Review
------
"“Mr. Abrams is such an excellent reporter and has
been such a keen observer of the NBA over more than two decades
that he makes an unerring tour guide. It’s a blast just to let
him lead us through the tumultuous era between Mr. Jordan and Mr.
James.” - The Wall Street Journal
“Riveting….an exhaustive work of research and reporting that
reads with the propulsive energy of a magazine feature that makes
you late for something important.” - Slate
"Masterful." - The Atlantic
“A must-read about the game, an incisive and exhaustively
reported exploration of the price that young men pay for a chance
to make it in the extraordinarily competitive world of pro hoops.
Jonathan Abrams asks smart questions and has a gift for
portraiture…an important contribution to the discussion about the
way we consume sports in America.” - The Daily Beast
"Expertly weaves stories and anecdotes from these players to
create a fascinating retrospective on the culture, success and
the continuing impact of those players in the league..Abrams’
book does an excellent job telling stories of these players,
unearthing details that add depth to even the most-known stars
including aspects of Kobe’s legendary pre-draft workouts and the
“luckiest” that accelerated LeBron’s star rising in high
school. It is worth reading for every basketball fan as a piece
of entertainment as well as for deeper in into an era now
past and the players who still shape our present and future." -
The Sporting News
"Abrams weaves a compelling tale about a transformational era in
the NBA that also speaks to the sometimes-desperate pursuit of
sporting stardom." - Kirkus (Starred Review)
"This essential, well-researched book will appeal to readers
interested in basketball’s business side as well as the factors
that have helped shape the modern NBA." -
“In this excellent effort, Abrams, the gifted hoops writer late
of Grantland, examines this controversial phenomenon from every
angle. –Publishers Weekly
"A riveting read that cements Jonathan Abrams' reputation as one
of the world's best basketball writers." – Bill Simmons, #1 New
York Times Bestselling author of The Book of Basketball
“A fascinating and unsettling account of what happened to
professional basketball when teenagers made their way into a
man's game."—Malcolm Gladwell, #1 New York Times bestselling
author of Outliers and David and Goliath
“Will stand as the definitive dissection of an oddly brief,
perpetually influential period in the history of NBA labor
relations."—Chuck Klosterman, New York Times bestselling author
of I Wear the Black Hat and Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs
“There was much I learned from this book, which covers not only
the superstar “kids" like Bryant and Garnett, but also the
compelling cautionary tales.” —Jack McCallum, New York
Times bestselling author of Dream Team and Seven Seconds or Less
"Boys Among Men is as inside as an account can be of the paths
of those players, both the famous and the forgotten. It's not
merely a compelling book for any hoops fan, it's an important
one."—David Epstein, New York Times bestselling author of The
Sports Gene
“An indispensable book for anyone who cares about basketball.”
—George Dohrmann, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Play Their
Hearts Out
“Jonathan Abrams has transcended one of the NBA's great business
and moral debates to deftly tell the inside story of the
prep-to-pros phenomenon…A marvelous book that will stand the test
of time." –Adrian Wojnarowski, New York Times best-author of the
selling The Miracle of St. Anthony
“Jonathan Abrams expertly captures this crucial era in
basketball history. Yet what makes Boys Among Men so compelling
isn’t the high school players who turned out to be future hall of
famers, but the stories of all the tragic would-be heroes that
basketball has long forgotten.’ —Dave McMenamin, NBA writer for
ESPN
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About the Author
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JONATHAN ABRAMS is an award-winning journalist who
has covered the NBA for ESPN’s Grantland, The New York
Times and Los Angeles Times. Heis a graduate of the University of
Southern California.
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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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Bucky Buckwalter carefully placed the pile of
hundred-dollar bills on the orange crate that doubled as a
dining room table in Mary Malone’s living room. A room in the
broken-down home belonged to her son Moses. A sizable hole in
its wall allowed water in whenever it rained. The money for
improvements and a better life had been placed before them by
Buckwalter, a pro basketball executive. Buckwalter empowered
Moses Malone with a choice. He offered Malone riches over
poverty. Malone just had to forsake the rest of his childhood.
Moses Malone was an unassuming, gangly teenager from the South.
He lived in Petersburg, Virginia, in a duplex off St. Matthews
Street. The city was once a major Civil War conflict zone. In
1974, it hosted Malone, a teenager who happened to be
basketball’s greatest recruiting prize since Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar. The sport came easily to Malone. He competed in
playgrounds against adults. The kids received orange juice for
winning. If they lost, they rounded up spare change to give their
elders some money. “We’d beat them so bad, they thought they
were already drunk,” Malone recalled with a hearty laugh. College
recruiters arrived in droves to watch Malone at Petersburg High
School, where he steered his team to 50 straight victories and
back-to-back state championships, forsaking their families and
checking into hotels for months. One day, a representative from
Oral Roberts pledged that a higher power would cure Mary Malone’s
bleeding ulcer should her son bless the school with his
basketball abilities.
