A New York Times bestseller, David Halberstam's The Breaks of the
Game focuses on one grim season (1979-80) in the life of the Bill
Walton-led Portland Trail Blazers, a team that only three years before
had been NBA champions.
More than six years after his death David Halberstam remains one of this
country's most respected journalists and revered authorities on American
life and history in the years since WWII. A Pulitzer Prize-winner for
his groundbreaking reporting on the Vietnam War, Halberstam wrote more
than 20 books, almost all of them bestsellers. His work has stood the
test of time and has become the standard by which all journalists
measure themselves.
The tactile authenticity of Halberstam's knowledge of the basketball
world is unrivaled. Yet he is writing here about far more than just
basketball. This is a story about a place in our society where power,
money, and talent collide and sometimes corrupt, a place where both
national obsessions and naked greed are exposed. It's about the
influence of big media, the fans and the hype they subsist on, the clash
of ethics, the terrible physical demands of modern sports (from drugs to
body size), the unreal salaries, the conflicts of race and class, and
the consequences of sport converted into mass entertainment and athletes
transformed into superstars -- all presented in a way that puts the
reader in the room and on the court, and The Breaks of the Game in a
league of its own.
