Review of "The Great Nowitzki"

 For those who celebrate Christmas, I hope yours was merry and that you were able to share it with the people who are important to you.  

On Christmas, it is traditional to have a plethora of good NBA games and what better book to post a review than one about one of the great NBA players, Dirk Nowitzki?  A book that was published in Germany in 2019 on him is soon to come out in the United States in English and I was fortunate enough to obtain an advance copy.  Here is my review of "The Great Nowitzki"

Title/Author: “The Great Nowitzki: Basketball and the Meaning of Life” by Thomas Pletzinger

Rating: 5 of 5 stars (outstanding)

Review: Dirk Nowitzki will go down as one of the greatest players in professional basketball history.  He played 21 seasons in the NBA, all with the Dallas Mavericks with the highlight of his career coming when he led his Mavericks to the NBA championship and was named the MVP of the NBA Finals against the Miami Heat.  His story of his development as a player in Germany, and his career with Dallas is captured in this excellent book by Thomas Pletzinger.

Originally published in German in 2019, the English version is one that American fans should be sure to pick up whether or not they were Novitizki or Mavericks fans.  Pletzinger spent six years working on this project while spending many days during that time frame talking to Dirk, to his longtime personal coach in both Germany and Dallas, Holger Gerschwinder and key people in Dirk’s professional life in Dallas.  However, that statement doesn’t do justice to the connections Pletzinger made to give the reader a complete picture of not only Dirk the basketball player but Dirk the person.  THis makes the book a very different read than the typical sports biography or memoir in that it delves into other areas of the subject’s life because the author was part of it.

Beyond the season and game recap, Pletzinger brings the reader inside other areas of Nowitzki’s life, starting with his relationship with Gerschwinder.  The conversations between them that are shared in the book are very interesting since they are more than just the drills and unusual training methods used by Gerschwinder.  There are paragraphs how music, specifically jazz music, gets tied in with Dirk’s life and this is made even better with quotes from Ernest Butler.  There are interviews and information from Dirk’s family in both Germany and America, teammates on both teams and so many others.

One of those “others” is a poignant moment that I felt set the tone for not only the quality of the book but captures how nearly everyone who has met Nowitzki has felt about him.  Before Nowitizki, Drazen Petrovic was considered to be the best European player to play in the NBA before he tragically died at 28.  In the book, Dirk is called to meet a woman after the 2005 European tournament in which he led Germany to the title and has already made his mark in the NBA.  Dirk opens his hotel room door and meets Petrovic’s mother who tells him that he reminds her of her son and plays the game the right way.  It remains one of the most memorable moments of Nowitzki’s life.

That is just one small example of the many great moments and passages in this book that pays a proper tribute to one of the truly great players in basketball history. 

I wish to thank W.W. Norton for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Link: Amazon.com: The Great Nowitzki: Basketball and the Meaning of Life eBook : Pletzinger, Thomas: Kindle Store

Review of "Havin' a Ball" - first review of 2021

Happy New Year to everyone and thank you for visiting my blog.  Starting off another year of reviewing some great books with one on longtime basketball coach Richie Abudato.  While he may not be a household name or have his name engraved on the Larry O'Brien trophy, he certain has some great stories to tell from his lengthy coaching career.  Here is my review of "Havin' a Ball."  

Title/Author:

“Havin’ a Ball: My Improbable Basketball Journey” by Richie Adubato with Peter Kerasotis

Tags:

Basketball, professional, memoir, coaching, Piston, Mavericks, Magic, Liberty, Mystics

Publish date:

October 1, 2020

Length:

216 pages

Rating:

4 of 5 stars (very good)

Review:

Richie Adubato is what one could call a basketball lifer. Between playing, coaching and broadcasting, he has been involved in the game in some manner for over six decades and shows no sign of stopping.  Currently doing color commentary for the Orlando Magic, Adubato had a very interesting career as a coach. He didn’t have the success of a Hall of Fame coach like Pat Riley or Phil Jackson, but he did become a well-known and beloved figure in professional basketball.  As a result, he has plenty of stories to share as he does in this very entertaining memoir.

A self-proclaimed “Jersey Boy”, Adubato began his coaching career in the junior and senior high schools of New Jersey, primarily in the Paterson area. He gained not only a good coaching reputation but also was known for his toughness both on and off the court, mainly due to the neighborhoods of the schools in which he worked.  He also coached at Division III Upsala College when he got his first break into professional basketball.  It came when a fellow Jersey Boy, Dick Vitale, called Adubato to be one of his assistant coaches of the Detroit Pistons.

From there, Adubato got the itch to stay in the professional game and he turned it into a lengthy career.  When Vitale was fired in the middle of his second season, Adubato became the interim head coach.  After the Pistons gig, Adubato made several stops as both an assistant and as a head coach for the Dallas Mavericks and the Orlando Magic.  He had success at both places, guiding the franchises to playoff appearances but also had down seasons that led to his dismissal at both places as well – such is the life of a NBA coach.  However, he didn’t let that stop him as he became the head coach of the New York Liberty in the early years of the WNBA, leading that team to at least the Eastern Conference finals in four consecutive seasons.  He also coached in Russia (one of the most entertaining stories in the book took place there) and came back to the WNBA, coaching the Washington Mystics in his last coaching job before going into broadcasting.

With all of this experience and travel, one would expect the book to contain plenty of stories and name-dropping.  It certainly delivers on that promise as Abudato shares so many stories of not only his coaching career, but also a few stories about meeting other celebrities such as Frank Sinatra.  There isn’t a lot of personal information in the book as he doesn’t talk about his family very much.  The most amount of text used for a personal or family story was when he married his second wife Carol and they were able to brag that they got married in Italy – Italy, Texas that is. 

