Grundman, Dolph. Dolph Schayes and the Rise of Professional Basketball. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2014. Pp. xix+163. Illustrations, notes, works cited, and index. $24.95 clothback. Reviewed by Paul Putz When Dolph Schayes passed away last December, the New York Times devoted two stories to the legacy of the basketball Hall-of-Famer. One described Schayes, who…
Wolff, Alexander. The Audacity of Hoop: Basketball and the Age of Obama. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2015. Pp. 181. Notes, timeline, selected bibliography, and index. $40 clothback. Reviewed by Alexander Hyres On Christmas Day, Carmelo Anthony, Stephen Curry, and Chris Paul spoke out against gun violence in the United States. In a series of three-minute…
“Kareem: Minority of One” documentary, produced by Mike Tollin, Rick Bernstein, and Deborah Morales (HBO Sports, Mandalay Sports Media, 2015) Reviewed by Frank Andre Guridy My earliest basketball memory is of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar shooting his patented “skyhook” shot over rival centers Darryl Dawkins and Caldwell Jones of the Philadelphia 76ers during the 1980 NBA Finals.…
By Alex Parrish There are two topics to never bring up at a dinner party, so we’re told – politics and religion. Few things simultaneously unite and divide people quite like politics and religion. Yet Americans seem to have an innate passion for discussing and debating these topics, often vehemently. Most people are fine with…
By Murry Nelson, Guest Contributor It was January 25, 1972, and Ohio State, the defending Big Ten champion and favorite to repeat was to play Minnesota in an early season match-up that some saw as a turning point for the remainder of the Big Ten season. It was, but not for the reasons that most…
by Adam Park For far too long, lamented Thomas Wentworth Higginson in 1858, “the saints have been ‘ashamed of their bodies.’”[1] For Higginson, Christians had failed to realize the interconnectedness between body and spirit. Christians needed something more physically robust. And as it so happened, America’s bourgeoning physical culture movement was ideal. Noting development…
Jerry Tarkanian put the University of Nevada, Las Vegas on the map. The Runnin’ Rebels former coach, who died yesterday at age 84, was the architect of a basketball powerhouse that established UNLV as a national brand. Tarkanian and UNLV, followed the example of other major universities and used sports as an important method of public relations…
By Murry Nelson, Guest Contributor Murry Nelson is a Professor Emeritus of Education at the Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on the history of basketball, and is the author of The National Basketball League: A History, 1935–1949 (2009) and Abe Saperstein and the American Basketball League (2013). He recently edited a multiple-volume encyclopedia on the history of…
While writing my book, The Bullets, The Wizards and Washington, DC Basketball on professional basketball industry and Washington, DC, a central question emerged about the city’s fans. From the origins in the late 1920s through the Bullets in Landover, Maryland, the city’s teams never drew very well. Even when they reached the National Basketball Association…
Former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren said, “I always turn to the sports section first. The sports page records people’s accomplishments; the front page has nothing but man’s failures.” Many fans followed his lead. Reflecting on America’s obsession with sport in 1994, historian Richard O. Davies wrote, “The void often left unfulfilled by…
Sport in American History 