain and Auerbach. Some of things those two did were unbelievable!

Almost all the stories in here are amazing and even if you think you know a lot about these famous basketball players, you'll be surprised at all the new inside information provided in this book - all of it very interesting and impartial.