Tall Tales: The Glory Years of the NBA, in the Words of the Men Who Played, Coached, and Built Pro Basketball

by Terry Pluto

Overview

An history of the beginnings of the National Basketball Associations for true basketball fans.

Tall Tales in an oral history of the early days of the National Basketball Associations, when giants such as Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Maurice Stokes, Oscar Robertson, Bob Pettit, Lenny Wilkens, Hot Rod Hundley, Jerry West, and Elgin Baylor stalked the boards. When players sometimes had second jobs in the off-season. When teams were based in towns like Fort Wayne, Syracuse, and Rochester. If you consider yourself a true basketball fan, you need to know the sport’s roots. They’re all here, courtesy of Terry Pluto.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476748641
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	05/18/2013
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	383,969
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Terry Pluto is an award-winning sportswriter who writes primarily for The Plain Dealer. He was a sportswriter for the Akron Beacon Journal from 1985-2007. He has twice been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and twice been honored by the Associated Press Sports Editors as the nation's top sports columnist for medium-sized newspapers. He is an eight-time winner of the Ohio Sports Writer of the Year award and has received more than fifty state and local writing awards. He is the author of twenty-one books, including The Curse of Rocky Colavito, Unguarded, and Loose Balls. He lives in Akron, Ohio.

Editorial Reviews

Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal sportswriter Pluto has been steadily building a reputation as one of the nation's top basketball writers with books like Forty-Eight Minutes and Loose Balls ; this fine oral history will surely enhance that reputation. After a brief account of the National Basketball Association's formative period, which ended in 1954 when the 24-second shot clock changed the game forever, Pluto describes the exciting events in basketball during 1956-66, when the Boston Celtics dominated the league. Unlike many comparable histories in which the superstars have declined to participate, this one includes contributions from Wilt Chamberlain, Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, Red Auerbach and dozens of other players almost as well known. Of course contemporary fans will argue that 1992, with the assembling of the Olympic ``Dream Team,'' was basketball's real glory year, but the debate should only aid sales of Pluto's book. Photos not seen by PW. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Following the format he employed in Loose Balls (LJ 9/15/90), Pluto strings together capsule comments from players, coaches, officials, owners, and reporters to chronicle the growth of the National Basketball Association during the decades of the Fifties and Sixties, when the league was struggling to gain parity with other professional sports. Among the topics covered are the ``forgotten'' stars (e.g., Bob Pettit, Dolph Schayes), the breaking of racial barriers, the Bill Russell/Wilt Chamberlain battles, and life on and off the court in the smaller NBA cities of Fort Wayne and Syracuse. While many of the observations are of a jocular nature, others define the dramatic changes that have occurred in the way the game is played and operated. For popular sports collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 8/92.-- William H. Hoffman, Ft. Myers-Lee Cty. P.L., Fla.

Library Journal