A treat for any fan of March Madness—and college basketball in general.
The doyen of college basketball prognostication tells all.
“When I talk to school groups,” writes ESPN analyst Lunardi, “I like to tell them that when I was their age I was the nerd who was too small to play. Coaches would hand me a clipboard to keep track of some stats.” Years later, bracketology—a term that made it into the Oxford English Dictionary—had become a highly followed form of basketball divination. Drawing up brackets is an elusive art, and it takes a lot of explaining. Suffice it to say that it requires constantly refreshing team statistics as the season progresses in order to predict the makeup of the NCAA playoffs. (Lunardi advocates expanding the field to 72 teams.) There’s money to be made in such learned guesswork. As Lunardi notes, when he published the predecessor volume to the current form of bracketing, “the first 500 copies we sold went to an address in Las Vegas.” Now it’s a matter of complex calculus done by computers augmented by the author’s unique intelligence, as he ponders, for example, what a squad might look like if 70% of its offense returns for another year of play. “What is a reasonable aggregate improvement based on the ages of the returning players?” he asks. “That depends.” Knowing the variables is an art based on a formidable body of data, one that involves studying “the transactions in college basketball from all available sources” and then piecing together the likely playing field. Lunardi admits that he guesses wrong a couple of times per season, and he can’t always foretell the future, but there’s an impressive science to the enterprise that will enthrall fans of Moneyball and other number-oriented sports books. In the foreword, Gonzaga head coach Mark Few rightly praises the author for a “breadth of knowledge” that “is beyond reproach.”
A treat for any fan of March Madness—and college basketball in general.Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-62937-881-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Triumph Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
PERSPECTIVES
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.
The Chicago Bulls stalwart tells all—and then some.
Hall of Famer Pippen opens with a long complaint: Yes, he’s a legend, but he got short shrift in the ESPN documentary about Michael Jordan and the Bulls, The Last Dance. Given that Jordan emerges as someone not quite friend enough to qualify as a frenemy, even though teammates for many years, the maltreatment is understandable. This book, Pippen allows, is his retort to a man who “was determined to prove to the current generation of fans that he was larger-than-life during his day—and still larger than LeBron James, the player many consider his equal, if not superior.” Coming from a hardscrabble little town in Arkansas and playing for a small college, Pippen enjoyed an unlikely rise to NBA stardom. He played alongside and against some of the greats, of whom he writes appreciatively (even Jordan). Readers will gain insight into the lives of characters such as Dennis Rodman, who “possessed an unbelievable basketball IQ,” and into the behind-the-scenes work that led to the Bulls dynasty, which ended only because, Pippen charges, the team’s management was so inept. Looking back on his early years, Pippen advocates paying college athletes. “Don’t give me any of that holier-than-thou student-athlete nonsense,” he writes. “These young men—and women—are athletes first, not students, and make up the labor that generates fortunes for their schools. They are, for lack of a better term, slaves.” The author also writes evenhandedly of the world outside basketball: “No matter how many championships I have won, and millions I have earned, I never forget the color of my skin and that some people in this world hate me just because of that.” Overall, the memoir is closely observed and uncommonly modest, given Pippen’s many successes, and it moves as swiftly as a playoff game.
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982165-19-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
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