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123 pages

English

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A brilliant, entertaining deconstruction of basketball, drawing on the expertise of board-game creators, magicians, therapists, and more Basketball is the second-most popular sport in the world-an insanely complicated game built on a combination of athleticism, craftiness, rules, intangibles, and superstardom. However, while it's enjoyable to watch, the real reason it works is because it's a game of culture, art, and all the things that make us human. How to Watch Basketball Like a Genius deconstructs the sport from top to bottom and then puts it back together again, detailing its intricacies through reporting and dozens of interviews with experts. These experts, however, are a diverse group: wine critics weighing in on LeBron's ability to delegate on the fly, magicians analyzing Chris Paul's mystifying dribbling techniques, cartographers breaking down Steph Curry's deadeye three-point shooting. Every chapter treats basketball to a multi-disciplined study that adventures far beyond the lines of the court, examining key elements of the sport from some surprising and revealing angles. There's a reason it has conquered the world, and every game is a chance to learn about pop culture, fashion, history, science, art, and anything else that bounces our way.

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Baloncesto

Basketball

Basket-ball

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Publié par	ABRAMS BOOKS
Date de parution	02 mars 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781683359203
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0600€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Text copyright 2021 Nick Greene
Illustrations copyright 2021 J.O. Applegate
Cover 2021 Abrams
Published in 2021 by Abrams Press, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020944848
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4480-8
eISBN: 978-1-68335-920-3
Abrams books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the address below.
Abrams Press is a registered trademark of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
ABRAMS The Art of Books 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007 abramsbooks.com
For Laura
Prologue It comes in peace
Section One: The Shape of the Game
An Introductory Class Naismith s original thirteen rules for basketball
Making a Bad Rule Disappear Dribbling s outlaw illusionists
Counting Down the Seconds Saving a sport in the nick of time
You ve Got to Draw the Line Somewhere The delayed insurgency of the three-pointer
Section Two: Putting the Ball in the Basket
The Cost of Free Throws Loneliness at the line
Jumping Past Conclusions Breaking the surly bonds of bad coaching
Dawn of Flight Dreaming about dunking
Section Three: Making That Dream Work
Stout, Resolute, and Somewhat Invisible Defense flies under the radar
A Passing Interest in Assists The selflessness and selfishness of sharing
The Phenomenal Shape of Chemistry When things work
Epilogue Bouncing back
Sources
Acknowledgments
Index of Searchable Terms
About the Author
PROLOGUE
It comes in peace
In July 2020, the New York Times published a report suggesting the United States military is in possession of alien technologies, including materials retrieved from UFO crash sites. An astrophysicist working with the Pentagon went on record and said that he had issued a classified briefing in March, asserting the recovered materials were from off-world vehicles not made on this earth. You may have missed this story about a potential interplanetary Cold War. I know I did. It came out in the middle of a summer beset by plague and chaos and got lost in the shuffle. America was exhausted. The aliens would have to check back in with us later.
The Times published a short follow-up piece, essentially to say, We can t believe we have to reiterate the alien news to you people. It didn t contain much new info, but the reporters further explained their sourcing: Numerous associates of the Pentagon program, with high security clearances and decades of involvement with official UFO investigations, told us they were convinced such crashes have occurred, based on their access to classified information. But the retrieved materials themselves, and any data about them, are completely off-limits to anyone without clearances and a need to know.
How, exactly, do they decide who gets to take a gander at this alien junk? I m not talking about security clearances, but rather the specific kinds of expertise deemed appropriate to the task of combing through the detritus of an extraterrestrial crash site. Physicists and materials scientists are obvious and necessary participants, as they are prepared to analyze the alloys or polymers or whatever this stuff may be, but the mystery goes beyond simply identifying properties of matter. As a species, we are very new to this sort of thing. I d hate to see us limit our options.
What if the aliens were moving to a new planet when an armoire fell out of their spacecraft and tumbled to Earth? Maybe a glowing heap at a crash site is actually a pile of otherworldly pants and overalls, but we have no clue because the military didn t ask a fashion designer or textile manufacturer to weigh in with their thoughts. Are the Pentagon s astrophysicists prepared to identify a pair of jaunty culottes? This is a legitimate concern.
