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'YOU'RE OKAY, IT'S JUST A BRUISE'

The former internist for the NFL's Los Angeles Raiders tells it like it is in this engaging muckraker's guide to the business of pro football. For over 30 years, the Raiders have been the outlaws of their sport. Huizenga, who was with the team from 1983 to 1990, chronicles how this game devours its young. The NFL proudly boasts that football features the biggest, fastest, and toughest athletes in the world. But, according to Huizenga, many players are emotionally immature, overgrown galoots who gladly abuse themselves by ingesting performance-enhancing and painkilling drugs while ignoring the obvious consequences—a fact underscored by offensive linemen Charley Hannah's assertion, made to Huizenga and some teammates over dinner one night: ``We're making too much money, we're having too much of a good time. They're going to have to drag me off the freaking field kicking and screaming.'' Much of Huizenga's memoir revolves around his relationships with players, including stars Marcus Allen (whose unwillingness to risk serious injury landed him in team owner Al Davis's doghouse), the late Lyle Alzado (one of the game's most notorious steroid abusers), and Bo Jackson (who sustained an injury that ended his football career and now plays baseball for the California Angels). However, the most inflammatory passages are reserved for Huizenga's many clashes with Davis and his incompetent team orthopedist, Dr. Robert Rosenfeld, whose frequent dismissal of potentially crippling injuries provides the book's title. Huizenga illustrates why Davis is a pariah among the NFL's owners; his mantra, ``Just win, baby,'' embodies his crass indifference to players' physical and emotional pain. While occasionally melodramatic, Huizenga keeps his vituperation in check, often allowing Davis's appalling actions to speak for themselves. Although many of Huizenga's revelations are old news, juicy gossip about the Raiders always gets tongues wagging. Fans looking for something to pass the time between autumn Sundays could do a lot worse than read this no-punches-pulled tell- all. (First printing of 60,000; author tour)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994

ISBN: 0-312-11353-6

Page Count: 336

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994

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WHEN THE GAME WAS OURS

Doesn’t dig as deep as it could, but offers a captivating look at the NBA’s greatest era.

NBA legends Bird and Johnson, fierce rivals during their playing days, team up on a mutual career retrospective.

With megastars LeBron James and Kobe Bryant and international superstars like China’s Yao Ming pushing it to ever-greater heights of popularity today, it’s difficult to imagine the NBA in 1979, when financial problems, drug scandals and racial issues threatened to destroy the fledgling league. Fortunately, that year marked the coming of two young saviors—one a flashy, charismatic African-American and the other a cocky, blond, self-described “hick.” Arriving fresh off a showdown in the NCAA championship game in which Johnson’s Michigan State Spartans defeated Bird’s Indiana State Sycamores—still the highest-rated college basketball game ever—the duo changed the course of history not just for the league, but the sport itself. While the pair’s on-court accomplishments have been exhaustively chronicled, the narrative hook here is unprecedented insight and commentary from the stars themselves on their unique relationship, a compelling mixture of bitter rivalry and mutual admiration. This snapshot of their respective careers delves with varying degrees of depth into the lives of each man and their on- and off-court achievements, including the historic championship games between Johnson’s Lakers and Bird’s Celtics, their trailblazing endorsement deals and Johnson’s stunning announcement in 1991 that he had tested positive for HIV. Ironically, this nostalgic chronicle about the two men who, along with Michael Jordan, turned more fans onto NBA basketball than any other players, will likely appeal primarily to a narrow cross-section of readers: Bird/Magic fans and hardcore hoop-heads.

Doesn’t dig as deep as it could, but offers a captivating look at the NBA’s greatest era.

Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2009

ISBN: 978-0-547-22547-0

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009

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BACK FROM THE DEAD

One of the NBA’s 50 greatest players scores another basket—a deeply personal one.

A basketball legend reflects on his life in the game and a life lived in the “nightmare of endlessly repetitive and constant pain, agony, and guilt.”

Walton (Nothing but Net, 1994, etc.) begins this memoir on the floor—literally: “I have been living on the floor for most of the last two and a half years, unable to move.” In 2008, he suffered a catastrophic spinal collapse. “My spine will no longer hold me,” he writes. Thirty-seven orthopedic injuries, stemming from the fact that he had malformed feet, led to an endless string of stress fractures. As he notes, Walton is “the most injured athlete in the history of sports.” Over the years, he had ground his lower extremities “down to dust.” Walton’s memoir is two interwoven stories. The first is about his lifelong love of basketball, the second, his lifelong battle with injuries and pain. He had his first operation when he was 14, for a knee hurt in a basketball game. As he chronicles his distinguished career in the game, from high school to college to the NBA, he punctuates that story with a parallel one that chronicles at each juncture the injuries he suffered and overcame until he could no longer play, eventually turning to a successful broadcasting career (which helped his stuttering problem). Thanks to successful experimental spinal fusion surgery, he’s now pain-free. And then there’s the music he loves, especially the Grateful Dead’s; it accompanies both stories like a soundtrack playing off in the distance. Walton tends to get long-winded at times, but that won’t be news to anyone who watches his broadcasts, and those who have been afflicted with lifelong injuries will find the book uplifting and inspirational. Basketball fans will relish Walton’s acumen and insights into the game as well as his stories about players, coaches (especially John Wooden), and games, all told in Walton’s fervent, witty style.

One of the NBA’s 50 greatest players scores another basket—a deeply personal one.

Pub Date: March 8, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-4767-1686-2

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016

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