Review of "Elevated"

Starting off May with a basketball book - an excellent collection of articles that tell the story of the NBA in the last 40 years. Here is my review of "Elevated"

Title/Author:

“Elevated: The Global Rise of the NBA” by Harvey Araton

Tags:

Basketball, professional, history

Publish date:

March 10, 2020

Length:

512 pages

Rating:

5 of 5 stars (excellent)

Review:

Professional basketball and the National Basketball Association (NBA) were on life support in the late 1970’s. The league had a reputation of being “too black” and drug-infested.  Arenas were rarely sold out. Television ratings were very low and the championship round of the playoffs was not shown live but on tape delay late at night. 

Enter two young college stars named Ervin “Magic” Johnson and Larry Bird.  When they became professionals, the game and the league started growing again, and it still is to this day.  This era of the history of the NBA is covered in this book of New York Times (NYT) articles edited by Harvey Araton, who was also the writer of several of the articles.

Marketed as a history book to celebrate the rise of the league, it was surprising to learn that this was a collection of articles instead of a narrative of how the league grew to be a global phenomenon. However, that format worked for this topic as the articles broke the book up into small, manageable sections that made reading over five hundred pages take very little time.

The other advantage to having this collection of NYT articles was that a lot of topics, players, owners and other key aspects of the game were covered.  Players from Magic and Bird, through Michael Jordan, Shaquile O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Stephan Curry are all featured.  Nearly every controversy in that time frame has at least an article or two as well – the three-point shot, the 2004 brawl between Detroit and Indiana, the dress code for players instituted by former Commissioner David Stern, banning former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling from the league – they are all there as well as many other topics. 

The complete picture of the NBA from the last 40 years is on display in this book and the writers of the articles as well as the editing job by Araton to put this together is excellent.  Even the small snippets of commentary that precede each chapter of related articles will teach the reader a little bit about the league. This book is highly recommended for readers of any level of interest in professional basketball.

I wish to thank Triumph Books for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

                                                                       

Book Format Read:

E-book (Kindle)                                                                                                                               

Buying Links:

https://www.amazon.com/Elevated-Global-Rise-N-B/dp/1629377929/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/elevated-harvey-araton/1129391795;jsessionid=731F1BC25A763A1E39595A7AB4C3DC48.prodny_store02-atgap08?ean=9781629377926&st=AFF&2sid=Goodreads,%20Inc_2227948_NA&sourceId=AFFGoodreads,%20Inc