Overview
A vital narrative history of 1970s pro basketball, and the Black players who shaped the NBA
Against a backdrop of ongoing resistance to racial desegregation and strident calls for Black Power, the NBA in the 1970s embodied the nation’s imagined descent into disorder. A new generation of Black players entered the league, among them Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Spencer Haywood, and the press and public were quick to blame this cohort for the supposed decline of pro-basketball, citing drugs, violence, and greed. Basketball became a symbol for post–civil rights America: the rules had changed, allowing more Black people onto the playing field, and now they were ruining everything.
Enter Black Ball, a gripping corrective in which scholar Theresa Runstedtler expertly rewrites basketball’s “Dark Ages.” Weaving together a deep knowledge of the game with incisive social analysis, Runstedtler argues that this much-maligned period was pivotal to the rise of the modern-day NBA.
The book, Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation that Saved the Soul of the NBA [Bulk, Wholesale, Quantity] ISBN#9781645036951 in Hardcover by Theresa Runstedtler may be ordered in bulk quantities. Minimum starts at 25 copies. Availability based on publisher status and quantity being ordered.
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