MASTERS OF THE GAME

Basketball buddies swap stories.

This meandering book features some interesting tales about the best players in league history, as chosen in a 2021 poll. Chicago sportswriter Smith covered Jackson when he coached the Chicago Bulls to six championships. Here, they share anecdotes whose defining quality is truthiness. Smith recalls Paul Arizin having “a 90-point game or something” in college. (85, actually.) Jackson says James Harden led the league in free throw attempts “maybe three, four, five years” running. (Six, in fact.) Smith concludes one yarn with the words “perhaps apocryphal,” though others probably qualify. Each chapter starts with a thumbnail sketch of a player. Then comes a breezy chat between the authors. Staying focused isn’t their priority. Ostensibly talking about Nate Thurmond, they barely mention the stalwart rebounder while musing about officiating and obscure players. Some of their stories are delightful. Smith remembers Julius Erving, who was running late for their planned interview, calling from a highway emergency phone. Jackson, who asked players to read classics, says Shaquille O’Neal described Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha as having “a lot of money and women, just like me.” As the subtitle promises, their give-and-takes appear to be transcribed conversations—memory lapses included. Jackson, thinking of a player’s name, says, “McCarthy, McClellan,” before getting it: “McNamara.” In several chapters, the authors mention an NBA figure by first name only, leaving readers to hunt elsewhere in the book for surnames. Smith’s preface asserts that basketball “history needs to be told and remembered and told again.” Yet much of what they’ve produced has only a glancing relationship to the players themselves. Bafflingly, their exchange in the Moses Malone chapter mentions Bobby Knight and Lonesome Dove—but not Malone.

A genial but frustrating appraisal of pro hoop’s all-time greats.