Book cover of Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association

Book description

What do Julius Erving, Larry Brown, Moses Malone, Bob Costas, the Indiana Pacers, the San Antonio Spurs and the Slam Dunk Contest have in common? They all got their professional starts in the American Basketball Association.

What do Julius Erving, Larry Brown, Moses Malone, Bob Costas, the Indiana Pacers, the…


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Why read it?

2 authors picked Loose Balls as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

The American Basketball Association (ABA) epitomized the swinging 1970s, and this book, set up as a series of interviews with players and coaches, lets you hear first-hand from the men who experienced it.

The modern NBA owes much of its exuberance and excitement to this oft-forgotten league. Learning about how the ABA transformed professional basketball makes me love this book so much. 

From Adam's list on basketball fans.

I love the Studs Terkel genre of storytelling, where the interviews themselves are ordered to tell a story without the author getting in the way. Terry Pluto’s book is a Studs Terkel version of the story of the ABA, an outlaw basketball league that was even crazier in real life than in caricature.

Hearing from the players and administrators themselves brought the ABA to life for me in a way that it never had in more traditional histories. I know, reading such stories, that there are things that get omitted in first-person accounts, but I can’t help but prefer to…

If you love Loose Balls...

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These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas,

A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

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