Under The Boards The Cultural Revolution In Basketball [Paperback]

The true story of basketball lives as much off the court as on the hardwood; it is about politics and race and cultural clashes as heated as a final-four buzzer-beater. This story unfolds in all its gritty and colorful detail in Under the Boards. From the birth of the Larry Bird legend to the ascendancy of a hip-hop-infused?NBA to the backlash against bling and the contemporary American game, Jeffrey Lane traces the emergence of a new culture of basketball, complete with competing values, attitudes, aesthetics, and racial and economic tensions.

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The revolution Lane describes resonates in the way Latrell Sprewells assault on his coach forever changed?NBA power relations; in legendary coach Bob Knights entanglement in high school basketball history; in the dramatic shift in attitude toward European players; in the impact of the deaths of two rappers on rookie Allen Iversons career; and in conflicting cultural models rooted in ideals of black masculinity and white nostalgia. In these moments Lanes book documents a profound change in basketball and in American culture over the last thirty years.