What do Julius Erving, Larry Brown, Moses Malone, Bob Costas, the Indiana Pacers, the San Antonio Spurs and the Slam Dunk Contest have in common? They all got their professional starts in the American Basketball Association.
The NBA may have won the financial battle, but the ABA won the artistic war. With its stress on wide-open individual play, the adoption of the 3-point shot and pressing defense, and the encouragement of flashy moves and flying dunks, today's NBA is still—decades later —just the ABA without the red, white and blue ball.
Loose Balls is, after all these years, the definitive and most widely respected history of the ABA. It's a wild ride through some of the wackiest, funniest, strangest times ever to hit pro sports—told entirely through the (often incredible) words of those who played, wrote and connived their way through the league's nine seasons.
This is often called the definite book about the ABA, but as far as I can tell, it may be the only book written about the ABA. Still, it's an entertaining tome. Pluto contrasts a year-by-year run down of the league with various stories relayed via an as-it-happened narrative, which, if you think about it, was really the best way to tell the league's story. This was a league that had no television exposure at all, and by its' last year of existence, was down to playing 7 teams in an 84-game season. The genesis of today's NBA started with the ABA, and the sheer number of characters contained within these pages is enough for me to recommend to any reader.
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