An excellent glimpse into high school playground hoops and college basketball recruiting.
Written: Nov 28 '05
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Easy prose. Fascinating subject. Looking back ten years later.
Cons: Truncated ending.
The Bottom Line: Recommended for any basketball fan, college or pro.
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| Pavel21's Full Review: Darcy Frey - The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketba... |
Much of the power of books stems from their ability to convey a world never otherwise experienced. Usually this aptitude refers to fictional fantasy-type books like The Lord of the Rings. But the transportation may be even more impressive or potent when done through a non-fiction book, such as The Last Shot.
The playgrounds of New York City are well known as a hotbed of basketball talent, but not all of that skill finds its way to the college level, let alone the NBA. In The Last Shot, author Darcy Frey spends a school year with a quartet of highly touted student-athletes (including freshman Stephon Marbury) at Abraham Lincoln High School, a public school located on Coney Island. Frey follows them around as they deal with the rigors of high school, life in underprivileged neighborhoods, and most intriguingly, college basketball recruiting.
NCAA basketball is one of my favorite sports, and while I played high school basketball, I was nowhere near good enough to be recruited by anyone, let alone Division I schools. Therefore the glimpse into the lives of those several notches better than me was fascinating, as Frey tells about meetings with college coaches (both head and assistant, many of whom are now household names), trips to the biggest and best high school camps, and the mysterious visits to collegiate campuses. The other place Frey transports the reader is the harsh streets of Coney Island, which is about as far from my middle America as possible. He explains how many playground legends have failed in the past, and how that directly impacts the present and future of his four subjects. He also takes the reader into their homes, providing a portrait that produces emotions ranging from anger to sympathy to disbelief. The juxtaposition of these two settings, at one end high success and at the other mere survival, is sometimes jarring, but goes a long way toward explaining the often fractured psyche of the players who survive the streets.
Although the book tails off at the end, due in large part to the NCAA impeding on Frey's access to the kids during campus visits, the picture is complete enough that the close is palatable even though it seems abbreviated. The key is the epilogue, which was added to the recently released 10th anniversary edition (make sure you get this version). The final pages quickly summarize what has happened to the principal characters over the last decade, putting closure on what would have otherwise been an open-ended book, and capturing another factor in the book's allure. Of the four boys focused on, even a huge sports fan (me) will likely have only heard of one of them (Marbury). That fact, knowing that something goes wrong may seem insignificant, but actually infuses the book with a sense of inevitable tragedy, hanging in the air like the sword of Damocles.
The Last Shot was named one of the top 100 sports books by Sports Illustrated, and lives up to that billing. With a lucid and personal writing style, Frey pens a written equivalent of the documentary Hoop Dreams, disclosing the intimate yet business-driven nature of college basketball recruiting without ever crossing the line to exploitation. The peeks into that world,the tough streets of Coney Island, and various minor characters who are now much more significant in the sports world merge into a compelling must-read for basketball fans. A slam dunk.
This is my third entry into sleeper54's Lean-n-mean IV write-off.
Recommended:
Yes
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Pavel21
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