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And the Walls Came Tumbling Down: The Basketball Game That Changed American Sports
Book by Fitzpatrick, Frank
256 pages, Paperback
First published March 4, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 31, 2009
Exciting account of Texas Western's 1966 basketball championship.
April 28, 2018
I'm glad this book was written (done in late 1990s) at a time when most of the principals were still alive and were available to speak about the experience. The author goes into a deep dive into the sociology of the era, both at Kentucky under Adolph Rupp and at Texas Western under Don Haskins. As he points out, the differences couldn't have been more stark, except that both ran brutally long practices and controlled their players' lives in ways that are unimaginable today. Oh, and they were both basically drunks, especially as they aged.
The book does a minimal job about the game itself, and in fact it says the game was kind of dull. Texas Western held a lead almost from the beginning, and though Kentucky cut it to a point or two a few times in the 2nd half, Texas Western had a 5-10 point lead down the stretch. It was a fairly mundane victory. And when the style of play is compared to today, the author notes that it seems as if the players are in slow motion and that the court is much bigger because they simply don't take up a lot of space. It took another 15 years or so before the college game got really exciting -- thank you Magic Johnson and Larry Bird.
Anyway, the author explodes a lot of myths in this book, and he deserves credit for being the first to nail down those facts so prominently. More recent books about the game have followed his lead. Among the things he explains, perhaps the biggest two are that Texas Western was an undisciplined team of outlaws that used superior athleticism to swarm around the stoic Wildcats, and overwhelmed them. Wrong on all counts. Texas Western probably did have better athletes, but it won with defense. Kentucky was a run-and-gun team at the time, the highest scoring in the nation. Texas Western won by outrebounding opponents by 13-14 boards per game and stifling them with a man-to-man that never gave up. On offense, Texas Western was always deliberate, and they were even more so in the championship game because they were afraid of getting into a speed showdown with the smaller, faster Kentucky team.
Oh, and here's another myth disposed of early in the book. Rupp complained after the game and for another decade that Texas Western won with kids who didn't deserve to be in college, who were criminals, etc. Actually, more Texas Western kids graduated on time and graduated eventually than Kentucky players, and every single Texas Western player had a significant professional career. Every single one. Against all the odds, they did everything right.
Perhaps the most interesting parts are the discussions of the two coaches. The author rips Rupp over and over again for his racism, his sadism towards his players and his arrogance. He quotes numerous people who call Rupp the worst egoist they ever met (I'm guessing that those people had not met Donald Trump!). And that's how Rupp is remembered today, mostly due to his refusal to integrate his team, his loss vs. Texas Western, and his bitter complaints about it forever after. But at the same time, the author notes that there were some nuances in Rupp's life, such as his use of a black player when he began as a high school coach and his legitimate comments that even if he took on a black player, it would have been all-but-impossible for that player to compete in Mississippi or Alabama at the time.
Meanwhile, Haskins seems charming, but nonetheless not exactly a guy you'd model your life after. He's described as drinking a case of beer a night and of running his team through practices after midnight if they lost a game. But he recruited guys who he thought could play ball, and he didn't care about their color or their back-story -- a true believer in performance. There's a lot to commend about that type of attitude.
So, the book is a great review of a seminal moment in college basketball, and the real story therein. One more myth to explode: at the time, the black v. white thing wasn't quite as prominent as it became in later decades. Yes, everyone knew it was there, but because Kentucky was expected to win easily, the game had very little pre-game buildup, and even after the victory, Rupp's denunciation of his own team led many people to believe that it was a fluke.
A few complaints. The writing in the book isn't particularly good, and it suffers from a ton of repetition. A ton of repetition. A ton of repetition. Kind of like that, where the same thing will be written on three consecutive pages, as if you're not smart enough to remember a prominent fact, such as that Rupp finally had a black player on his final team, or that he considered trying to recruit Wes Unseld (who went to Louisville instead), but didn't try very hard. Unseld would have been the center on that Kentucky team -- and probably would have made a difference.
The book also has some weird shout-outs that make no sense. For example, it mentions that Gary Williams, future Maryland coach, was watching the NCAA final game because he was a college student at the time. But there's no quote from Williams about the game, nor any reference to what he thought about its significance. It's just dropping in his name for no apparent reason.
The book does a minimal job about the game itself, and in fact it says the game was kind of dull. Texas Western held a lead almost from the beginning, and though Kentucky cut it to a point or two a few times in the 2nd half, Texas Western had a 5-10 point lead down the stretch. It was a fairly mundane victory. And when the style of play is compared to today, the author notes that it seems as if the players are in slow motion and that the court is much bigger because they simply don't take up a lot of space. It took another 15 years or so before the college game got really exciting -- thank you Magic Johnson and Larry Bird.
Anyway, the author explodes a lot of myths in this book, and he deserves credit for being the first to nail down those facts so prominently. More recent books about the game have followed his lead. Among the things he explains, perhaps the biggest two are that Texas Western was an undisciplined team of outlaws that used superior athleticism to swarm around the stoic Wildcats, and overwhelmed them. Wrong on all counts. Texas Western probably did have better athletes, but it won with defense. Kentucky was a run-and-gun team at the time, the highest scoring in the nation. Texas Western won by outrebounding opponents by 13-14 boards per game and stifling them with a man-to-man that never gave up. On offense, Texas Western was always deliberate, and they were even more so in the championship game because they were afraid of getting into a speed showdown with the smaller, faster Kentucky team.
Oh, and here's another myth disposed of early in the book. Rupp complained after the game and for another decade that Texas Western won with kids who didn't deserve to be in college, who were criminals, etc. Actually, more Texas Western kids graduated on time and graduated eventually than Kentucky players, and every single Texas Western player had a significant professional career. Every single one. Against all the odds, they did everything right.
Perhaps the most interesting parts are the discussions of the two coaches. The author rips Rupp over and over again for his racism, his sadism towards his players and his arrogance. He quotes numerous people who call Rupp the worst egoist they ever met (I'm guessing that those people had not met Donald Trump!). And that's how Rupp is remembered today, mostly due to his refusal to integrate his team, his loss vs. Texas Western, and his bitter complaints about it forever after. But at the same time, the author notes that there were some nuances in Rupp's life, such as his use of a black player when he began as a high school coach and his legitimate comments that even if he took on a black player, it would have been all-but-impossible for that player to compete in Mississippi or Alabama at the time.
Meanwhile, Haskins seems charming, but nonetheless not exactly a guy you'd model your life after. He's described as drinking a case of beer a night and of running his team through practices after midnight if they lost a game. But he recruited guys who he thought could play ball, and he didn't care about their color or their back-story -- a true believer in performance. There's a lot to commend about that type of attitude.
So, the book is a great review of a seminal moment in college basketball, and the real story therein. One more myth to explode: at the time, the black v. white thing wasn't quite as prominent as it became in later decades. Yes, everyone knew it was there, but because Kentucky was expected to win easily, the game had very little pre-game buildup, and even after the victory, Rupp's denunciation of his own team led many people to believe that it was a fluke.
A few complaints. The writing in the book isn't particularly good, and it suffers from a ton of repetition. A ton of repetition. A ton of repetition. Kind of like that, where the same thing will be written on three consecutive pages, as if you're not smart enough to remember a prominent fact, such as that Rupp finally had a black player on his final team, or that he considered trying to recruit Wes Unseld (who went to Louisville instead), but didn't try very hard. Unseld would have been the center on that Kentucky team -- and probably would have made a difference.
The book also has some weird shout-outs that make no sense. For example, it mentions that Gary Williams, future Maryland coach, was watching the NCAA final game because he was a college student at the time. But there's no quote from Williams about the game, nor any reference to what he thought about its significance. It's just dropping in his name for no apparent reason.
December 31, 2018
Really fascinating how this event has come to represent a pivotal moment for race and racism in basketball. ESPN's documentary Basketball: A Love Story has a good, if short, treatment of the game and the season. This book just does not demonstrate much deep (or critical) thinking about the institutions and structures that have perpetuated racism in American sports and culture. Too much of the blame, here, is confined to the SEC. True, that's where literal segregation held on the longest; but it took a much broader society blind to injustice to let the quota system persist as long as it did elsewhere. The author never deeply considers the exploitation of the athletes as college basketball became a bigger business. A few times, he reveals some deeply conservative notions about the sort of progress he finds appropriate; he's particularly frightened by what he calls "the social spasms of the late 1960s" (p. 29). Nonetheless, Rupp makes a detestable villain and Texas Western's success is still a great moment. Maybe for it's time this book evoked the meaning of the game and the experience of its players, but this story badly needs a fresh retelling.
August 10, 2020
Great book.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews