Review of "Built to Lose"

A hot topic in sports today is "tanking" - purposely losing in order to improve a team's draft position in their respective sport.  While it is talked about in all the major sports, this book concentrates on basketball and the NBA and does a good job of teaching the reader the management and culture of those teams who have engaged in the practice.  Here is my review of "Built to Lose."

Title/Author: “Built to Lose: How the NBA’s Tanking Era Changed the League Forever” by Jake Fisher

Rating: 4 of 5 stars (very good)

Review:  In basketball, more than any other professional sport, one draft pick can make or break a team’s future success.  Therefore, draft picks, or more correctly, draft capital, are considered a very valuable commodity.  Because the NBA draft lottery does not guarantee that the worst teams will get the first pick, some teams may want to accumulate draft capital in addition to losing more games, known as “tanking”, in order to improve their draft position.  How this was done by some NBA franchises in the five year period between 2013 to 2018 is chronicled in this very good book by Jake Fisher.

Fisher conducted many interviews with players, coaches and team management personnel to collect the information and stories he uses throughout the book and it provides very good insight into the workings of those teams who sought to improve their draft capital.  While several teams are discussed in the book, the primary focus was on the Philadelphia 76ers and their “process”, as it was called, in obtaining draft capital at the expense of wins.  They came very close to breaking their own record for the worst full season but did get some valuable picks. 

Other teams include two that might surprise people – the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers.  While both of those storied franchises may not come to mind when the subject is tanking, they did fit the profile that Fisher gives to teams who may lose many games, trade veteran players for draft picks or realize that it may be more beneficial to try to gain draft capital instead of chasing a low playoff spot.  The results are mixed – the Celtics and Lakers did not take long to go back to their winning ways while others, such as the 76ers (on the rise, but not a champion yet) or the Minnesota Timberwolves (still struggling at the time of the book’s publication) have not seen the fruits of this type of management.

While the book is a good look at this type of management of a basketball franchise, the stories jump around and at times it’s hard to keep up with all the different names and stories being discussed.  Because of that, no one team’s experience is described fully.  Not even the 76ers’ story could be considered complete here.  There is another book on their process that is recommended if the reader wants to know more about them specifically – “Tanking to the Top” by Yaron Weitzman.  But if a reader wants to learn more about this type of management in a more general sense, this is good reference.

Link:  https://www.amazon.com/Built-Lose-Tanking-Changed-Forever-ebook/dp/B091FVVKFR/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1647543251&sr=1-1

Review of "Kyrie Irving"

Another of the new baskeball books for the upcoming season is one that was just released on Kyrie Irving.  It is a very detailed look at his baskeball career and how he is both considered one of the best but also heavily criticized.  Here is my review of this book.

Title/Author:

“Kyrie Irving: Uncle Drew, Little Mountain and Enigmatic NBA Superstar” by Martin Gitlin

Tags:

Basketball, professional, biography, Cavaliers, Celtics

Publish date:

October 1, 2019

Length:

224 pages

Rating: to

3 ½ of 5 stars (good)

Review:

Kyrie Irving is one of the most exciting offensive players in professional basketball currently playing in the NBA.  His one-on-one game leaves defenders in the dust as he is among the very best at isolation play.  His play on the court, his relationship with his parents and some of his off-court statements that leave people puzzled are all documented in this book by Martin Gitlin.

As a pure basketball book, this was excellent as Gitlin writes about Irving's basketball life in high school, his brief time at Duke and his years with the Cleveland Cavaliers and Boston Celtics (the book was completed before Irving signed in 2019 with the Brooklyn Nets) in great detail.  Basketball junkies will love the details on Irving's contributions in key games for both teams, especially in the 2016 NBA Finals when he made the decisive three point shot late in game 7 to give the Cavaliers their first championship.  Known in Cleveland as simply "The Shot", there is a whole chapter devoted to this moment.

Speaking of the chapters, they are all short in length but long in basketball information. The best part of this information was the explanation of some of the advanced statistical analytics for basketball, something that may not be familiar to many readers. They are used to explain the criticism behind the weakest part of Irving's game, his defense. This has cause some friction between Irving and his teammates at times, and also been a frequent reason for his criticism in the press.

While the book is plentiful in basketball information, there is not as much information available on the rest of his life, save for his youth when he lost his mother at four and grew even closer to his father as a result.  He still kept his mother, who was part Native American, in his heart as he even was anointed with the Native American name of "Little Mountain."  There is also a few sentences about some of his more unusual statements, such as his questioning of the existence of dinosaurs and whether the earth is round.  While they are in the book, it would have been an even better read had these topics as well as some more about Irving the person would have been included to balance the amount of basketball writing.  

In fairness, Gitlin does mention at the beginning that Irving and his agent would not be contributing in any manner to the book and that would make including more information on his personal life difficult.  Nonetheless, I did believe that this book is one that basketball junkies and hard-core fans will enjoy but for those who enjoy memoirs that are more about the person will come away feeling shortchanged.  Overall, it was a good read for me as the information on the basketball analytics alone made it worthwhile.

I wish to thank University of Nebraska Press for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

                                                                       

Book Format Read:

Paperback                                                                                                                                        

Buying Links:

https://www.amazon.com/Kyrie-Irving-Mountain-Enigmatic-Superstar-ebook/dp/B07Q6P5XZT/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= 


https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/university-of-nebraska-press/9781496213495/

Review of "Longshot"

Sometimes it is more entertaining to read about a player who had to overcome long odds to just get a shot at playing in the pros, making the Olympics or a similar endeavor.  Very often that story is better than reading about a superstar.  That is the case in this book about a basketball player whose NBA career spanned a total of three games.  But how he got there is a great read.  Enjoy "Longshot."

Title/Author:

“Longshot” by Lance Allred

Tags:

Basketball, professional, NBA, Cavaliers, autobiography

Published:

May 21, 2009

Length:

276 pages

Rating:

4 of 5 stars (very good)

Review:

Lance Allred was a professional basketball player who made it to the NBA.   He did not have a distinguished career as he appeared in three games for the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2007-08 season.  That is not what makes this book and his story interesting.  It is how he got there that is captured in “Longshot.”

He was raised in a small Montana compound where polygamy was practiced. His family was targeted for harm by fundamentalists.  He later converted to the Mormon faith. Just his youth experiences would make for a tale that would be worth the time to read, but that is far from the whole story.  He writes about his high school basketball coach with reverence, his college experience at the University of Utah and legendary coach Rick Majerus with a little less enthusiasm.  The reason for this is that he believed that the coach was discriminating since Allred was deaf.  

This handicap is important to the story.  While Allred did not try to make the reader feel sorry for him because of this condition, it was mentioned often enough that it seems that way.  At times while reading, I thought to myself, “Yes, I know you are deaf.  Now carry on.”

Thankfully he doesn’t do this with other afflictions he had, such as foot and knee injuries.  In fact, some of the funnier parts of the book are his anecdotes about how he dealt with these.  His tryout for a team when his foot was injured was one of the funnier parts of the book that I enjoyed.  Although that particular passage would not be for the squeamish!

 
Basketball fans will especially enjoy the sections about his time in the NBA Developmental League, or D-League as it is commonly called.  It will certainly remind people that not every professional athlete, no matter the sport, lives a life of luxury.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Allred’s memoir about his struggles and path to finally achieve his dream of playing in the NBA.  Sometimes when looking for a book on an athlete, skipping the stories of the superstars and reading about a fringe player like Allred can be a rewarding experience.  That was the case with this book. 

Did I skim?

No

Did I learn something new?

Yes.  In addition to learning about the culture of polygamy and Mormonism, I learned about the D-League and that it really isn’t the “minor league” of the NBA.  The life of a D-League player is nothing like that of a minor league baseball player. 

Pace of the book:

Very good.  Lance’s story was never boring.

Positives:

I enjoyed the basketball portions of the book, especially his experience in Europe (another excellent source of humor in the book) and in the D-League.  

Negatives:

The biggest negative I found was the constant reference to his deafness.  This has been noted in the review, and while important, I felt Allred reminded the reader about this a little too often. 

Do I recommend?

Yes, especially for those readers who like inspiring stories.  Readers who are not basketball fans will like this book as well because of the information on other topics.  There is very little about basketball in the first third of the book, and the story will grab any reader enough that he or she will want to keep going.

Book Format Read:

eBook (Nook)

Buying Links:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/longshot-lance-allred/1111739440?ean=9780061879999

http://www.amazon.com/Longshot-ebook/dp/B002AR2Q2Q/ref=sr_1_4?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1379029509&sr=1-4&keywords=longshot