A mini reading list.
Today in New York, you can’t get to lower Manhattan because the streets are clogged with Knicks fans. My town is still on fire from their historic championship win last weekend. People who could not name a single NBA player a month ago (ahem, it me) have sprouted expertise and regional patriotism overnight. Thanks to Jalen, OG, Josh, and Karl, the street vibes haven’t been this good since Obama’s win in 2008.
Yet I anticipate the complaint of the serious sports fan. Where will all this goodwill go after the parade ends? A lesson of this historic season is that one could love basketball all year, not just when the games are being projected on the sides of bodegas. But say you have a nebbish temperament, and poor hand-eye coordination.
Literary sports-writing is a long American tradition. But in the wake of Grantland‘s demise, it’s been harder to find diamonds in the genre. There are some great basketball books out there. And diehards always have ESPN. But if you’re a casual reader on the bench, you might check out some of these features first.
Here’s what to read if you’re almost ready to commit to basketball.
A still from Love & Basketball. Omar Epps & Sanaa Lathan.
1. Hanif Abdurraqib’s “Notes on Hoops,” The Paris Review
Abdurraqib’s 2021 column for the Review revisited the “golden age of basketball movies.” His close reads of classics like Love & Basketball and White Men Can’t Jump note the elegance of the sport, and situate b-ball in a rich American history.
Observations range from the pithy (“In most sports movies, no one can actually play the sport”) to the personal (“[Like Mike] is, at least in part, about loneliness, about placelessness, about wanting to pull the curtain back on a world where a kid feels worthy of being desired”). A great place to start, considering he’s one of our best bards, fullstop.
2. Katie Heindl’s “Basketball Feelings,” Substack
This newsletter, launched on TinyLetter in 2018, tries to “reconcile life with basketball” while expounding on “the cultural, political, historic, and ideological intersections of the sport.” Heindl’s is a devoted but philosophical fandom. She’s as inclined to meditate on miracles as offseason turbulence.
She’s also written about women’s basketball for The Believer, and recently published a breathless Knicks play-by-play for SB Nation. Her coverage is detailed, ardent, and soon to be collected in a book from Transit. I especially love her more tender musings, like this one.
3. John McPhee’s “A Sense of Where You Are,” The New Yorker
This lengthy profile from a 1965 New Yorker zones in on Bill Bradley, an Ivy League hooper who was once considered the best of the best and brightest. Later turned into a book, the essay was one of the first to give a human face to the world of college sports.
Though mighty hagiographic, McPhee’s ability to break down a player’s gifts makes a poetic case for the game.
4. Giri Nathan, Defector
A staffer and co-founder at one of our last good sports writing hubs (Defector, ftw!), Nathan regularly writes about tennis and basketball—often in a witty register that makes the players feel like friends. I’ve loved his exuberant coverage of this year’s finals. (And the glorious aftermath.)
Nathan’s hoop creds are also well-established. He profiled Abdurraqib for Vulture around the publication of the latter’s memoir, There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension.
And, on a general note? Defector is the place to go for all good hoop writing, au courant. Maitreyi Anantharaman is writing stylish reports about the WNBA. And a great bench of freelancers is making this all-American game feel dramatic, approachable, and exciting—even to filthy casuals.
5. John Edgar Wideman, Hoop Roots
I leave you with a long read. Wideman, one of our more prolific and fascinating novelists, wrote a rangy memoir of his own court time back in 2003. Combining reflections with love letters with poetry, this strange amalgam reconstructs the author’s days as a college champ.
Another great lay-up for the abstract fan.