Can't Knock the Hustle: Inside the Season of Protest, Pandemic, and Progress with the Brooklyn Nets' Superstars of Tomorrow

by Matt Sullivan

Overview

“Brilliantly audacious…written with the profundity of a sage baller and the acuity of a seasoned journalist.”—Kiese Laymon, New York Times bestselling author of
Heavy 

An award—winning journalist's behind—the—scenes account from the epicenter of sports, social justice, and coronavirus, Can't Knock the Hustle
is a lasting chronicle of the historic 2019—2020 NBA season, by way of the notorious Brooklyn Nets and basketball's renaissance as a cultural force beyond the game.
The Nets were already the most intriguing startup in the NBA: a team of influencers, entrepreneurs and activists, starring the controversial Kevin
Durant and Kyrie Irving. But this dynasty—in—the—making got disrupted by the unforeseen. One tweet launched an international scandal, pitting the team's
Chinese owner and the league's commissioner against its players and LeBron
James. The sudden death of Kobe Bryant, after making his final public appearance in Brooklyn, sent shockwaves through a turbulent season.
Then came the unimaginable. A global pandemic and a new civil—rights movement put basketball's trend—setting status to the ultimate test, as business and culture followed the lead of the NBA and its empowered stars. No team intersected with the extremes of 2020 quite like the Brooklyn Nets, and
Matt Sullivan had a courtside view.
Can't Knock the Hustle crosses from on the court, where underdogs confront A—listers like Jay—Z and James Harden, to off the court, as players march through the streets of Brooklyn, provoke Donald
Trump at the White House, and boycott the NBA's bubble experiment in Disney
World. 








Hundreds of interviews—with Hall—of—Famers, All—Stars,
executives, coaches and power—brokers across the world—provide a backdrop of the NBA's impact on social media, race, politics, health, fashion, fame and fandom, for a portrait of a time when sports brought us back together again,
like never before. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063036802
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	06/22/2021
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Matt Sullivan has been an editor at The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Esquire and Bleacher Report. His work in sports, celebrity and investigative journalism has been honored more than a dozen times by The Best American Sports Writing, the National Magazine Awards and the Edward R. Murrow Awards. A native New Yorker and graduate of Duke University, he lives with his wife, their daughter and a French bulldog.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xi