The book doesn’t have a really good flow, although Abudato tells his stories in chronological order, which is helpful.  The writing is pretty good and is clearly in conversational style as he sometimes just goes immediately from discussing one coaching job ending to another starting and a reader may not remember which season this refers to unless he or she is paying close attention.  But those are minor annoyances because reading this book is just so much fun. The stories will often make you laugh, but a few are more somber, such as the story of one of the players he coached in Dallas, Roy Tarpley.  Those stories and situations are just as easy to read, however, and it shows how much coaching and basketball are in Abudato’s blood.

Any basketball fan who has heard about Abudato, either through his coaching or his broadcasting, will want to read this book. It has the feel of a chat on the porch while sitting on a swinging bench and enjoying one’s favorite beverage while the coach shares another tale from his coaching life.

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

Book Format Read:

E-book (PDF)                                                                                                                                   

Buying Links:

https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9781496212825/

https://www.amazon.com/Havin-Ball-Improbable-Basketball-Journey/dp/1496212827/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= 

Review of "The Soul of Basketball"

The synopsis of this excellent book says that the 2010-11 season is one that could be considered a season that saved the NBA.  I thought that was a bit strange - after all, it was the season where LeBron James jumped from his hometown to take his talents to South Beach.  How in the world could this have been the one to "save" the league?  Well, the book makes an excellent case of just that point.  It is one of the best basketball books that I have read.  Here is my review of "The Soul of Basketball."

Title/Author:

“The Soul of Basketball: The Epic Showdown Between LeBron, Kobe, Doc and Dirk that Saved the NBA” by Ian Thomson

Tags:

Basketball, professional, Heat, Mavericks, Celtics, Lakers

Publish date:

April 17, 2018

Length:

352 pages

Rating: 

5 of 5 stars (Outstanding)

Review:

The 2010-11 basketball season turned out to be one that was very pivotal for the sport and the league. Why this season was such an important one is explained by author Ian Thomson in this excellent book about not just LeBron James and the Heat, but also about other key player and teams.

It started during the summer when the game’s biggest star, LeBron James, announced “The Decision” to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat and in doing so, became a villain in the eyes of many fans, not just those in Cleveland. From there, the season was a topsy-turvy affair for the top teams. Not just for the Heat, who now had three stars (they also signed free agent Chris Bosh to go with their star guard Dwayne Wade), but also for the Boston Celtics, the Los Angeles Lakers and the Dallas Mavericks.

Thomson takes the reader inside these teams and one key person for each team. For the Celtics, that is their coach Doc Rivers, who led the team to the championship in 2008 and lost a heartbreaking seven game series to the Lakers in the 2010 Finals.  This has weighed heavy on Rivers’ mind and he wants to make sure this does not deter from his team’s goals. The Celtics had good success against the Heat during the 2010-11 season and they meet in the playoffs.  Through the stories of not only Rivers, but also Paul Pierce and Rajan Rondo, the reader will experience the ups and downs of the season up to their elimination by the Heat in the playoffs.

Speaking of Miami, the Heat’s adventures are covered with the same extensive detail about their key personnel.  The reader will learn about James’s inner turmoil about becoming the player everyone loved to hate.  He realized that announcing his joining the Heat in the manner that he did was not popular, that the rally held soon afterward in which he, Wade and Bosh predicted multiple championships added fuel to that fire, and that he was realizing that he was not the only cog that made Miami a good team.

Not all of the material about the Heat is about the players, however. The reader will learn a great deal about the inner workings a team will execute when attempting to sign a star player when he or she reads about Pat Riley’s wheeling and dealing to sign James.  These passages were very informative and helped the reader understand why James eventually chose Miami – and late in the book, also why James left Miami to head back to Cleveland. These are part of the “self- corrections” that Thomson illustrates as an important part of the NBA culture.

The Los Angeles Lakers were the defending champions during the 2010-11 season, and the determination and drive to succeed exhibited by their superstar, Kobe Bryant, is well documented.  However, the best writing about a player who is exhibiting a special talent to win is saved for Dallas Mavericks forward Dirk Nowitzki. What is especially entertaining about Nowitzki’s story is how he worked closely for many years with Holger Geschwindner.  Holger worked with Nowitzki on everything from his footwork to his shot selection to his mental game. Like his team, Nowitzki didn’t start the 2010-11 season with a lot of fanfare, but by the time the NBA Finals were done, the Mavericks were the champions, defeating James and the Heat with Nowitzki being the dominant player in the Finals. His reaction to winning was interesting – he lifted both fists up in triumph, then ran into the locker room where he was crying hard while being urged to come back out to the arena to accept the award of being named the MVP of the Finals.  It made for great drama.

The book is certainly one of the best basketball books one will find about recent NBA history and one of the best I have had the pleasure to read. The NBA is carving out its own identity, according to Thomson, as the sport of the American Dream as Major League Baseball is drawing criticism for its slow pace and the NFL has issues with the violence of the game and the dangers of concussions. The book is a compelling case for arriving at this conclusion and is one that any NBA fan will want to add to his or her library.

I wish to thank Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Book Format Read:

E-book (Kindle)

Buying Links:

https://www.amazon.com/Soul-Basketball-Showdown-Between-LeBron-ebook/dp/B01MZ876IN/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-soul-of-basketball-ian-thomsen/1125350310?ean=9780547746517#/