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The Art of a Beautiful Game

The Art of a Beautiful Game by Chris Ballard
The Art of a Beautiful Game by Chris Ballard

Chris Ballard is a lucky guy.

He makes a fair portion of his living writing about basketball, which he loves immoderately and writes about with curiosity and energy. He gets to talk at length with players he admires, and his admiration of them is certainly evident in The Art of a Beautiful Game: The Thinking Fan’s Tour of the NBA.

Some of these players – Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, Dwight Howard, Steve Nash – are active in the NBA. Others – current Phoenix Suns General Manager Steve Kerr, for one – retired a while back. Each of them has something to tell Chris Ballard about the game at which they have all excelled.

Fans of the NBA will enjoy this book, especially if they are not much inclined to worry about how some of the players Chris Ballard admires have conducted themselves when the shot clock hasn’t been running. It’s probably not fair to single out Kobe Bryant in this respect, since he is perhaps only the most super of the superstars to have faced felony charges. Still, it might have been interesting if Ballard, who celebrates Bryant’s will to dominate and his determination to be “the alpha dog” in every situation he encounters, had explored the implications of that compulsion as it has sometimes been evident off the court.

This program aired on December 10, 2009. The audio for this program is not available.

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