1 Decisions, Decisions 1

2 The Clean Sweep 23

3 Fight For Freedom 47

4 A Conspiracy of Silence 65

5 The Circuit Board 83

6 Rise of the Underdog Disruptors 103

7 IRL 121

8 Activists Wear Sneakers, Too 143

9 Keeper of the Soul 167

10 Disinfected 191

11 Timeout 213

12 The Roar of the Crowd 227

13 A Revolution on Top 243

14 The Toothpaste is Out of the Tube 269

Encore 301

Appreciations 313

Endnotes 317

Editorial Reviews

"Only a brilliantly audacious book could begin to make sense of the weirdly brilliant audacity of the new Brooklyn Nets. One writer on Earth could have written this book this way — with the profundity of a sage baller and acuity of a seasoned journalist — and that writer is Matt Sullivan." — Kiese Laymon, New York Times best—selling author of Heavy
“With Can't Knock The Hustle, Matt Sullivan correctly positions the basketball games we love as both a prism through which to understand our culture, and a battlefield on which to fight for the better angels of that culture. On the surface, it's a story about the unending march of 2020. But once you finish it, you understand that it's also an essential document about the decades that led us to this moment, and about the future decades yet unspooled."  — Wright Thompson, ESPN senior writer and New York Times bestselling author of Pappyland and The Cost of These Dreams
“In the dueling eras of unprecedented athlete empowerment and the coarse ugliness of 'shut up and dribble,' Matt Sullivan's Can't Knock the Hustle offers a can't—look—away sampling of not merely the NBA's most fascinating franchise, but a frozen period in time that will leave historians both horrified and riveted."  — Jeff Pearlman, New York Times bestselling author of Three—Ring Circus and Showtime
“Can't Knock the Hustle is a terrific book because it gives us something in woefully short supply: real journalism. Matt Sullivan has discovered the ground zero of a player revolution—and it's in Brooklyn. Is anybody ready for it?"  — Howard Bryant, ESPN senior writer and author of Full Dissidence: Notes from an Uneven Playing Field
“The superstar—studded Brooklyn Nets are basketball's most captivating team, and Can't Knock the Hustle delivers a fascinating secret history of their journey to the pantheon of player activism and empowerment. With brilliant reporting and breakneck prose, this is our generation's Moneyball.”  — Don Van Natta Jr., Pulitzer Prize—winning ESPN investigative reporter and New York Times bestselling author of First Off the Tee and Wonder Girl
“No narrative has captured the dynamics of the ‘player empowerment’ movement quite like Can’t Knock the Hustle. Sullivan has written about as revealing a basketball book as there's been in a long time: an insider’s account with an outsider’s moxie.”  — Dave Zirin, The Nation sports editor and author of The Kaepernick Effect
“Matt Sullivan is one helluva social anthropologist, and as a result, his Can't Knock the Hustle amounts to way more than a journey with the Brooklyn Nets, or an examination of the modern—day athlete. This is an astute, ambitious book about the glory and torment of talent itself. Basketball? That's just the starting point, and what a trip Sullivan's remarkable odyssey turns out to be.” — James Andrew Miller, New York Times bestselling author of Those Guys Have All the Fun, Live From New York, and Powerhouse
“Sportswriter Sullivan takes readers on a propulsive ride in his tour—de—force debut. . . . Sullivan’s detailed account will intrigue anyone who cares about sports and the role it plays in social justice today.”  — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"More than a basketball book, this helps explain race relations, celebrity power, and personal choice in a changed world." — Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

"Only a weird, brilliantly audacious book could begin to make sense of the weirdly brilliant audacity of the new Brooklyn Nets. One writer on Earth could have written this book this way — with the profundity of a sage baller and acuity of a seasoned journalist — and that writer is Matt Sullivan."

Kiese Laymon

2021-04-07
A sportswriter and investigative journalist delivers “a contemporaneous history revealing how everyone from LeBron James and Kyrie Irving to shifty billionaires and calamity-stricken Brooklynites were forced to evolve as frantically as the world did” during the pandemic.

In 2020, everyone’s story became one of life and death, of personal choices about racial inequality and political beliefs, of playing it safe or taking risks during a global pandemic. In this ambitious book, Sullivan captures all those aspects in the lives of the Brooklyn Nets, including one of the NBA’s biggest superstars, Durant, one of its most controversial, Irving, and the rest of a team poised to win a championship this season. The author embedded with the Nets back in 2019, when no one could have imagined the hundreds of thousands of Covid-19 deaths or millions of Black Lives Matter protesters taking to streets across the U.S. Sullivan’s eyewitness accounts of the team’s private moments and in-depth interviews with players and coaches yield explanations for those crises as well as behind-the-scenes details of some of the biggest stories in sports, including the international incident surrounding the Nets’ exhibition game against the Los Angeles Lakers in China and the deliberations over whether the team should finish out the 2020 season in the NBA–created bubble in Orlando. All of the author’s cogent reporting allows him to place these events in a deeper context. “It continues to be a despicable and particularly American reality,” he writes, “that the oppressed so often, and especially with the undue pressure of television and social media, are expected to both withstand and overcome, to survive and speak out at once.” He also reveals remarkable details about Durant’s recovery from injuries, Irving’s Indigenous roots and headline-grabbing behavior, Spencer Dinwiddie’s forward-thinking business strategies, and Garrett Temple’s plans to study law.

More than a basketball book, this helps explain race relations, celebrity power, and personal choice in a changed world.

Kirkus Reviews