Showing results by author "Charley Rosen" in All Categories

Phil Jackson has done it again, led the L.A. Lakers to an NBA championship victory. For him, it's More Than a Game. Also, listen to a recent Fresh Air interview with Jackson.

Jason Lewis is a star college basketball player just back from World War II. He’s a hero, missing two fingers on his shooting hand. He can’t play any longer, so he makes the ultimate ballplayer’s sacrifice: He becomes a referee. Set in postwar New York during the founding of what will eventually be the NBA, No Blood, No Foul is the story of a man who must come to terms with a debilitating injury and chase after dreams of perfection in a decidedly imperfect world.

The college basketball scandals of 1951 were to basketball what the 1919 Black Sox scandals were to baseball - a loss of innocence, after which the game would be permanently tarnished, its relationship to power and big money firmly established. In Scandals of '51, Charley Rosen identifies all the major figures - including players, coaches, gangsters, clergymen, politicians - that made up the elaborate network that controlled the outcomes to many games or protected those who did so.

An all-Jewish basketball team barnstorms across Depression-era America, confronting prejudice and point-shaving in this “some-times agonizing, frequently hilarious” novel (Chicago Tribune) by “the game’s foremost chronicler” (Wall Street Journal).