Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association

Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association

by Terry Pluto
Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association

Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association

by Terry Pluto

Paperback(Reissue)

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Overview

What do Julius Erving, Larry Brown, Moses Malone, Bob Costas, the Indiana Pacers, the San Antonio Spurs and the Slam Dunk Contest have in common? They all got their professional starts in the American Basketball Association.

What do Julius Erving, Larry Brown, Moses Malone, Bob Costas, the Indiana Pacers, the San Antonio Spurs and the Slam Dunk Contest have in common? They all got their professional starts in the American Basketball Association.

The NBA may have won the financial battle, but the ABA won the artistic war. With its stress on wide-open individual play, the adoption of the 3-point shot and pressing defense, and the encouragement of flashy moves and flying dunks, today's NBA is still—decades later —just the ABA without the red, white and blue ball.

Loose Balls is, after all these years, the definitive and most widely respected history of the ABA. It's a wild ride through some of the wackiest, funniest, strangest times ever to hit pro sports—told entirely through the (often incredible) words of those who played, wrote and connived their way through the league's nine seasons.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781416540618
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication date: 11/06/2007
Edition description: Reissue
Pages: 464
Sales rank: 202,194
Product dimensions: 6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Terry Pluto is an award-winning sportswriter who writes primarily for The Plain Dealer. He was a sportswriter for the Akron Beacon Journal from 1985-2007. He has twice been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and twice been honored by the Associated Press Sports Editors as the nation's top sports columnist for medium-sized newspapers. He is an eight-time winner of the Ohio Sports Writer of the Year award and has received more than fifty state and local writing awards. He is the author of twenty-one books, including The Curse of Rocky Colavito, Unguarded, and Loose Balls. He lives in Akron, Ohio.

Table of Contents

Introduction Cast of Characters Year-by-Year Standings and Franchise Histories ABA Team Logos Prologue

Part I: Opening Gambits Birth Pangs The Ball The First Jumper The Shakeout Begins Finding Players Opening Tip The 3-Pointer Larry and Doug The Hawk Bad Times in Oakland First-Year Notebook: 1967-68 The $1.3 Million Glass Ring: An ABA "Success" Story The Leaders Crumble Second-Year Notebook: 1968-69 Saved from the Brink Washington: First in War, First in Peace, and Third in the Western Division? Sideshow in Miami Third-Year Notebook: 1969-70 Raiding the Refs The Indiana Pacers: The Boston Celtics of the ABA

Part II: Middle Game Star Wars Fourth-Year Notebook: 1970-1971 The Stars Rise in L.A., but Shine in Utah The Meanest Men in the ABA Fifth-Year Notebook: 1971-72 Enter the Doctor From the Sublime to...Johnny Neumann Memphis Follies Sixth-Year Notebook: 1972-73 Carolina: Where the Cougars Roamed Wendell Ladner: An ABA Original Seventh-Yearh Notebook: 1973-74 Coach Chamberlain Doctor J and the Rest The Rivalry A Big Move Spurs a Texas Revival

Part III: EndGame The Legend of Doctor J Moses Malone: The Ultimate Underclassman The Kentucky Colonels: The ABA's Frontline Team Eighth-Year Notebook: 1974-75 The Wildest Team of Them All

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