Think for a moment about the reverse scenario. Humans haven t sent any physical objects far enough to realistically believe that they ll bump into the home planets of other intelligent beings, but our radio and television signals travel at high enough speeds to reach thousands of nearby star systems. It is a very real possibility that aliens living light-years away are just starting to enjoy our old programming. They might be tuning into Game 7 of the 1984 NBA Finals as you read this.
How would those extraterrestrials approach basketball? Barring the extreme cosmic coincidence that they developed an identical version of the sport independently and without our influence, the aliens wouldn t have any hoops analysts or former players to help explain what s happening. They d be forced to formulate their budding expertise regarding crossovers, reverse layups, and three-pointers on observation alone. I hope the alien powers that be let everyone, and not just their most esteemed scientists, watch hoops. The game was designed to be enjoyed by all.
Basketball is a relatively recent invention. It didn t crash-land on Earth until the late nineteenth century, and it didn t arrive fully formed. The sport has undergone constant changes throughout its brief life, many of which were thought up by people who could not be described as basketball experts. (Especially in its early days, when that distinction did not yet exist.) Despite its ever-evolving form, there remains a unique pull to the game that transcends routine fandom. Much like the Beatles discography or Sandra Bullock s performance in Speed , basketball is maximally appealing to a staggeringly large audience. It s as if we re preconditioned in the womb to embrace it. While I can t remember the first time I saw the game being played, I am confident that my underdeveloped cerebral cortex responded, warmly: This must be basketball. It s rather nice .
I live in the Bay Area, which was the center of the basketball universe for the better part of a decade thanks to the success of the Golden State Warriors. Naturally, all anyone wants to talk about is basketball. I tend to cover sports for work, but I ve long balanced that beat with writing on a whole slew of topics. As a result, I have found myself discussing hoops with concert harpists, cat behaviorists, and plasma physicists. I initially considered this to be small talk-common ground to explore before we got to the nitty-gritty of their respective fields-but it quickly became apparent that, if they had their druthers, we d spend hours talking about Steph Curry.
These are people who don t think like the athletes playing the sport or like the writers covering it. For example, a wine critic once told me she thought that noted oenophile LeBron James would make a good vineyard owner because he s a multitasker who prefers to delegate on the fly, and that his history with erratic teammates like J. R. Smith would come in handy when harvesting in unpredictable weather. This hypothetical vineyard stewardship was some of the most apt analysis I ve encountered in all my years following basketball. Score one for viticulture.
We all watch basketball differently. Not only did this realization help me build a greater appreciation for what had already been my favorite sport, but it also sparked the idea for this book. If one person s unique perspective on the game can help expand my own, what else have I been missing? I m no genius, but I knew well enough to assume there was much more to learn.
This book will not make you a better basketball player. How could it? Its author can barely dribble to his left, and I want to get that embarrassing fact out of the way early lest anyone who is familiar with my handles comes forward to initiate a public shaming. Nevertheless, I still love the sport. It just works. Whether as a whole or broken down to its disparate parts, basketball has something for everyone.
The question of how and why the game remains compelling cannot be answered from a single point of view. The NBA may never invite a ballet choreographer to judge its annual Slam Dunk Contest, and you probably won t hear a magician analyze Kyrie Irving s handles on SportsCenter, but these surprising founts of basketball wisdom are worth listening to. With this in mind, I sought out some of the smartest and most interesting people I could find and approached them with the same simple request: Would you like to talk about basketball?
I m unsure whether the chemists, professors, casting directors, philosophers, and everyone else who agreed to chat about hoops thought they were going to greatly broaden my own understanding of how the game works, but each and every one managed to do just that. What follows is an attempt to collect and contextualize all those little epiphanies so that I can share them with you.
Who knows? If this goes well, maybe they ll let us take a crack at those UFOs, too.
SECTION ONE
THE SHAPE OF THE GAME
TOPICS DISCUSSED IN THIS SECTION:
Where basketball comes from
Grievous bodily harm
Reese s Puffs cereal
Board games
Facial hair
Nominalism
Dribbling
Close-up magic
Cheating
Chain-smoking
The shot clock
Bowling alleys
PBA Rule 17.6.2.b
Superman
School dances
Maps
Faith Baptist Bible College
Management consulting
Traffic signals
TOPICS NOT DISCUSSED IN THIS SECTION:
Where babies come from
The 1988 Democratic Convention
Fly-fishing
Bubble tea
Acupuncture
Pangea
Artificial intelligence
Millinery
Wheat allergies
Calligraphy
The Olestra diarrhea panic of 1996
Pointillism
Rick Steves Europe
Baccarat
Pliny the Elder
Foghat
Pliny the Younger
Train ferries
The different types of clouds
AN INTRODUCTORY CLASS
Naismith s original thirteen rules for basketball
There are two wildly dissimilar stories about