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Rating: 
Summary: Good book but too many factual errors
Review: I can concur with the previous reader, there are too may factual errors to allow for this book to be considered great. I have followed Nelson's career for sometime now and I have found his writings to be very good and factual. However, I am a firm believer that writers should stick to topics/subjects that they are more familiar with. It is obvious from the many errors, that Nelson doesn't have a firm grasp of the history of African-Americans in basketball.Additionally, I found the first half of the book, up to chapter six, to be the most interesting. As for the remaining four chapters, the information Nelson wrote about has been communicated via the many mediums of media (television, print, radio) over and over again. I consider myself to be an avid basketball fan and historian, however, I would still like to learn something new and that didn't happen with the last four chapters. Overall the book is a good buy for the average basketball fan but not for the novice, in particular, African-Americans.
Rating:
Summary: Good book but too many factual errors
Review: I can concur with the previous reader, there are too may factual errors to allow for this book to be considered great. I have followed Nelson's career for sometime now and I have found his writings to be very good and factual. However, I am a firm believer that writers should stick to topics/subjects that they are more familiar with. It is obvious from the many errors, that Nelson doesn't have a firm grasp of the history of African-Americans in basketball. Additionally, I found the first half of the book, up to chapter six, to be the most interesting. As for the remaining four chapters, the information Nelson wrote about has been communicated via the many mediums of media (television, print, radio) over and over again. I consider myself to be an avid basketball fan and historian, however, I would still like to learn something new and that didn't happen with the last four chapters. Overall the book is a good buy for the average basketball fan but not for the novice, in particular, African-Americans.
Rating: 
Summary: Superb
Review: Nelson George is a brilliant, articulate, sardonic, insightful author and a wonderful man. Anyone who has a profound appreciation of minority history and/or the game of basketball will thoroughly enjoy this well-written, well-researched masterpiece. Amen.
Rating:
Summary: Superb
Review: Nelson George is a brilliant, articulate, sardonic, insightful author and a wonderful man. Anyone who has a profound appreciation of minority history and/or the game of basketball will thoroughly enjoy this well-written, well-researched masterpiece. Amen.
Rating: 
Summary: Too Much Improvisation
Review: On the one hand, this book is an important one, given the scarcity of serious discussions of the role of race in basketball history. On the other, the renown and talented critic of jazz music and insightful commentator on black culture does not here comfortably wear the cloak of a sports historian. This book is full of dozens upon dozens of errors and infelicities (uncorrected from the first edition) of both a typographical (excusable if bothersome) and historical (inexcusable) nature. For an opening taste I note only the following: Jabbar was not traded to the Lakers in 1977 (it was 1975), Bernard King did not play for the Lakers (though he did for just about everyone else), Harold Seymour wrote a classic baseball (not basketball) history, Phog Allen did not coach at Kansas for only one decade, Cincinnati did not finally win the NCAA crown in 1962 (it was 1961), it was the NBA Chicago Packers (not Zephyrs) in 1961, Jordan played (not missed) only 18 games in 1985-86, it was Miss State and not Ole Miss that broke racial ground against Loyola in the 1963 NCAAs, UK's Baron Rupp won 3 not 2 NCAA crowns, Jackie Robinson was a baseball and not basketball hall-of-famer, Hank Luisetti pioneered one-handed shooting and not jump shooting, Frank McGuire is not Al McGuire's uncle, the NY Rens joined the NBL and not the ABL as the Dayton Rens, Guy Rodgers starred for Temple and not Villanova, and James Thurber certainly did not write his poem "The Big O" about Oscar Robertson. And this is just for starters. George's social conclusions are sometimes open to serious question, given the sloppiness of his historical research.
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