Order LOOSE BALLS here
* a suggestion by Rory Costello *
Before you roll your eyes and click out, please read the introduction paragraph of this book review. It's going to be about way more than basketball. It'll be about the world we currently live in and a world that doesn't exist anymore. The American Basketball Association is the last great sports myth we've ever had as a society, because it is the last major sports out that almost completely evaded the media, so no one has any idea if the stories surrounding its brief life are true. Sportwriter Terry Pluto wrote LOOSE BALLS, an oral history of the ABA that is still to this day the ultimate reference for anything related to this blessed era of basketball insanity and I have to admit, it's pretty wicked.
LOOSE BALLS is an oral history starring several key figures of the American Basketball Association, so in order to structure his book, Terry Pluto separated his chapters as the individual history of every team involved with the association, as well as the involvement of a couple major players. There's a lot of people talking, but it never gets confusing in regards who exactly is talking and what they are talking about. I knew next to nothing about the ABA when I jumped in aside that it was where Julius Erving and Moses Malone has their first chance, but by page 200 I was familiar with every important name involved.
I don't know if you're familiar with the movie Slap Shot, but according to LOOSE BALLS, the ABA was the closest real life sports equivalent we've ever had to it. I don't know if everything in the book is true, but I sincerely wish it is. My favorite story is about the Indiana Pacers - a team that still exists today in the NBA - where coach Slick Leonard got so fed up with his power forward Bob Netolicky that he chased him down an arena with a hockey stick, cursing, losing his mind and forcing the 6'9 player to seek asylum in a locked bathroom. In fact, there are conflicting versions of this story in LOOSE BALLS, but it's the one I choose to believe this one because it's the one I prefer.
This is Wendell Ladner. This photo exists and it was meant to be a serious promotional item.
We'll never know how glorious the American Basketball Association truly was, but LOOSE BALLS puts the reader in the active position of carrying its legacy through the memories they choose to select from the book. It's the only way for the myth to perpetuate itself since it lives mostly in the oral tradition. I'll remember plenty of things from LOOSE BALLS: John Brisker getting sucker punched at tip-off by a terrified opponent, women traveling from different states to have sex with Wendell Ladner, Marvin Barnes walking in thirty minutes before games and eating McDonald's while getting taped up only to score 40, Moses Malone forsaking college at 18 in order to free his overworked mother from the burden of providing for him, there were so many unique, colorful and moving moment in that era that you really can pick and choose what you decide to carry on.
The American Basketball Association more or less invented basketball as we know it today. Culturally, it will live forever as this disorganized, magic place where the craziest characters in the sport created together the last sport legends in America. There is no need to know anything about the ABA or basketball altogether in order to enjoy LOOSE BALLS, like you don't need to know anything about sports in order to watch a good sports movie. It's a nostalgic throwback to a blessed time where media scrutiny was almost non-existent and that athletes could be as flamboyant and ridiculous as they felt like. Some its spirit is still alive in today's NBA, but it will never live up to to the ABA the way an aging heartthrob actor will never live up to James Dean.