His talent traveled by word of mouth in an era when college
recruiters routinely circumvented NCAA rules of amateurism. A
wink could mean a new car for a recruit and a turned head could
result in the transfer of a handful of money. “It was like the
Wild West,” noted Howard White, then an assistant coach at the
University of Maryland. Recruiters found Malone a reluctant
listener. When they drove him in their cars, he feigned being
a. When they came to his house, he pretended that he was not
home. He had heard so many pitches that they had blended together
by the time he finally committed to stay close to home and attend
Maryland. When Maryland’s coach, Lefty Driesell, learned of
Malone’s pending intentions, he camped outside the Malones’ home.
Malone awakened at about 7 a.m., wiping the from his eyes.
Driesell, at his bedside, came into focus. Malone signed the
offer before rolling over and returning to .
Then, Buckwalter, his money, and the American Basketball
Association came along. The upstart league was widely viewed as
inferior to the National Basketball Association’s purer, more
technical brand of basketball. The 11-team ABA originated in
1967 and predicated itself on showmanship, with its
red-and-white ball and three-point line. The league existed in
the NBA’s shadow, but exploited a crack in luring talent by
accepting players with remaining college eligibility. The NBA
finally relented, following Spencer Haywood’s antitrust lawsuit,
and allowed players to leave college early and join their ranks
if they could prove a financial hardship. But no high school
player had ascended straight into basketball’s major leagues.
(The Detroit Pistons had drafted Reggie Harding out of high
school in 1962, but he first played in basketball’s minor leagues
before joining the NBA.) By chance, Buckwalter, the director of
player personnel for the ABA’s Utah Stars, had stumbled upon one
of Malone’s high school All-Star Games. He marveled at Malone’s
blend of height and quickness. A hard wind would have blown
Malone over. He stood 6 feet 11 inches tall and weighed just over
200 pounds. But his feet danced like those of a boxer. They never
stopped moving on the basketball court. The colleges wanted the
best basketball players. Buckwalter did, too. The Stars drafted
Malone in the third round of the ABA’s 1974 draft. Most viewed
the selection as little more than a publicity stunt, although it
granted the Stars the ability to negotiate a contract with
Malone.
Buckwalter had heard rumblings about the envelopes stuffed with
money that one of Malone’s uncles requested just to let a
recruiter meet with the teenager. Buckwalter had to sneak under a
fence and narrowly avoided the jaws of a dog simply to knock at
their front door. Mary Malone answered the door. Buckwalter
glanced at the ce furnishings. Mary Malone had four pictures
on her mantel: one each of Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King Jr.,
John and Jackie Kennedy, and her son Moses.
Buckwalter knew that Moses Malone had heard every possible spiel.
He discussed being a pioneer with Malone. Malone stared and
mumbled. Buckwalter offered to build the family a new house.
“This is yours,” Buckwalter said after he put the money on the
crate. “This is for you and your friends. This isn’t like
Maryland, where you never really see anything.”
Malone nodded and mumbled some more. He left the room and phoned
Lefty Driesell. “Coach Buckwalter is over here and he’s got
$25,000 in cash lying on my table,” Malone told Driesell. “He
wants me to sign this thing. Should I sign it?”
Driesell did not miss a beat. “Tell them to leave,” he said. “And
if they don’t, call the . Now, if he puts a million dollars
on your table, then call me back.”
Driesell’s enthusiasm could drown out the voices of the hundreds
of other coaches who lusted after Malone. Driesell was a
marvelous, relentless recruiter. He had told Malone that they
could start counting their national championships together. He
planned to pair Malone with John Lucas, a talented guard, and
purchase him an insurance package should an injury derail his
future professional career. Driesell sold the university to
Malone. More importantly, he sold himself to Mary Malone. She
supported herself and Moses, first as a practical nurse and then
as a meatpacker. Moses’s her had left the family before his
son turned two. Driesell told Mary Malone that he was a
God-fearing man and Maryland was a Christian-based program.
He was not going to lose Moses Malone without a fight. Driesell
had successfully and skillfully fended off the other college
recruiters. He now planned on struggling for Malone all over
again. He preached the sanctity of college. He told the Malones
that he had their best interests at heart and recommended that
the Malones talk to an agent acquaintance, Donald Dell, and his
partner, Lee Fentress, before making any decision.
The Malones agreed to the meeting. Dell found Malone to be
aloof—as all the college coaches had. He wanted his attention.
“Moses, have you ever heard of slavery?” Dell asked.
Malone’s head snapped up. “Well, this contract you’ve been
offered is slavery.” The contract, Dell said, ran for 16 years.
Utah only guaranteed the first four years, with a team option for
the next dozen years. “I hated the contract they offered him,”
Dell recalled. “I thought it was chickenshit that they arrived at
their house and put all that money on the dining room table of a
poor person’s home. The whole thing smelled.” Dell wearily agreed
to represent Malone in the negotiations. “I was very, very
worried that he wouldn’t make the team or he would turn into
something less than he wanted to be,” Dell said. “A young
eighteen-year-old with no education. That’s what I was really
worried about and I really didn’t for a couple of weeks
thinking about it.”
