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The Breaks of the Game
| Our Price |
$ 13.25
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| Retail Value |
$ 16.99 |
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| You Save |
$ 3.74 (22%) |
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| Item Number |
2126983 |
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Item Description...
Product Description
"One of the best books I've ever read about American sports!"
--Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times Available for the first time in years, David Halberstam's The Breaks of the Game focuses on one grim season (1979-80) in the life of the Portland Trail Blazers, a team that only three years before had been National Basketball Association champions. As Halberstam follows this collection of men through the months, through the losing streaks and occasional victories, the endless trips and the brutal schedules, we come to know them and their world--the other players, coaches, and owners; the competition, drafts, trades, and traditions; the wives, the fans, the media connections--a world of grand dreams, impossible expectations, and bracing realities. The tactile authenticity of Halberstam's knowledge of the basketball world is unrivaled. Yet he is writing here about far more than just basketball. This is a story about a place in our society where power, money, and talent collide and sometimes corrupt, a place where both national obsessions and naked greed are exposed. It's about the influence of big media, the fans and the hype they subsist on, the clash of ethics, the terrible physical demands of modern sports (from drugs to body size), the unreal salaries, the conflicts of race and class, and the consequences of sport converted into mass entertainment and athletes transformed into superstars--all presented in a way that puts the reader in the room and on the court, and The Breaks of the Game in a league of its own.
Outline Review
The Breaks of the Game is sports reporting at its finest--basketball's equivalent to Roger Kahn's The Boys of Summer. Join David Halberstam on his yearlong journey with the 1979 Portland Trail Blazers and witness professional basketball from the inside, where front-office egos, big-money contracts, and the colorful personalities of coaches and players collide, and winners and losers emerge. This insightful account is evidence of how much basketball has--and hasn't--changed since 1979, before the money really started rolling in.
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Item Specifications...
Pages 400
Dimensions: Length: 1" Width: 6" Height: 9.25"
Weight: 1.2 lbs.
Binding Softcover
Release Date Feb 17, 2009
ISBN 1401309720
EAN 9781401309725
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Availability 27 units.
Availability accurate as of May 30, 2012 03:33.
Usually ships within one to two business days from Bridgewater NJ.
Orders shipping to an address other than a confirmed Credit Card / Paypal Billing address may incur and additional processing delay.
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Reviews - What do our customers think?
 | Another Halberstam Classic Nov 13, 2009 |
David Halberstam was one of the most astute observers of American culture of the past century. His skill as a reporter was not only in his meticulous accumulation of facts and his canny ability to piece them together into a coherent historical perspective. His true genius was the realization that history is driven by people, not events, and his consumate skill in making individuals come alive on the printed page. Whether he dealt with Korean war figures, Viet Nam era politicians or famous professional athletes, the reader was made to understand how and why these men behaved as they did in times of duress.
I had overlooked this book for some reason despite being an aficionado of both Mr Halberstam and basketball. It proved to be a history of the changing face of American sports and the metamorphasis of the sport of basketball from one era into another. Along the way we are introduced to and come to understand and care about characters as disparate as Jack Ramsay the Trailblazers driven coach, Bill Walton, his flawed superstar, Larry Weinberg, Portland's Jewish businessman owner, and Billy Ray Bates, a black sharecroppers's son. My only mild criticism is that Halberstam tended to become so enamored of peripheral characters in the basketball world in which he traveled that he wandered down long circuitous pathways which contributed little to the overall premise of his book. But, oh, what interesting pathways, and what an astute guide for the fortunate reader. | | | | Defining NBA book... STILL Sep 28, 2009 |
| It's amazing how a book written three decades ago captures the heart of the NBA and how free agency and more lucrative contracts dramatically changed the way teams are assembled. It is still relevant today. It's funny how petty and cut-throat the players became for FAR LESS money than what players are making today. It just goes to show you that competitiveness and greed can deteriorate the fabric of a professional sports team. | | | | The best basketball book I've ever read May 19, 2009 |
The Breaks of the Game is a great sports book.
The difference between good books on sports and great books on sports is that the great books aren't really about sports. Ok, ok, that's not quite fair. The Breaks of the Game expertly chronicles the 79-80 Trailblazers and captures the ebbs and flows of an NBA season: the injuries, the mastery of the coach, the skill of the players, the relief of NBA victory and the very real (for Jack Ramsey, especially) pain of defeat. This is a book very much about sports and its heroes.
But, more than that, The Breaks of the Game is about the growing pains of the NBA as it entered its golden age--the age of Magic and Bird--and the way those pains were felt. What makes this book so incredible is the way that Halberstam blends objective observation with his keen knowledge of the game, its history, and his great capacity to see the humanity in everyone. When all of his considerable skills are dedicated to painting a portrait of Maurice Lucas, for instance, the player becomes the man, vibrantly portrayed and filled with conflicting instincts and emotions. Halberstam deftly works into his analysis of the players, the team, and the league as a whole the seminal aspects of money, respect, and race. The ideas and observations fueling the book are fantastic, and Halberstam's subtle, lyrical prose makes them all the more powerful. Ultimately, this is a book about people: who they are, why they play, what they need, how they interact.
In short, this is the best book on basketball--and one of the best books, period--that I've ever read. It is thorough, fiercely intelligent, and captures a moment in time when the NBA was in flux between the white, poor league it was and the black, rich league it has become. | | | | Fascinating book. May 18, 2009 |
| This book is phenomenal. I am a fan of Bill Simmons on ESPN.com, and he recommended this book. It is his favorite, and it lived up to his opinion. If you know anything about the NBA or have any interest in its history, you will enjoy reading Breaks of the Game. Halberstam goes into a ton of detail and has nuggets of information that you never hear about today's athletes. | | | | Captures a time and place in a way that speaks to all of life May 17, 2009 |
As a writer, Halberstam is a master portraitist. There isn't any part of life you might be curious about that you wouldn't want him to shed light on for you.
From each of the people involved with the '80 Blazers, to the team itself, to the NBA, to modern sports, to America at that time: he captures it all.
I've been caught in a phase of reading half a book before moving onto the next one, but this one I read all the way through and quickly at that. | | | Write your own review about The Breaks of the Game
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