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Elevated: The Global Rise of the N.B.A.
Howard Beck. Marc Stein. Jonathan Abrams. Chris Broussard. Ira Berkow. George Vecsey. Mike Wise. Selena Roberts. Lee Jenkins. All have graced the pages of The New York Times, entertaining readers with their probing coverage of the a stage on which spectacular athletes perform against a backdrop of continuous social change. Now, their work and more is collected in a new volume, edited and annotated by Hall of Fame honoree Harvey Araton, tracing basketball's sustained boom from Magic and Bird to the present.Elevated provides a courtside seat to four decades of professional basketball. Both the iconic moments and those quieter, but no less meaningful times in between are here, from Wise riding around Los Angeles with a young Kobe Bryant on the eve of his first All-Star Game, to Stein declaring Giannis Antetokounmpo's "unspeakable greatness" to the world in a riveting profile. Rather than simply preserving the past, Elevated reexamines and further illuminates hoops history. This expertly curated collection features exclusive new writing by Araton and postscripts from the original journalists, revealing candid exchanges with NBA greats that didn't make the original newspaper edit and tracing the rise of a worldwide phenomenon from a contemporary vantage point.
- GenresSportsBasketball
552 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 10, 2020
41 people are currently reading
196 people want to read
About the author
Harvey Araton
12 books6 followersHarvey Araton joined the New York Times as a sports reporter and national basketball columnist in 1991 and became a "Sports of the Times" columnist in 1994. He is the author of numerous books, including most recently, When the Garden Was Eden: Clyde, the Captain, Dollar Bill, and the Glory Days of the Old Knicks. His work has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, GQ, ESPN The Magazine, Sport, Tennis, and Basketball Weekly. Born in New York City in 1952, he is a 1975 graduate of the City University of New York. Araton lives in Montclair, New Jersey.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
May 3, 2020
Professional basketball and the National Basketball Association (NBA) were on life support in the late 1970’s. The league had a reputation of being “too black” and drug-infested. Arenas were rarely sold out. Television ratings were very low and the championship round of the playoffs was not shown live but on tape delay late at night.
Enter two young college stars named Ervin “Magic” Johnson and Larry Bird. When they became professionals, the game and the league started growing again, and it still is to this day. This era of the history of the NBA is covered in this book of New York Times (NYT) articles edited by Harvey Araton, who was also the writer of several of the articles.
Marketed as a history book to celebrate the rise of the league, it was surprising to learn that this was a collection of articles instead of a narrative of how the league grew to be a global phenomenon. However, that format worked for this topic as the articles broke the book up into small, manageable sections that made reading over five hundred pages take very little time.
The other advantage to having this collection of NYT articles was that a lot of topics, players, owners and other key aspects of the game were covered. Players from Magic and Bird, through Michael Jordan, Shaquile O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Stephan Curry are all featured. Nearly every controversy in that time frame has at least an article or two as well – the three-point shot, the 2004 brawl between Detroit and Indiana, the dress code for players instituted by former Commissioner David Stern, banning former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling from the league – they are all there as well as many other topics.
The complete picture of the NBA from the last 40 years is on display in this book and the writers of the articles as well as the editing job by Araton to put this together is excellent. Even the small snippets of commentary that precede each chapter of related articles will teach the reader a little bit about the league. This book is highly recommended for readers of any level of interest in professional basketball.
I wish to thank Triumph Books for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
https://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/20...
Enter two young college stars named Ervin “Magic” Johnson and Larry Bird. When they became professionals, the game and the league started growing again, and it still is to this day. This era of the history of the NBA is covered in this book of New York Times (NYT) articles edited by Harvey Araton, who was also the writer of several of the articles.
Marketed as a history book to celebrate the rise of the league, it was surprising to learn that this was a collection of articles instead of a narrative of how the league grew to be a global phenomenon. However, that format worked for this topic as the articles broke the book up into small, manageable sections that made reading over five hundred pages take very little time.
The other advantage to having this collection of NYT articles was that a lot of topics, players, owners and other key aspects of the game were covered. Players from Magic and Bird, through Michael Jordan, Shaquile O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Stephan Curry are all featured. Nearly every controversy in that time frame has at least an article or two as well – the three-point shot, the 2004 brawl between Detroit and Indiana, the dress code for players instituted by former Commissioner David Stern, banning former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling from the league – they are all there as well as many other topics.
The complete picture of the NBA from the last 40 years is on display in this book and the writers of the articles as well as the editing job by Araton to put this together is excellent. Even the small snippets of commentary that precede each chapter of related articles will teach the reader a little bit about the league. This book is highly recommended for readers of any level of interest in professional basketball.
I wish to thank Triumph Books for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
https://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/20...
