Word: halberstam
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...BREAKS OF THE GAME by David Halberstam Knopf; 362 pages...
...National Basketball Association championship and, in the process, made the works of a Swiss watch look haphazard. Three seasons later, the Trail Blazers had slipped into the second division, the bright hopes of dynasty ended. The parabola of the Trail Blazers is the stuff of tragedy. But Author David Halberstam (The Powers That Be) has produced a tome so heavy that he contracts what basketball insiders call "white man's disease": no leaping ability...
...When Halberstam picks up the team during the 1979-80 season, Walton has left in a fury of lawsuits against the team, its trainer and doctor over treatments with pain killers. Maurice Lucas, the power forward who had provided muscle and meanness under the boards, was locked in an acrimonious contract dispute with Portland's owner. Guard Lionel Hollins, ball-handler and playmaker nonpareil, also wrangled with management; he and Lucas were soon traded. Their running mate, Dave Twardzik, stumbled about the court, a man suddenly severed from a rare athletic symbiosis. Forward Bobby Gross was injured for most...
...answers lay in professional basketball itself: a season too long for the human body to stand its stresses; a roster too short for the team's chemistry to survive disaffection; an ownership weakened by the financial fevers of big-time sports. The sources of affliction intrigue Halberstam, but on their trail he stumbles as badly as the team. His account is told at one remove. Throughout, the season is observed with 20/20 hindsight in the subjunctive mood that is the hallmark of Halberstam's style: "Later, he would realize...
...Halberstam's brother David--the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Best and the Brightest--told stories of Michael's exploits as an undergraduate, and told Bok he hoped a recipient with the same "exuberance and joy" as his brother could be found for the prize...