But Malone’s decision had been made long ago. At 14, he had
scribbled in the back of his Bible that he wanted to be a
professional athlete. To reject this rtunity meant turning
his back on the gift. “I said if I make this decision, this
decision is going to be on me,” Malone said. He had remained
mostly quiet throughout the process. His muteness did not reflect
the lack of interest it often projected. “What I do is listen and
pay attention,” Malone said. “I listen to words and I can tell if
they’re trustworthy or if they’re honest.”
The Maryland players offered Malone their combined per diem for
food and laundry, about $15 a month from each player, in an
effort to make him stay in college. His college career lasted all
of five days. John Lucas, his roommate, tried stirring Malone one
morning. “C’mon, we’ve got to go,” Lucas said.
“Big Mo going pro,” Malone replied. “Big Mo can’t take these damn
college hours.” He signed a seven-year contract with Utah that
would pay him up to $3 million.
•••
Moses Malone’s leap from high school did not immediately change
professional basketball’s landscape. In a hierarchy of natural
progression, players starred in high school and made their names
in college before graduating to the pros. Darryl Dawkins and Bill
Willoughby jumped to the NBA from high school a year after
Malone’s decision. Malone joined the NBA in 1976, when the league
absorbed much of the ABA, and carved out a Hall of Fame career.
But Dawkins and Willoughby provided cautionary tales for
different reasons as to why teenagers, both physically and
mentally, were not prepared for the NBA’s rigors.
That thought persisted until a lanky teenager named Kevin Garnett
reopened the dormant door in 1995. The game had been transformed
by the time of Garnett’s arrival. Players commanded millions in
salary, a large jump from $130,000—the average salary of an NBA
player in 1976. Malone’s decision ultimately birthed the route
into the NBA for one of the game’s greatest group of players,
from Garnett to Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady, LeBron James, and
Dwight Howard. They grew into stardom, while quickly advancing
from their proms to playing against grown men whose paychecks
accounted for how they fed their families. “When I see guys like
Kobe, LeBron James, Kevin Garnett still doing what they’re doing,
it just makes all the high school players that came before very
proud,” Malone said. “We’re doing what we’re doing because we
were the best in high school and we ain’t got to go to college
for four years to be the best.” They did not first toil in minor
leagues, as in professional baseball and hockey. They did not
have to wait three years after high school before becoming
professionals, like NFL players. Most became successful and,
lacking stardom, made more money than they would have otherwise
dreamed of. A few failed and faded with their chance at fame and
fortune eternally lost.
They all started at the same place. At an early age, they showed
remarkable physical gifts and someone pegged each of them as a
phenom. The days of a talent undiscovered until college are long
gone. High school games are televised across the country.
Elementary-school children are ranked nationally. “It’s the same
reason we want to see young, gifted actors, musicians, or
pianists,” said Jeremy Treatman. Treatman served as one of Kobe
Bryant’s high school assistant coaches and later scheduled and
broadcast marquee high school games. “They’re phenoms,” he
continued. “They’re prodigies. LeBron James was a prodigy. Dwight
Howard’s a prodigy. Kobe Bryant’s a prodigy. When someone can do
things that no one else can, you’re just blown away by it. Even
when you’re seeing a seven-year-old girl sing the national
anthem perfectly and you’re blown away for days. It’s that kind
of thing.” But the attention often came with a price: an
abbreviated childhood and mostly unrealistic expectations. “The
hustle and bustle, prostitution, drugs, gang banging, and all
that [in his neighborhood] to the AAU [Amateur Athletic Union]
circuit was no different,” said Tyson Chandler, taken second
overall in the 2001 draft out of high school. “It was the same
hustle. It was just legal. It was definitely the same characters
I would see on my street corner, just disguised different. My
life was accelerated because I had to learn how to protect myself
and use people who thought they were using me and do all of that
to get to where I wanted to get to. I was very aware of what was
going on at such a young age. That innocence is kind of thrown
out the window.”
Malone’s decision to fulfill his own prophecy mutated over the
years. A decision faced by a modern NBA prospect who considered
the jump from high school became saturated with too many parties
all with a stake in his future: the coaches, the families, the
shoe companies, the NBA, the handlers, the agents. Former NBA
commissioner David Stern began presiding over NBA drafts that may
as well have been high school graduations. The procession stopped
in 2006 with a rule mandating draft-eligible players be at least
one year removed from high school. “It’s a failing of so many
institutions, for which I think we are drawn into it,” Stern
said. “I don’t mean to take any attention, cut away any
responsibility, because we’re part of the system, but we’re not
the lead part of the system.”
They are the end goal, the league kids dreamed of and, for a
while, played in. The ban on high school players is continually
discussed. Some want it eliminated. Others want to extend the
league’s age minimum to at least 20 years. “It’s just not right,”
said Jermaine O’Neal. He jumped to the NBA from high school in
1996. “You can go to the and fight a war at eighteen
years old and give your life at 18 years old. Those people are
going to war to try to better their lives. It’s life or death in
the . You’re allowed to carry a and give your life.
That’s the ultimate sacrifice. So my question is, Why aren’t you
allowed to do something as simple as play basketball?”
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