Magic in the Air
The Myth, the Mystery, and the Soul of the Slam Dunk
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- USD 16.99
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- USD 16.99
Descripción editorial
"Who doesn't wanna read an entire book about the slam dunk? I love basketball." - Ann Patchett
"The definitive dunking dissertation." - Jack McCallum, Wall Street Journal
From the author of the bestselling Kobe Bryant biography The Rise comes the legend of the most powerful shot in basketball: the slam dunk.
The evolution of basketball, and much of the social and cultural change in America, can be traced through one powerful act on the court: the slam dunk. The dunk's history is the story of a sport and a country changed by the most dominant act in basketball, and it makes Magic in the Air a rollicking and insightful piece of narrative history and a surefire classic of sports literature.
When basketball was the province of white men, the dunk acted as a revolutionary agent, a tool for players like Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell to transform the sport into a Black man’s game. The dunk has since been an expression of Black culture amid the righteous upheaval of the civil-rights movement, of the threat that Black people were considered to be to the establishment. It was banned from college basketball for nearly a decade—an attempt to squash the individual expression and athleticism that characterized the sport in America’s cities and on its playgrounds. The dunk nevertheless bubbled up to basketball’s highest levels. From Julius Erving to Michael Jordan to the high flyers of the 21st century, the dunk has been a key mechanism for growing the NBA into a global goliath.
Drawing on deep reporting and dozens of interviews with players, coaches, and other hoops experts, Magic in the Air brings to life the tale of the dunk while balancing sharp socio-racial history and commentary with a romp through American sports and culture. There's never been a basketball book quite like it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"The entire social, cultural, and athletic evolution of basketball can be traced through the slam dunk," according to this energetic history. Philadelphia Inquirer sports columnist Sielski (The Rise) notes that in the early 20th century, basketball coaches considered dunking antithetical to the sport's higher aspirations to improve young men's moral character, believing the technique too ostentatious. Debates over dunking were inextricably entwined in midcentury basketball's racial politics, Sielski contends, describing how the National Basketball Committee banned dunking in college and high school hoops in 1967 to stymie the success of UCLA center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who was famed for his dunks, and other Black players pushing the sport forward in the late 1960s. Arguing that dunking played a crucial role in turning the NBA into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise, Sielski describes how the thrills of the American Basketball Association's inaugural slam dunk contest in 1976 hastened the decision of the comparatively staid NBA to merge with its competitor later that year. Briskly told and grounded in observant portraits of famous dunkers (New York streetball legend Earl Manigault is portrayed as a tragic figure whose tireless pursuit of transcendence on the court was hampered by heroin addiction), this scores.
