Massy's Game

Broussard "Bru" Massy is eight feet two inches tall, a New Orleans piano prodigy who gave up basketball for a music conservatory and then, inexplicably, gave up music for the pros. He can barely fit through a doorway. He has never played organized ball above junior high. And he doesn't talk to reporters.

The city's NBA franchise, the hapless Wasps, signs him as a publicity stunt. Nobody expects him to last two weeks.

He lasts the whole season. And then some.

Told through the eyes of Sam Forrester, the Wasps' sardonic beat reporter, Massy's Game is Jack Olsen's wildly funny, unexpectedly moving novel about what happens when a gentle giant collides with the machinery of professional sports. Massy dominates on the court in ways no one can explain or stop — pulling down rebounds a yard above the rim, blocking shots from ten feet out, rattling the backboards with slam dunks that shake the building. The fans despise him. The opposing players despise him. The officials despise him. Nobody roots for Goliath.

But who is Broussard Massy, really? Behind the silence and the size, Sam Forrester senses something — the alcoholic father, the little girl with the flute, the half-million dollar life insurance policy taken out before the season even started. And then the threats begin.

Sharp, satirical, and propelled by Olsen's instinct for character, Massy's Game skewers the absurdities of professional sports while quietly asking something more serious: what does America do with a man it cannot fit into any of its boxes?