August 3, 2020
Brought back great memories of NBA legends past. A great read during the suspended season!
July 17, 2022
Encyclopedic in its format but never dry like an encyclopedia. Sometimes, this book can be too brief but there’s a give-and-take in compiling decades of information into one 500-page book.
The usual highlights are covered (Magic Johnson & Larry Bird are practically the Big Bang of Modern Basketball and they’re covered throughout its first 100 pages), but what this book does best (and maybe better than any book re: NBA) is show how trends evolved throughout the NBA’s history— especially the commercialism that started with Michael Jordan; evolved with the Dream Team as a “festival of shoe company pitchmen” (p. 99); and metastasized post-Jordan into false expectations of one-person teams (“Forgotten was the fact that Jordan barely scratched the postseason surface before Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant came along… Certainly not that Pippen was Jordan’s equal, but that his contributions and Hall of Fame credentials and those of others were often minimized by the Nike-inspired and league-abetted sell.” (p. 192)).
Since this is a compilation of New York Times articles, there’s occasionally an article that views a major storyline as it went through New York. For example, there’s an article about the influence of the Syracuse Nationals on the 24-second shot clock; an article about New York Knick Bernard King vs the 1980s Detroit Pistons; and an article on the 7’2’’ French player who was drafted by the Knicks and then famously had a guy jump over him during the Olympics (each of these articles being some of the book’s best).
(Unrelated to New York, but wanting to throw it in here, the article about Shaq’s habit of breaking backboards as viewed through the prism of ‘90s era conservatism is another great one.)
The usual highlights are covered (Magic Johnson & Larry Bird are practically the Big Bang of Modern Basketball and they’re covered throughout its first 100 pages), but what this book does best (and maybe better than any book re: NBA) is show how trends evolved throughout the NBA’s history— especially the commercialism that started with Michael Jordan; evolved with the Dream Team as a “festival of shoe company pitchmen” (p. 99); and metastasized post-Jordan into false expectations of one-person teams (“Forgotten was the fact that Jordan barely scratched the postseason surface before Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant came along… Certainly not that Pippen was Jordan’s equal, but that his contributions and Hall of Fame credentials and those of others were often minimized by the Nike-inspired and league-abetted sell.” (p. 192)).
Since this is a compilation of New York Times articles, there’s occasionally an article that views a major storyline as it went through New York. For example, there’s an article about the influence of the Syracuse Nationals on the 24-second shot clock; an article about New York Knick Bernard King vs the 1980s Detroit Pistons; and an article on the 7’2’’ French player who was drafted by the Knicks and then famously had a guy jump over him during the Olympics (each of these articles being some of the book’s best).
(Unrelated to New York, but wanting to throw it in here, the article about Shaq’s habit of breaking backboards as viewed through the prism of ‘90s era conservatism is another great one.)
July 9, 2019
A fun overview of the past 40 years in the NBA. Some tremendous writing from a few stalwarts, but also a handful of duds that haven't aged well. (Not sure how/why those got included in this collection.)
Solid, but only a must read for truly passionate fans.
Solid, but only a must read for truly passionate fans.
June 30, 2019
The book, in my opinion, was OK. The stories were from newspaper writers from the New York Times. Overall, you might want to look for another book.
July 7, 2019
Excellent collections are NYT articles on the rise of this sport.
March 2, 2020
I’ve been watching basketball since I was 8. This is full of nostalgia and really charts how the game and league have changed since I watched that Bulls Suns Finals back in 93. This book ruled.
Read
December 4, 2020This was a great book. It really tells the story through an NBA player's life. It shows you the struggles and the strengths a player has. It shows kids that not everything in life is easy.
May 15, 2021
A treasure trove of NBA writing, covering the past 40 years of the league’s history by some of its best, most consistent writers. A book every NBA fan should have on their shelf.
August 1, 2022
Shows the timeline of the NBA, and the evolution of the game of basketball and everything that is involved with the NBA.
May 27, 2024
Verzameling columns en reportages over de grote sterren en allang vergeten spelers. Mooie trips down memory lane, geinig om om de zoveel tijd eens op te pakken en er een paar te lezen.
July 10, 2024
3.0 ✴️
July 8, 2019
In small doses, this is probably a 4-star take on the NBA. It's a compilation of the best basketball writing from the New York Times over the last 40 years or so, and it's more or less thematically organized.
However, in this big dose, "Elevated" wears a little thin. No topic is developed at length, because these were newspaper stories. Nonetheless, a mostly pleasant read for a sports fan.
However, in this big dose, "Elevated" wears a little thin. No topic is developed at length, because these were newspaper stories. Nonetheless, a mostly pleasant read for a sports fan.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews