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Crazy Basketball

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Charley Rosen's basketball career was filled with 45 years of playing time, coaching positions and hilarious stories that can not be matched. In his new book, Crazy Basketball, Rosen shares the ups and downs of his wacky career.


Bill's Thoughts on Crazy Basketball:
Charley Rosen's life in basketball - mostly minor league basketball - has provided him with a lot of entertaining stories.

There's the one about the Continental Basketball Association player who carried a gun in his gym bag. Nobody was sure why, until the night he congratulated the opposing player who'd torched him for about thirty points, then pulled out the gun and warned that player never to do it again.

Charley Rosen witnessed that conversation. In some of the other stories, he's a principle. In one of his CBA coaching stints, he gave a former NBA player fewer minutes than the player's wife felt he should get. After the game, she confronted Coach Rosen, and though the wife had no gun, her vocabulary featured many colorful bullet points. Charley nodded, smiled, and retreated to the phone booth in the corridor, from which he traded the player, assuming the wife would go, too.

If the NBA lockout lasts long enough to actually deprive fans of basketball, Charley Rosen's book will offer some solace. In fact, even if the lockout ends soon enough for the next season to begin on time, Crazy Basketball is more entertaining than the first couple months of the NBA campaign are likely to be.

This segment aired on July 9, 2011.

Headshot of Bill Littlefield

Bill Littlefield Host, Only A Game
Bill Littlefield was the host of Only A Game from 1993 until 2018.

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